Urban Sanctuary

San Jose, CA

bethannon

Thank you to Urban Sanctuary Wells Fargo Protest Participants

Thanks to everyone from Urban Sanctuary that participated in Thursday’s protest outside of the Wells Fargo’s branch in San Jose, calling on the bank to stop funding Climate change and fossil fuel infrastructure projects.

Wells Fargo Peaceful protesters

Sharing some thoughts from Jim Thompson: “What we did Thursday was reach out to more than 200 people (and more than 300 on Friday) with flyers explaining why we were protesting at a Wells Fargo branch. We had positive conversations with lots and lots of people and we got a lot of reinforcement for what we were doing. We also picked up a bunch of people who wanted to get on our mailing list. This is especially important because we need to grow this movement.

A bunch of thank-you’s: To Sara Bruce who was ill Thursday (hope you’re felling better today, Sara) and unable to be present for making the text into a lovely flyer; Linda Lappin for running off a LOT of flyers on her home printer; Kevin Haley for adding pizzaz with his saxophone playing on Thursday; Stew Plock for doing an eerily effective job of being Oily Wells (& Doug Neilson for speaking for Oily); Sandra Hietala for going in alone to the WF branch to try to talk with the branch manager; Dana Bainbridge for a lovely blessing at Thursday’s conclusion; Rita Foster Sharkey for bringing so much energy to Thursday’s event; Ruth Priest for showing us that the 80s is a perfectly good age for protesting; Walter Hudson for bringing a friend to the Thursday event; Peter Wood for your idea about having conversations at branches about moving your money; Rush Rehm for an example of how to get a lot of people closing their Wells Fargo account at the same time; and many more individual acts of solidarity.

What we did on Thursday and Friday were part of a big movement that is building. Many of you signed letters to the CEO of Chase and 1,500 of them were delivered to his two homes last week. There are a lot of actions being take on behalf of the planet and many more to come as this is a year of action to stop the money pipeline: (https://www.stopthemoneypipeline.com/).”

Jesus was an Illegal Immigrant

What if one of the families crossing the border happened to be named Joseph, Mary and Jesus?  It has happened.  It came to be for the same reason many families are coming to our borders now – to flee from violence.  The story goes that King Herod heard that there were rumors that the Messiah had been born among the Hebrew people.  Herod did not like any threats to his power, apparently, even from a baby.  So he ordered Hebrew children under age 2 to be killed.  It’s one of those horrible stories in the Bible, warning us of the human capacity to commit genocide.

Fearing for their son’s life, Joseph and Mary decided to flee Herod’s territory for a safer place.  The story is called “The Flight into Egypt.”  There are many great art paintings compassionately depicting the Holy Family running for their lives.

Because his family was able to find a safe place, Jesus was able to return to his home country at a better time.  Maybe that’s why later, he said, how you treat other people is how you treat me.

“Whatever you do to the least of these, you do it to me.”

Likewise, Mother Teresa warned us to be careful how we treat each other.  Some are Jesus in his most clever disguise.