UMW looks at race, class issues raised by Katrina
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Kyung
Za Yim (center), president of the Women's Division, shares a photo with
displaced children at a camp in Bateilik, Indonesia.
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Kyung
Za Yim (center), president of the Women's Division of the United
Methodist Church, shares a digital photograph with children at a camp
for people displaced by the Dec. 26 tsunami in Bateilik, Indonesia. The
Methodist Church of Indonesia is helping support programs at the
facility. A delegation of church mission and communications leaders
visited areas of Sumatra, Indonesia, near the center of the earthquake
that triggered the waves. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo #05-679.
Accompanies UMNS story #574. 10/11/05 |
Oct. 11, 2005
By Linda Bloom*
STAMFORD, Conn. (UMNS) — United Methodist Women is calling on its
membership to address issues of race and class raised by Hurricane
Katrina.
“While we identify and address the systemic and institutional sources of
injustice, we must also recognize our own culpability,” said a UMW
statement.
“Often, protective of our own need for jobs, lower taxes and private
schools over the common good, we have bought into the mentality of
reducing taxes and privatizing public services, leaving larger and
larger groups of people behind.”
The statement, “Be Repairers of the Breach,” was adopted during the Oct.
7-10 annual meeting of the Women’s Division, Board of Global
Ministries, in Stamford. The division is UMW’s administrative arm.
UMW members are urged to study biblical and ethical obligations “to
respond and address both immediate and long-term system injustices.”
In the community, that means having conversations on issues of race,
class and public policy; serving as advocates for those displaced by
Katrina; and leading dialogues “on what it means to welcome strangers in
our midst and be communities of hospitality.”
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose United
Methodist Dora Jackson, 77, gathers a few belongings from her home in
Slidell, La., after it was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
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Dora
Jackson, 77, gathers a few belongings from her home in Slidell, La.,
after it was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Jackson is a member of
Hartzell Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Slidell. A UMNS photo by
Mike DuBose. Photo #05H171. Accompanies UMNS story #574 and #676.
10/11/05 |
On a larger scale, UMW members are asked to affirm the rights and
self-determination of those affected by disasters; actively work for the
return of thousands of displaced persons to their communities; and
advocate for the building of government capacity to serve the public
good, with the “voices of those most affected” included at the table.
In her address to directors, Division President Kyung Za Yim said the
UMW must increase its longtime attention to poverty-related issues.
“We saw through Katrina the ugly face of poverty, where health care and
education and the social safety nets have been dropped from under the
poor long before the hurricane hit them,” she said.
After the Dec. 26 tsunami, Yim was part of a Board of Global Ministries
delegation that visited Indonesia. She said she found the images
televised after Katrina to be more horrifying than what she witnessed in
Indonesia because of the wealth and capabilities of the United States.
“The day after Katrina, the new figures for people living in poverty rose by a million to 37 million,” she told directors.
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose The United Methodist Church's historic Gulfside Assembly grounds in Waveland, Miss., lies in ruins after Hurricane Katrina.
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Foundation
pilings and a crushed basketball goal are amid storm debris at the
historic Gulfside Assembly grounds in Waveland, Miss. The center and
town were devastated when Hurricane Katrina made landfall Aug. 29. A
UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo #05H172. Accompanies UMNS story #574.
10/11/05 |
Jan Love, the division’s chief executive, noted that national mission
institutions supported by the Women’s Division and founded by its
predecessors served as first responders to hurricane victims and will
continue to provide long-term assistance.
“Hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast, especially Katrina, graphically
exposed the extreme decay of our inner cities,” she said in her report
to directors. “New Orleans is not the only urban area riddled by
poverty, racism and violence, but when a natural calamity like a
hurricane collided with New Orleans’ long-standing human-made disaster,
the flood washed away our ability as a nation to deny these harsh
realities.”
In other business, Women’s Division directors welcomed a new treasurer,
Andrea Bryant Hatcher, who began her work Sept. 19, and elected M. Lynne
Gilbert as assistant treasurer.
Hatcher, a member of Janes Memorial United Methodist Church in
Philadelphia, had a personal consulting business in Philadelphia and
previously was a senior vice president at State Street Bank and Trust
Co. in Boston. Gilbert, a certified public accountant in Greensboro,
N.C., is a UMW vice president for the Western North Carolina Annual
(regional) Conference.
Division directors also:
- Approved spending up to $200,000 for an
interactive DVD called “Women Empowering Women.” The DVD’s purpose is to
interpret the work of UMW.
- Supported the development of an online
community and Web-based membership for UMW, along with an allocation of
$150,000 for design and program services related to the online
community.
- Saw highlights of a DVD of the Sept. 21
“Forum for Discussion between the Women’s Division and the RENEW
Network.” The DVD is an unedited version of the forum, includes
post-forum interviews and can be downloaded at http://gbgm-umc.org/umw,
the division’s Web site, until Sept. 20, 2006.
- Agreed to become an official member of
the Global March Against Child Labor, “a movement to mobilize worldwide
efforts to protect and promote the rights of all children.”
- Endorsed the Federal Fair Minimum Wage campaign initiated by Interfaith Worker Justice, a partner organization.
- Approved a letter-writing campaign to
businesses such as Office Max, Office Depot and Corporate Express,
calling on them to stock processed chlorine-free paper. The campaign
already has involved Staples and FedEx/Kinko’s.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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