Moratorium 2000 calls for halt to death penalty
Helen Prejean, spiritual advisor to death-row inmates and author of Dead Man Walking, says it's time for her supporters to step up the pressure on their elected leaders to stop state executions. "The first thing I'm asking folks to do," says Prejean, "is sign the Moratorium 2000 petition, to put their name down and commit themselves to ending this terrible system."

Coordinated out of an office in New Orleans, the Moratorium 2000 campaign already has more than 80,000 signatures -- and thousands more are arriving each week. The signatures will be gathered for presentation to the United Nations in December, in honor of International Human Rights Day. State groups will also use the names from their area to lobby state legislatures for a moratorium.

"A moratorium is like a cease-fire in a war," explains Prejean. "It's the first step towards peace on this issue, with governments agreeing not to execute any more prisoners. Many people find it's a safer way to begin moving away from their support of the death penalty, like a mid-point, so they can really take a look at what we are doing."

It's a particularly newsworthy topic these days, with a diverse group of moratorium supporters like Pat Robertson, actress Susan Sarandon, Illinois Governor George Ryan (a Republican), and musician Bruce Springsteen. The presidential candidates (both death-penalty supporters) are routinely confronted by questions about capital punishment. The movement against executions has been fueled by discoveries of innocent men on death row, stories of public defenders who were drunk or asleep during trial and a disproportionate number of poor minorities on death row.

"We can show that this is a broken system that can never be fixed," insists Prejean. "And we've got to stop this killing now, with an immediate moratorium."

Moratorium 2000 hopes that those who sign onto the petition will be willing to get further involved with the struggle by participating in local activities and circulating the petitions in their communities.

To sign the petition and make donations, visit the Moratorium 2000 website (www.moratorium2000.org). For materials, contact the Moratorium 2000 office: P.O. Box 13727 New Orleans, LA 70185; (504) 864-1071; <info@moratorium2000.org>.

-- Theresa Meisz

Phone strikes and 'free time'
"In Sunday's New York Times (7/30/00) there was a major article on a possible impending telephone workers strike -- the CWA (Communication Workers of America) vs. "Verizon" -- what was Bell Atlantic, plus other global-corporate parts," writes Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center (www.shalomctr.org) in an email communication to groups involved with the Center's "Free Time/Free People" project.

"As you know, about two years ago, the Shalom Center began bringing together people from a broad spectrum of religious communities and traditions with some secular scholars, to address the issue of overwork in American society, and its destructive impact on families, neighborhoods, and spiritual life.

"Among the folks we started working with was Jobs with Justice (JwJ), a national network of pro-labor community people and the most creative energies in the labor movement. JwJ invited us to lead a workshop on Free Time/ Free People at their recent annual national meeting, including a sub-conference on Religion & Labor.

"The conference had about 700 participants -- about 150 from religious groups/congregations, about 200 students, maybe 100 from various community organizations, the rest from labor.

"There was a very strong sense of excitement and forward energy, and a consensus that specific critiques and issues fit within a critique of the increasing anti-democratic power of global corporations, which have been growing in their power to brush aside national governments, labor unions, environmental groups and consumers.

"How did this perception of growing corporate power and this feeling of more resistance-power co-exist? Through a sense that public attention and organizing energy are now focused on the right place, and that workers, students, religious folk, and environmentalists are beginning to see a common oppressiveness in global-corporate institutions that endanger the values of each of those gatherings of people.

"There was a plenary session with five or six major figures from labor movements in South Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia -- as a working effort to bring together a transnational labor movement to resist the new global corporatism.

"Most of the workshops were focused on nuts-and-bolts stories of effective organizing, rather than on theoretical or ideological debate. In the religion-labor discussions, there was some discussion of the difference between 'calling a collar' -- that is, getting a priest/ minister/ rabbi to come speak on behalf of a labor struggle so as to give it legitimacy in public eyes -- vs. the notion that labor unionists might listen to religious concerns closely and deepen their own approach to organizing by taking religion seriously.

"Here is where the Free Time/ Free People project comes in.

"Once upon a time, the labor movement fought for the eight-hour day and the 40-hour week. More recently, large parts of it have succumbed to sheer money-ism and have not complained even at huge amounts of compulsory overtime, because it pays more.

"But this is now changing. The CWA telephone struggle is an example.

"The entire JwJ conference, instead of only sitting in classrooms to learn together, went on Friday afternoon to join a mass picket line at a nearby Bell Atlantic plant. Most of the workers there answer phone calls from customers who need various kinds of information. The work force has been halved over the last two years. But the work has not. So workers are now on intense speed-up.

"When a certain number of calls pile up unanswered, the bosses announce 'red alert.' That means no one can leave the desk, stretch, shmooze, pee -- no free time. This is one of the major oppressions against which CWA is organizing.

"One of CWA's major concerns is that after two generations of being a unionized company, Bell Atlantic/ Verizon is now making sure that the new-tech areas in the bigger 'Verizon' holding company are not unionized -- so that the phone workers are being boxed in and will not be able to resist such speed-up pressures.

"As we pointed out in our own workshop at JwJ, the Free Time vs. Overwork issue could call forth a cross-class alliance. Fancy lawyers at fancy firms, blue-collar workers with no time to breathe, and very poor workers holding two or even three jobs to barely get by are all being overworked. Addressing this issue could bring them together.

"JwJ invited the Shalom Center to create a 'Welcome to the Sabbath' of some sort for the whole conference, not just the Jews.

"What I chose to do Friday evening was to begin with invoking one of the great labor organizers of all time -- i.e., Moses -- who in a society where construction was very big business organized Bricklayers Local #1 (an image from A. J. Muste). I talked about how hard the organizing was -- even workers who joined the union quit when the boss, CEO of Egypt, Inc, got tougher. But finally they called a strike and won.

"Two strands of practice grew from this victory: rules against exploiting workers or foreigners and -- Sabbath. I connected that with the CWA/Verizon struggle -- red alerts, etc. -- we had learned about on Friday afternoon.

"And I said that even organizers need to rest, to reflect, to sing, to celebrate with joy.

"So -- I hope you all will reflect on your own experiences with forced overwork, and the ways you could make 'space' in your life-time, and on how these experiences point the way toward what we should be doing next to open up Free Time."

Accessible congregations
The Accessible Congregations Campaign, a project of the Religion & Disability Program of the National Organization on Disability, Washington, D.C., seeks to recruit 2,000 congregations by Dec. 31, 2000 that are committed to removing their barriers of architecture, communications and attitudes and welcoming people with disabilities. To date, the campaign has received commitments to become hospitable and welcoming to people with all types of disabilities from 1,256 congregations of all faiths nationwide, including 94 Episcopal Church congregations. Campaign leaders believe that access to worship for people with disabilities is as vital as access to employment, transportation, health care and education.

Visit the campaign's website at www.nod.org for more information and to find a list of congregations by state.

--Lorraine Thal

Voting for faith, not theology
The Christian Science Monitor's Peter Grier reports (8/10/00), "Polls show atheism would be far more damaging to a presidential or vice presidential candidate thatn adherence to any major religion.

"But U.S. voters prefer that candidates' public religiousity remain bland. General pronunciations of faith and values win votes. Specific theological discussion can lose them."