For the Love of Neighbor

Catholics held a Day of Action for Migrant Children on Wednesday.  We wrote prayers for the children on strips of fabric and tied them to a metal fence representing the cages that kids are being kept in at the immigrant detention centers. Jean Stokan from the Sisters of Mercy spoke about the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, funding and fueling so much of the violence outbreaking in Central America, meanwhile we won’t even let migrants escaping the violence to find refuge in the U.S. without putting them in cages, without proper hygiene, food or water, and keeping them separated from their parents.  “Child detention is illegal under international law and causes serious mental, physical, and emotional health complications.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics and many other public health organizations have declared the policies towards immigrants a public health crisis. Immigrant policing has been found to negatively impact trust of government health information including vaccination of children.  The children are experiencing psychological trauma and may experience long-term mental health effects due to the detention and separation.  “The experiences may also exacerbate prior exposure to traumas in the home country (eg, violence) and during migration (eg, extortion).”  The children are not getting appropriate medical care; are forced to be in situations of poor sanitation and living conditions, and sit through long detention periods without the stimulation necessary to promote healthy child development. AAP past-president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, said “Separating parents from their kids at the border contradicts everything we know about children's welfare.”   

Indeed, any human rights crisis is a public health crisis, when people are not provided with the means by which they need to live dignified lives with nourishing food, clean water, clean air, shelter, clothing, bodily autonomy, and anything else they need to maintain hygiene and safety. 

Meanwhile, the public health community is also fighting for Child Nutrition Reauthorization, and ensuring the future of school wellness in New York State.  Almost 90% of school districts in New York State are missing at least one element of a comprehensive school wellness policy, as measured by the WELLSAT tool from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.  New York City school wellness advocates are trying to tackle support for school wellness, better school food and nutrition education at the city, state, and federal levels right now.   At the state level through the WELL Campaign, we want to see a model state school wellness policy that incorporates mental health and social and emotional learning alongside standards for school food, nutrition education, physical activity and physical education.   

And yet, the battle against inhumane immigration policies towards children seems totally disconnected from the battle for child health and well-being in schools.  Why can’t we see these efforts for the dignity & well-being of children as all connected, and work on them together?  Surely the faith community knows that public health advocates working on child nutrition also don’t want to see kids in cages, right?

Perhaps you think that nutrition education is not as important as immigration policies and ending child detention. (I for one have not seen many Catholic organizations promoting nutrition education, with exceptions including Altagracia Faith & Justice works in Northern Manhattan and the Mercy Center in the South Bronx - organizations serving immigrant communities while also protesting the root causes that cause people to have to flee their countries in the first place.) 

We cannot forget that everything is connected.  The Amazon and other rainforest areas are being destroyed to clear land for cattle that is used to produce fast food, palm trees to create an unhealthy oil which is used as a stabilizer for processed foods, and other consumer products such as paper, furniture and clothing which our consumeristic society is so dependent on.  If we do not each take a serious look at our lifestyles and examine how they are contributing to the destruction of human livelihoods and lives, and teach children to do the same, we will continue to perpetuate the crises in front of us. We live in an interconnected world and all our actions have consequences. We are called to co-create with our Creator, not destroy.  Youth are striking for the climate, some every Friday through the Fridays for Future movement, and some are just gearing up specifically for September 20.  

There are ways these youth can take action in their own schools though; we need to be proactive in our actions, not just resistant.  The Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University has created a handout about what youth can do to demand more sustainability solutions in their schools. This could take the form of starting a school garden, participating in Meatless Mondays, campaigning for a Green Team, advocating for food and nutrition education, or decreasing food waste from school lunch. 

At the end of a “Climate Emergency and the Green New Deal” event at Riverside Church, a Fridays for Future climate strike march video was played with a backdrop of music from the song Bella Ciao which was used to protest the Nazis (re-written with lyrics to protest climate change), followed by the audience singing along. This was a chilling reminder of the connection between genocide and environmental destruction, which is all too close to home in the United States, with the founding of this country being at the expense of so many Native American lives, and too timely, with the killing of indigenous peoples in the Amazon and in other rainforests where the native peoples rely on the rainforests for their livelihoods.  

I have been encouraged to see youth leadership in promoting peace and living in harmony with creation, such as the Interfaith Youth Forum for Environment & Peace organized by JPIC Franciscans Africa.  However, the work of JPIC Franciscans Africa and the work of many other religious groups across the world are doing to promote this harmony is deeply underfunded.  For now, I have created a Go Fund Me page for JPIC Franciscans Africa, with hope and prayers that sufficient funds can be raised by the time of their 2019 youth forum which will be held during the Global Climate Strike on 20 September and World Peace Day on 21 September. The report about my trip to Kenya for the Laudato Si Generation conference, which I wrote about recently, has been translated into Spanish, French and Italian by the International Council of the Secular Franciscan Order.   

Recognizing the divide and silos between the public health community and faith-rooted social justice advocates, who seem to rarely work together for the same causes, several colleagues and I have decided to start the Interfaith Public Health Network, which seeks to engage and mobilize faith communities to improve population health, by addressing the underlying determinants of health (social, commercial, environmental, and political) through connecting, convening, cultivating, and catalyzing.  We want to bring the voices of healthcare advocates and the faith community together to advocate for things such as reduced emissions which lead to child asthma, promote agroecology projects and appreciation of plant-based meals which support the health of environment and people, support mental health services for people in need, and improve gun violence prevention measures.  

During a visit to New York by Olivier van Beeman from the Netherlands, author of the book “Heineken in Africa” the Interfaith Public Health Network organized an event with Olivier van Beeman along with Minister Onleilove Alston and Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg at the CUNY School of Public Health. We brought together the faith and public health communities to learn about the insidious practices of a multinational corporation that takes advantage of government tax loopholes in order to make its profits at the expense of the African community.  Some governments are even intertwined with the company, such as in Burundi.  This is the type of issue the Interfaith Public Health Network wants to raise awareness about: as Minister Onleilove Alston pointed out, in her religious tradition, it’s not a sin to drink, but it’s a sin to commit injustice.  And these injustices, involving government collusion with multinational companies, is what’s contributing to poverty, violence, despair and migration of our neighbors in many countries throughout the world, our common home.