Traditionally, the harvest is a time of intense labor, gathering the final yield of the year’s labors, followed by a celebration. We had hoped to gather together in person this year to celebrate and honor the amazing work that has been done, however with ongoing high transmission of the delta variant, we have decided to make this year’s Harvest Dinner an online gathering. 

We rely on this major fundraiser to support ICPJ with $20,000 in donations, and so we are asking that you give at the same level that you would have if we had gathered in person and enjoyed a good meal together. We also ask that you approach any congregation or organization you are a part of to ask them to consider sponsoring our gathering.  Addressing racial and economic inequality and climate justice has never been more important. Together we can make a difference through our financial support of ICPJ. 

We look forward to seeing you online on Monday October 4^th as we honor some of those in our community who have been leading us in this struggle. Please register for the gathering here: https://2021-icpj-harvest-dinner.eventbrite.com

Thank you,
The ICPJ Board of Directors

We will be honoring activists who embody the values of ICPJ:

2021 Peace & Justice Honoree: Natalie Holbrook

Peace and Justice Network Organization: We The People Michigan

Emergent Leader: Student Advocacy Center

Anti-Racist Advocate: Trische Duckworth

Network Weaver: Gail Summerhill

ICPJ centers racial and economic justice as we address the root causes of violence from oppression, poverty, environmental devastation, patriarchy, and war. We wage love and practice nonviolence in all its forms through education, community organizing, advocacy, and direct action. We unite across our differences and empower leadership in people to create the change we need for a more peaceful and just world.

Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice is committed to healing as a diverse community by dismantling systems of violence and building our collective capacity to live our shared values of peace, justice, and ecological sustainability. We believe that relationships that individuals and communities build through learning, mobilizing, organizing, and growing together create the foundation for co-liberation, abundance, and dignity of all life and our planet.

Background article in Politico, “How a Liberal Michigan Town Is Putting Mental Illness at the Center of Police Reform” by Lynette Clemetson about Anthony Hamilton and his contact with the criminal legal system in Washtenaw County. https://www.politico.com/…/police-reform-mental-health…

Here are four things we can do to offer support to Anthony:

1.) Send an email of encouragement to MaryAnn Sarosi at sarosia2@gmail.com. She will print the emails and deliver in person.

2.) Write County Prosecutor, Eli Savit, prosecutor@washtenaw.org, and ask for diversion instead of jail time for Anthony given his well-established mental health struggles.

3.) If you live in Ann Arbor, write your City Council Member and ask for changes in how AAPD interacts with minors, all of this could have been avoided had 17-year old Anthony been diverted to a restorative justice program instead of being arrested. Council needs to hear from the community that we want a different approach, one that is centered in restoration & wholeness, not in punishment and detainment.

4.) Watch the court proceedings on Wednesday, August 4th when Anthony appears before Judge Archie C. Brown. The docket starts at 1:30pm and his court is available via YouTube. Start here to find the link to his court: https://www.youtube.com/…/WashtenawCountyTrialCo…/videos

Co-sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.®, Delta Psi Omega Chapter, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, and the NAACP, Ann Arbor Chapter

Wednesday, June 30, 2021 ~ 7:00 8:30 p.m. via Zoom
REGISTER HERE

“The Black Woman is extraordinary. These true stories reveal courage in the face of racial prejudice and gender oppression. The Black Woman fought enslavement in court. She challenged laws enacted to make her human property. She became an activist for her own freedom, learned the law and became a judge. She used the law to liberate herself. . . . This was done in the midst of terrorists intent on murder, and few legal protections. . . . Yet she took justice. Her story is my story.” These are the opening words of Gloria Browne-Marshall’s compelling history, She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power – 1619 to 1969. Browne-Marshall relates the heroic stories of a score of Black women warriors for justice, beginning with African Queen Nzingha’s fight against Portuguese slavers in the seventeenth century, and ending with the election of Shirley Chisholm to Congress in 1969, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House. A few years later, of course, in 1972, Chisholm would become the first African American and first woman candidate for a major party’s nomination for U.S. President.

