Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP)
http://icujp.org
email: icujp@pacbell.net (coordinator)
webmanager@icujp.org (web and email)
see the icujp.org web calendar for meeting times,
local events and other Peacemaking opportunities

"Maybe we can tap into some of that $87 billion from George Bush's war budget," Parker said on the picket line at MTA headquarters. "You know, I think you could probably cover every single state budget deficit in the country with what we're spending this year in Iraq."

                                                                    Reid Parker, who fixes bus air-conditioners,
                                                                    quoted in Steve Lopez
                                                                    October 15, 2003, Los Angeles Times

Both locally and in other parts of the nation, nearly 100,000 workers are on strike fighting a battle for Economic Justice which ICUJP supports.

In regard to both the Grocery and the Transit workers' strikes, the least advantaged are the most adversely affected.

Super wealthy CEO's with salaries and bonuses in the millions, (whose business failures have cost their own shareholders many millions in bad deals), are holding the lives of both workers and the poor in the balance. They aim to roll back workers' wages and benefits, using Wal-Mart as a model (with its low wage and zero benefits practices forcing workers to use emergency rooms at public expense for their "health plan" and food stamps to supplement their inadequate wages).

The owners are wealthy, politically powerful, and have the resources to make the strike into a war of attrition waged against their already struggling employees. In order to insure that bargaining can be done with dignity and justice can be found, workers in these strikes need our support.

Donate to the Strike Support Fund

Shop at unionized stores that are not on strike

Volunteer or donate to the Bus Riders Shuttle effort

Action! from:
AFL-CIO Community Services

Donate to the Striking Workers
AFL-CIO Turkeys & Toys Holiday Assistance Program

AFL-CIO Community Services has organized a support fund for the workers involved in both the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) - MTA strikes.

The "Turkeys & Toys Holiday Assistance Program" is described in the letter here, on our speakOut page. Please consider donating to the fund!

Make your check payable to:

Labor Community Services
(with a note that it's for the Strike Fund)
2130 W. James M. Wood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90006

Please call Steve Neal at 213-427-9044 with any questions.

The UFCW has
a list of unionized supermarkets whose workers are not on strike

Action! from:
Bus Riders Union

The Bus Riders Union is Organizing
Shuttle Service Routes

The Bus Riders Union will be operating shuttles along the Crenshaw, Wilshire, and Vermont corridors, and a Koreatown loop. They are requesting vehicles and supplies to serve riders.

Mark the 450th Anniversary of the most important instigating event of the organized Unitarian Universalist movement.

Throop Memorial Church
Throop Sanctuary
300 S. Los Robles Ave.
Pasadena
directions

On October 27, 1553, Miguel Servet (known by his Latin name of Michael Servetus) was burned to death for heresy on a pile of green wood at the hands of John Calvin and his Geneva city government.

Servetus was one of the most important Renaissance scholars and theologians, a noted geographer, physician-scientist (discoverer of the pulmonary circulation of the blood) a proponant of Jesus' human divinity, as well as the divinity of all human beings. He strongly disputed the doctrine of the Trinity as non-biblical. And in his last book, The Restitution of Christianity, which was burned along with him, put forth a neo-platonic mystical vision of a reformed Christianity that could unite Muslims, Christians, and Jews with the influence of the message of love of the divine-human prophet Jesus, stripped of his other-worldly, specially sacrosanct status.

Read more here

In memory of Servetus and the conflagration of ideas that ignited our own religious movement, two or three or more of us will meet in our Throop Sanctuary on Monday October 27th at 7:30 pm to honor Migel Servet, the great Spanish Humanist whom we Unitarian Universalists hold dear. I have asked some Unitarian Universalist colleagues to join me in this celebration of his life. You are also welcome.

Paul Sawyer, minister

Tuesday October 28, 2003
5:00 pm

Where did our schools and hospitals go?
Protest Bechtel Corporation:
War Profiteers Prosper - Working People Suffer

Bechtel Corporation's LA Offices
707 Wilshire Blvd. (at Hope St.)
Downtown Los Angeles

Mark this Halloween by protesting truly scary Bechtel Corporation

Bechtel, along with Halliburton, receives billions to implement US control over Iraq's resources.

Their efforts to privatize water in many countries was, in Bolivia, defeated by a grassroots rebellion.

Women, hardest hit by their policies, are central to the fight against Bechtel, starting with grandmothers from Big Mountain who fought displacement.

Bechtel oversees the nuclear dumpsite at Yucca Mountain.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz is currently on the board of the Bechtel Corporation. Shultz is California Gov.-elect Schwartzeneger's economic advisor.

Last April, the Bush administration gave Bechtel the first big Iraqi reconstruction contract, a prized $680 million deal over 18 months.

Join women and men in this anti-military/anti-corporate protest.
COSTUMES WELCOME.

For more information call (323) 292-7405, or e-mail la@crossroadswomen.net

Called by the Global Women's Strike, cosponsored by ANSWER and others .

Sunday November 16, 2003
ICUJP Fall Conference at USC:
Confronting Extremism in Our Religious Traditions:
The Impact on the Public Square

An Educational Forum

USC's Mark Taper Hall
3501 Trousdale Pkwy
Los Angeles
directions

registration: 12:30 pm
Program: 1:00 - 6:00 pm

Admission:
$10.00 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
with Special close of Ramadan meal $20.00

Keynote Speaker
Chip Berlet
Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates
co–author, with Matthew N. Lyons
'Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort'

Religious Leaders Speak Out on Issues of Religious Extremism:
Dr. Maher Hathout
Islamic Center of Southern California & Author of 'Jihad Versus Terrorism'

Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak
Executive Director, HaMifgash

Reverend Zelda Kennedy
All Saints Church, Pasadena

Seating is limited, Please RSVP:
icujp@pacbell.net
or call 626 683-9004
download a flyer
descargue un folleto

for more information, see:
http://icujp.org/calendar.shtml#nov16

more information about the Religious Right from Political Research Associates:
http://www.publiceye.org/main.htm

Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) c/o the Regas Institute, 215 North Marengo, Third Floor Pasadena, CA 91101 USA tel.: (626) 683-9004 • fax: (626) 683-9485 http://icujp.org email: icujp@pacbell.net (coordinator) webmanager@icujp.org (web and email)