Are you Hungry for Immigration Reform? Faith Leaders Launch “Fast for Families” Initiative

By Hannah Cornfield, a Fall 2013 Leadership Conference Education Fund Intern

Faith and civil rights leaders gathered on the National Mall on Tuesday to launch “Fast for Families: A Call for Immigration Reform and Citizenship.”

While the immigration reform bill has passed through the Senate, House Speaker John Boehner said that he has no intention of passing it through the House floor. “Fast for Families” seeks to urge Congress to stop the moral crisis caused by this nation’s broken immigration system and its impact on millions of families, and pass comprehensive immigration reform.

“As millions of immigrants live in fear of going to the hospital, sending their children to school, or even calling 9-1-1, the House leadership has chosen to ignore its responsibility to govern and let these families suffer in the shadows of society,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and emcee of the press conference.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, and Lisa Harper, director of mobilizing at Sojourners, remarked on the history and significance of fasting as a call to social action. “This issue has been racially polarized and politicized….We fast and pray to break the spiritual hold that political dysfunction, political self-interest and racialized politics have overcome good and the future of this country. To break that hold, to heal this nation, we pray to the lord,” The Rev. Wallis said.

Referencing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” the Rev. Barbara Williams Skinner, co-chair of the National African American Clergy Network, emphasized interconnectivity despite different populations’ migration stories when she said, “Whether they walked across the desert, or trapped in a slave ship, or fled poverty and persecution, we all deserved – when we got here, however we got here – a warm welcome.”

Other speakers included the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) International Secretary-Treasurer, Eliseo Medina, Executive Director of NETWORK, Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, Dae Joong Yoon, Virginia Director of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Tony Suarez, Immigrant and Member of Make the Road New York, Lucy Tzunun, Director of Training for PICO National Network, the Rev. Al Herring, and Public Policy Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, the Rev. Michael Livingston.

In prayer, the Rev. Herring led the crowd in chanting, “We fast and we pray. We fast for justice and we pray for justice….We are all God’s children.”