Please join us for this special event, a presentation and conversation with Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Browne-Marshall teaches classes in Constitutional Law; Race and the Law; Evidence; and Gender and Justice. She taught in the Africana Studies Program at Vassar College prior to joining the faculty of John Jay. She is a civil rights attorney who has litigated cases for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. Professor Browne-Marshall has spoken on issues of law and justice in Ghana, Rwanda, England, Wales, Canada, South Africa and before the United Nations in Geneva. In addition to She Took Justice, Professor Browne-Marshall is the author of The Voting Rights War (2017) and Race, Law, and American Society (2013), and scores of articles in the academic and popular press. Professor Browne-Marshall is also the author and producer of the short 2021 film, Dreams of Emmett Till.
This special event is in commemoration of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, in recognition of both the power and the limitations of that document, and in honor of the dramatically underappreciated contributions of Black women to the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S.

ICPJ is a member of Drive Michigan Forward (DMF) — a coalition made up of immigrants and allies. Our goal is to restore driver’s licenses to all and pave the way for basic dignity and security for members of our community.
More information here.

There are six important requests that we are making of you today:

1. Please join us during the #DriveMichiganForward Week of Action from May 17 – May 21st! We will be posting ready-made posts on ICPJ’s Facebook page daily. Just copy & paste to spread the word. (More details here.)
   
2. Sign the petition here to thank the #DriveSAFE bills sponsors and to urge Senator Tom Barrett, Chair of the MI Senate Transportation & Infrastructure Committee to which SB 433 & 434 have been referred, to give the bills a hearing.
   
3. Please sign up to participate in the Deep Canvassing Phone Bank THIS WEEK. (Details about how to prepare & sign up here.) This is an opportunity to do deep canvassing — talking with voters about why you support the Drive SAFE legislation, connecting with them about their views, and building toward common goals of paving the way for basic dignity & security for all.
   
4. Help ICPJ get the word out: ICPJ is hosting a #DriveSAFE Brown Bag, Wednesday, May 26th, 12pm. Registration Required here. This will be a brief zoom meeting – to provide all the information you need to know about this campaign.
   
5. Introduce this issue and your views to others in your network who live outside of Washtenaw County. If you can make connections with congregations or organizations in areas where legislators are not yet supportive of #DriveSAFE, this would be really helpful. We can help you with whatever background information you might want.
   
6. Forward this information to 5 of your friends. ICPJ has a strong network of friends committed to justice. Reach out, share information, and build the momentum that we need.

Sunday, May 23rd, 3 – 5 pm (Remote)

Registration Required: https://bit.ly/3d5Hkur (link is case sensitive)

Click here to see the bios of Board member candidates nominated by the current ICPJ Board during its March 2021 Board meeting. Voting will take place during the Annual Meeting, from 3-5pm.
The Board-recommended nominees are:
Duaa Aljirafi
Trevor Bechtel
Kira Berman
Trische’ Duckworth
Bryan Foley
Kwame Hooker
Rev. Shonagh Taruza
Hillary Watson
Rabbi Josh Whinston

Vote on Bylaws changes here: https://forms.gle/1b9pNsHFYQciE4on7

Each current member of ICPJ may vote on the below bylaw changes. Voting begins April 23rd and ends May 23rd at 3:30pm (ET). If you need assistance, please email Info@ICPJ.org

Overview of Recommendations
#1 Recommendation — Article V: Update Board Responsibilities
#2 Recommendation — Article V: Update Number of Board Members possible
#3 Recommendation — Article V: Include Director/CEO/Co-Directors as voting members of the Board
#4 Recommendation — Article V: Add Executive and Programming Committees
#5 Recommendation — Article V: Create Youth Board Term of One Year

Flores Exhibit, with Voices of Youth in Border Detention
May 6th, 6:30 pm

Registration Required Here: https://bit.ly/3wuCXld (case sensitive)

Tuesday, May 11th | 7-8:30pm

Screening of two short films: Brazil: Guardians of the Amazon and Brazil: Impunity in the Amazon, followed by discussion with Ethan Shirley
Registration Required here.

The Guardians of the Forest set fire to the equipment of illegal loggers in a bid to protect their ancestral homelands. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has increased sharply with the rise to power of Jair Bolsonaro, who insists that indigenous people own too much land.

