Ecumenical Meeting Starts with Protest

["Daphne Martin_Gnanadason" <Daphne.Martin_Gnanadason@wcrc.ch>]

World Communion of Reformed Churches  
News Release 
31 March 2011
 
Ecumenical Meeting Starts with Protest
 
More than 30 representatives of the World Communion of Reformed
Churches (WCRC) will travel to a small town in south Florida in
the United States today to visit and speak with a coalition of
low-paid, itinerant tomato pickers about their working and
housing conditions and other concerns related to their
employment.
 
As part of a one-day immersion program, WCRC representatives
will spend time with workers who are part of the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization of primarily
Latino, Mayan Indian, and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage
agricultural jobs throughout the state of Florida. Immokalee is
the town where the coalition is based.
 
“We will learn of the issues that they face and then consider
ways in which the WCRC can help them, since justice for workers
is a matter that WCRC takes very seriously,” says Peter
VanderMeulen, the Christian Reformed Church in North America’s
representative to the consultation. The CRC is a member of WCRC
and helped host a meeting at which the WCRC was created.
 
WCRC representatives from all over the world will make the
onsite visit at the start of a four-day consultation that, among
other things, will seek ways in which the ecumenical
organization, formed last summer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, can
support immigrant workers who face various challenges obtaining
work permits and then eking out a living in this case as tomato
pickers in the southern state in the United States.
 
The visit and consultation emerges out of a mandate provided by
the WCRC last year that asks its memberchurches to find ways in
which they can come alongside and support workers worldwide as
they struggle for fair compensation and decent living conditions.

 
In a document accepted at the meeting in Grand Rapids, there is
a section that addresses the stance WCRC takes and the actions it
wants governments and churches to undertake on issues involving
immigrants and their rights. 
 
In part, this document states: “We deplore the ill-treatment of
migrants, attacks by individuals, and criminalization by
governments … We urge our governments and churches to see people
with dignity and equality. We urge our governments and churches
to see people neither as a threat or a commodity …”
 
At the meeting with the tomato pickers, say organizers of the
event, they will likely hear how “the supermarket industry has
yet to agree to the extra penny for each pound of tomatoes
picked. Supermarkets are the only remaining obstacle in the way
of a long-awaited, urgent change in the fields.”
 
After learning from the workers how they have fought to get
other parts of the tomato industry to agree to additional payment
and how supermarkets are the sole hold-outs, WCRC representatives
will gather outside of a grocery store that sells these tomatoes
and demonstrate in various public ways about the human injustice
involved in keeping the cost of the tomatoes low.
 
Following the demonstration, they will meet at a nearby church
and discuss what they have learned, assess the success of their
protest action, and discuss how it fits with WCRC’s strategic
vision. They will then depart for Fort Myers, Florida, where the
rest of their meeting will be held.
 
On Friday, the WCRC representatives from countries such as
Nigeria, Jamaica, Switzerland, Taiwan, India, Kenya, Canada, and
the United States will review the key points, directions, and
mandates that came out of the meeting last summer at which the
World Alliance of Reformed Churches merged with the Reformed
Ecumenical Council.
 
There will then be roundtable discussion, led by such WCRC
officials as Setri Nyomi, General Secretary of WCRC.  Jerry
Pillay, a South African pastor and president of the WCRC, will
also lead discussions.
 
The roundtables will address gender and race issues and
economic, climate, and social justice.
 
The following day, April 2, will be devoted to developing a
methodology to implement approaches – educational, spiritual,
confrontational, and otherwise – to address key issues brought up
last summer.
 
The final day will be used to refine the methodologies and
approaches and draw up key points and future direction for WCRC
strategies and priorities.
 
WCRC was created in June 2010 through a merger of the World
Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical
Council (REC). Its 230 member churches representing 80 million
Christians are active worldwide in initiatives supporting
economic, climate and gender justice, mission, and cooperation
among Christians of different traditions.
 
 
  Media Contacts: 

Local Media
Allan Buckingham
AllanBuckingham@Gmail.com
 
WCRC Media Relations (Geneva)
Kristine Greenaway
PO Box2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
tel. +41 22 791 6243; fax +41 22 791 6505
kgr@wcrc.ch; www.wcrc.ch ( http://www.wcrc.ch/ )