A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for One World on Sunday, June 7! Special thanks to our speakers, cosponsors, and volunteers who made the conference possible.
We hope you found the conference meaningful, informative, and inspiring. On this page, we've included the available session recordings, calls to action, information shared by participants, and links to other resources to help us continue taking the next steps and putting our learning into action. Together, let's confront the challenges we're facing and work to create a peaceful and just world for all.
We encourage you to take the action steps listed, watch the session recordings, and visit the cosponsors and resources listed to continue learning about ways we can help create the better world we all seek!
Calls to Action
Recording of Conference Calls to Action
As people of faith committed to ending war and violence, ICUJP supports:
- Reducing the military budget and abolishing nuclear weapons
- Increasing spending on human needs: Healthcare, education, affordable housing, et al
- Reducing dependence on fossil fuels and supporting alternative energy
- Fair, humane treatment of immigrants and refugees, with a path to citizenship
- Ending the prison industrial complex and immigrant detention
- Ending the death penalty
- Ending police violence, particularly towards people of color
- Strong gun control measures
- Closing Guantanamo and “black sites” that incarcerate people in inhumane conditions
- Ending torture
- Funding the World Health Organization, United Nations, and other international peace and justice bodies
- Promoting global human rights, social justice, and democracy
- The UN Declaration of Human Rights
Calls to Action: Peace with Justice
- PLEASE EMAIL OR CALL YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES TO OPPOSE ANNEXATION AND OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE.
- OPPOSE U.S. ARMS SALES, ESPECIALLY TO AUTHORITARIAN AND REPRESSIVE REGIMES LIKE THE PHILIPPINES, EGYPT AND SAUDI ARABIA.
- CONTACT ELECTED OFFICIALS AND TELL THEM TO STOP MILITARIZING LAW ENFORCEMENT: https://fcnl.quorum.us/campaign/25330/
Calls to Action: Environmental Justice
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SUPPORT CARBON PRICING. Carbon pricing is one of many important policy tools Congress should use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states, “Explicit carbon prices remain a necessary condition of ambitious climate policies.”
To write your Congressperson, go to https://citizensclimatelobby.org/write-your-representative/#/74/
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SUPPORT LOCAL INITIATIVES TO CLEAN UP TOXIC SITES. In Los Angeles, poisonous lead contamination has yet to be cleaned up at homes near the closed Exide battery recycling plant. Black, Latino and low-income California residents are especially likely to live near unplugged oil and gas wells that can spew pollution. People of color are more likely than white people to live alongside power plants, oil refineries and landfills.
See https://www.naacp.org/issues/environmental-justice/ and https://www.ienearth.org/category/climate-justice/
- SUPPORT INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WHO ARE PROTECTING WATER AND OTHER NATURAL RESOURCES. See https://www.ienearth.org/
Calls to Action: Racial and Religious Justice
- SUPPORT BLACK LIVES MATTER AND END POLICE VIOLENCE AND BRUTALITY! Go to https://www.blmla.org/
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ICUJP STANDS WITH BLM IN CALLING FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY JACKIE LACEY TO HOLD ACCOUNTABLE POLICE WHO ENGAGE IN RACE-BASED VIOLENCE AND BRUTALITY.
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TELL MAYOR GARCETTI AND CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT NURY MARTINEZ TO “FUND SERVICES, NOT POLICE”: Contact the Mayor at https://www.lamayor.org/contact-us-0
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NO BAN ON MUSLIMS OR REFUGEES: Trump has used the Covid-19 crisis to expand an executive order banning travel to the U.S. for nationals from certain Muslim-majority countries and dismantling the refugee resettlement program.
Your Congressperson can advance two bills to prohibit this from happening again: 1) The NO BAN Act (H.R. 2214/S. 1123) and 2) the GRACE Act (H.R. 2146/S. 1088). Together, they would immediately end the current bans, set limits so that Congress can stop discriminatory bans from being implemented, and establish a minimum number of annual refugee arrivals.
Urge your member of Congress to prioritize legislation to ensure no future President has unchecked power to discriminate against Muslims, immigrants, or refugees.
Calls to Action: Economic Justice
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URGE YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO PROVIDE NEEDED ASSISTANCE TO OUR VULNERABLE NEIGHBORS THROUGH THE DURATION OF THIS COVID CRISIS. The pandemic has revealed growing economic and racial disparities in our country, with people of color suffering the greatest impact due to systemic racism and xenophobia. We therefore urge shifting priorities away from the police and military to the following:
- Increasing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for allSNAP households;
- Providing aid for states, which will otherwise be forced to lay off teachers and other workers and cut health care, education, and other key services, exacerbating the economic downturn; and
- Extending expanded unemployment assistance, which is scheduled to expire inJuly and at the end of the year.
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SUPPORT STATE AND LOCAL HOUSING JUSTICE : Support Project Roomkey, eviction moratoriums, rent subsidies for low-Income renters, increased funding for affordable and homeless housing, etc.