“Among the nine federated states that make up the Brazilian Amazon, Rondônia has lost the most forest: a surface area the size of New York has been wiped up the map, up 50% from the year before.” Impunity in the Amazon continues from the Guardians to speak with small farmers in other areas of Brazil and the threats to their land and livelihood such as cattle farming and soya agribusiness.

Ethan is a conservationist, legal scholar, and extinction researcher. Working on conservation and sustainable development in the Brazilian Pantanal since 2003, his research addresses issues of past extinction in woolly mammoths as well as modern questions of ecology, environmental law, and policy to prevent extinction in the future. He holds a Master’s in Fisheries and Wildlife and a Juris Doctor from Michigan State University. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in Paleontology at the University of Michigan. He also holds active positions on the boards of Focus Conservation Fund, a conservation and ecotourism nonprofit, and Juara Foundation, which supports education and research in conservation priority regions.

The ACLU Of Michigan has released their report: The Border’s Long Shadow How Border Patrol Uses Racial Profiling and Local and State Police to Target and Instill Fear in Michigan’s Immigrant Communities. The report shows how U.S. Border Patrol, an agency within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is engaging in racial profiling throughout the state of Michigan and uses state and local law enforcement agencies to target immigrants and other people of color.

For activists, check out this media toolkit to help spread the research.

In this second part of a two-part documentary, different sectors of Colombian society give their perspectives after the peace agreement.

Registration Required Here

We will screen the second half of the film by Jenni Kivisto & Jussi Rastas featuring interviews with FARC guerrillas about to hand over their weapons, coca farmers trying to make a living, politicians and the aristocracy sharing their perspectives after the Colombian peace agreement was signed.

We will be joined by Elvira Sanchez-Blake. She obtained her PhD in Hispanic Literature and Latin American Studies at Cornell University and held academic appointments at Cornell and Michigan State University. A journalist, academic and writer, she authored numerous publications, including Spiral of Silence, a testimonial novel that breaks thirty-year silence about the traumatizing impact of Colombia’s civil war, and centers on the experiences of women who move through hopelessness, loss, and grief during this volatile era in Latin American history.

In this first part of a two-part documentary, different sectors of Colombian society give their perspectives after the peace agreement. Registration Required Here.

For this viewing, we look forward to having Maria Perdomo with us for discussion afterward. Maria is an Eastern Michigan University alum who has studied the multidimensional root causes and impact of the Colombian conflict. She has focused mostly on how the conflict has affected the rural areas of Colombia, as well as the grassroots movements and resilience of the Afro-Colombian, indigenous and peasant communities who face the challenges brought by the conflict before and after the 2016 Peace Accords. Maria is currently working as an analyst for the Permanent Mission of Chile to the United Nations, now focusing on the humanitarian, digitalization, crime prevention and criminal justice, and women’s issues portfolios, while also continuing to follow issues related to her dear homeland, Colombia.

Due to the length of this film, we will be showing it in two parts over two months.

Friday, February 5 | 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Saturday, February 6 | 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exposed inequities caused by long-standing racism in the United States, revealing that the need for change is more urgent than ever.

Join us in a free, virtual, two-day community conversation as we imagine a world free of racism and explore what must be done to create this future. Experts will talk about the fundamental changes needed in the institutions of policing, work, health care, and the commons, with interludes by local musicians, poets, and artists. We’ll conclude with a visioning session for all.

Registration required, click on button below to register. Eventbrite confirmation email will include Zoom link and detailed schedule. See Washtenaw Faces Race website for more information or contact Joy at joy@ypsilibrary.org.

SCHEDULE:
Friday, February 5, 6:00pm-9:00pm
Introduction and Overview:

• La’Ron Williams, B.F.A., Racial Justice Educator and Professional Storyteller, co-founder of Washtenaw Faces Race. http://laronwilliams.blogspot.com/

Policing Redefined (Panel):

• Eli Savit, J.D., Prosecuter, Washtenaw County, Michigan https://www.washtenaw.org/3284/Prosecutor-Eli-Savit
• Rev. Joe Summers, M.Div., Pastor, Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, Ann Arbor, Michigan http://incarnationannarbor.org/our-staff/
• Desirae Simmons B.A., M.S., Co-Director, Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Ann Arbor, Michigan https://www.icpj.org/about/bios/

Performance

• Mikhaella Norwood, Founder & CEO of Freelife Productions, LLC. Motown award-winning Spoken Word Artist of the Year, actress, motivational speaker, emcee. Tonight reads two poems, “Still” and “Fragility of a Black Man’s Gentle” from her book of poetry, Fruit: Haiku of Haikus for the Blossoming Soul (2019). https://mimifreelife.com

Redefining Work:

• Alford A. Young, Jr., Ph.D., Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Author of From the Edge of the Ghetto: African Americans and the World of Work (2019) and Are Black Men Doomed?: Debating Race (2018). https://lsa.umich.edu/soc/people/faculty/ayoun.html

Saturday, February 6, 1:00pm-4:00pm
Health Care for Everyone:

• Patricia Coleman-Burns, M.A., Ph.D., Assistant Professor Emerita of Nursing and Black Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.. https://nursing.umich.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/patricia-w-coleman-burns
• Anita Hernandez, M.D., Assistant Professor of Family Medicine & Service Director of Family-Mother-Baby, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan and Family Physician affililiated with the Corner Health Clinic, Ypsilanti, Michigan. https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/family-medicine/anita-k-hernandez-md

Defense of the Commons: Individual rights vs. the rights of the collective:

• Thom Hartmann, Ph.D., Political commentator, radio host, and author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting: Who Stole Your Vote and How to Get It Back (2020) and The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream (2020). https://thomhartmann.com

Rescuing Democracy: The way forward (Short session):

• Abdul El-Sayed, M.D., Physician, epidemiologist, progressive activist, educator, author, speaker, and podcast host. Formerly the Health Director for the City of Detroit and candidate for Governor of Michigan in 2018. http://abdulelsayed.com/

Visioning Session led by:

• Zarinah El-Amin Naeem, B.S., M.A., Publisher and Chief Spiritual Officer, Book Power Publishing. https://bookpowerpublishing.com
• Eleanore Ablan-Owen, B.A., M.U.P., Co-Director, Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Ann Arbor., Michigan. https://www.icpj.org/about/bios/
   

Sponsored by Washtenaw Faces Race , Ypsilanti District Library., University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, and Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice.
This program is funded in part by the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment of the Humanities.

Registration Required HERE for online event.

The Latin America Caucus of the Interfaith Council for Peace & Justice invites you to the documentary screening of Ruben Figueroa’s work connecting disappeared Central American migrants in Mexico to their families.

For more insight and discussion, Hannah Zwolensky will join us. She is a recent graduate of Eastern Michigan University where she studied International Affairs and Spanish Language. Hannah currently works as an administrative intern and internship coordinator at Colibrí Center for Human Rights, an organization which advocates to end the disappearances and deaths of migrants and the militarization of our southern border.

Registrants will receive the zoom link / information to join the event email 2 days prior & 2 hour prior & 10 minutes prior to the event. If you do not receive one of these three automated emails, please check your spam and trash folders to see if the info is there. If these emails never got to you, let us know at Info@ICPJ.org

For more information, contact Info@ICPJ.org

Wednesday, Jan 13th: 7-8:00pm

An important part of ending mass incarceration here in Michigan is fundamentally reforming our juvenile justice system.    In this program, Mary King, the former Director of the Michigan Youth Justice Center, will be talking about some of the critical and time-sensitive reforms needed in Michigan’s Juvenile Justice System to address the horrendous racial disparities we find throughout this system.  If, following this program, you decide you would like to become a youth justice advocate, we will be having a more formal, two to three-part training, in the near future.  The Episcopal Church of the Incarnation is partnering with the Michigan Youth Justice Center and other organizations and faith communities to create a state-wide network that will promote the reforms our Juvenile Justice system so badly needs.

The zoom link to our gathering is: 
https://zoom.us/j/93150340210?pwd=bXNaS2kxMFJpTlhFS0pxNzdhSmI2QT09

Passcode: 510302