- Congressional offices are hearing a lot from industry lobbyists. It’s important they hear from you too. Act now.
Session Recordings
Keynote Session
Video: Rev. James Lawson, Pastor Emeritus, Holman United Methodist Church
Video: We Carry the Dream - Jerusalem Prayer Project
Video: Peace Camp 2018 - Sola Community Peace Center
Breakout Sessions
Peace with Justice
Amid the COVID 19 pandemic, the United States continues to suffer from another deadly and chronic disease: addiction to war. For generations, leaders of both political parties have pathologically pursued a failed foreign policy of warmaking and intervention. With 800 military bases around the world, since 9/11 the US has squandered over $6 TRILLION on wars, causing a catastrophic loss of life and destruction of societies. The Pentagon outspends the world’s seven next largest militaries combined. And the US sells more weapons - to 98 countries in the last five years - than any other nation. This session will examine America’s blind commitment to armed supremacy and military dominance. And it will explore how we can strengthen diplomatic and humanitarian alternatives to war and build a world of pluralism and peace.
Session 1, 1:45 pm - Coming soon
- Jodie Evans, Cofounder and Director, CODEPINK
- Shakeel Syed, Regional Director, American Muslims for Palestine
Session 2, 2:45 pm - Coming soon
- Salam Al-Marayati, President, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
- Dr. Douglas Becker, Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California
Environmental Justice
Environmentalists have been warning that with a rise in the earth’s temperature, we will see increased climate disasters, devastation, rising seas, higher temperatures that result in more virulent strains of viruses and bacteria, destruction of crops, and resulting hunger, among other things. COVID-19 could well be a result of this climatic change.* ICUJP has long held that in addition to the above, wars continue to play a big role in the destruction of the earth. Yet many are working for change in policy and in personal actions. This session will highlight some of the ways that environmentalists are providing a way forward to restore us to a healthy planet. (*James Kingsland, Medical News Today, 4/3/20)
Session 1, 1:45 pm - Coming soon
- Dr. John Cobb, Founder, Center for Process Studies; Process and Faith
Hop Hopkins, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Sierra Club
Session 2, 2:45 pm - Watch ROLLBACKS film • Discussion video coming soon
- Lisa Smithline, Old Dog Documentaries, discussing the film ROLLBACKS: An Assault Against Life on Earth
Racial and Religious Justice
The COVID 19 pandemic has exposed a serious “pre-existing condition” in American society: racism and bigotry. Deep-seated racism - the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation - has contributed to severe disparities in health care, housing, food, jobs, incarceration, and other features of American life. Today, black, brown and native Americans are suffering twice the death rate from COVID 19 compared to the white population. Meanwhile, long simmering anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and prejudice toward immigrants and refugees (fostered and condoned at the highest levels of government) are breeding White Nationalism. And, inflamed by President Trump, ugly anti-Asian prejudice has flared. This session will examine racism and religious bigotry in America and will offer an opportunity to discuss how progressives and people of faith can embrace movements of liberation to create a multiracial, diverse democracy.
Session 1, 1:45 pm - Coming soon
- Hyepin Im, Founder and CEO, Faith and Community Empowerment
- Dr. Zaman Stanizai, Professor of Political Science, Cal State Dominguez Hills
Session 2, 2:45 pm - Coming soon
- Rabbi Mel Gottlieb, PhD, President, Academy for Jewish Religion | CA
- Tahil Sharma, North American Coordinator, United Religions Initiative
Economic Justice
The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered how the current economic system is not working. Based on a form of capitalism that has become exploitative and oppressive, it has slowly increased inequality and eroded the middle class, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Some people are calling out for a jubilee of economics, based on a system of debt forgiveness across the board.** ICUJP has long held that U.S. prioritization of the military industrial complex has created a budget that is heavily invested in this sector with a disproportionately minuscule amount allotted to our social welfare and thus has produced the stark poverty we have today. This breakout session will look at how this has impacted the lower-income and working class and will offer solutions for a new way forward. (**Washington Post 3/21/20; Marketplace Morning Report 4/2/20)
Session 1, 1:45 pm - Coming soon
- Ashley Gonzales, Faith Rooted Organizer, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE)
- Ben Poor, Community Organizer, UniteHere! Local 11
Session 2, 2:45 pm:
- Ashley Gonzales, Faith Rooted Organizer, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE)
- Ben Poor, Community Organizer, UniteHere! Local 11
Cosponsors
Thank you to our cosponsors for partnering with us, and for everything you do to work toward peace and justice! Please visit them online to learn more about these organizations and their missions:
Additional Resources
Thank you to everyone who shared links and resources throughout the conference:
- Defund the Police, Fund Communities: The People's Budget LA
- Stand with hotel workers fighting for healthcare: Sign letter to Chateau Marmont owner
- Yale Climate Connections article: Environmental rollbacks will take years to reverse
- NY Times article: Using Pandemic as another excuse to weaken environmental protections
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