|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 5, 2013 15:23:21 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 9, 2013 12:46:08 GMT
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gurdwarasturnedfood-banks-sikh-temples-are-catering-for-rise-in-britains-hungry-8991824.htmlGurdwaras-turned-food banks:
Sikh temples are catering for rise in Britain’s hungry
 Each week across the UK, around 5,000 vegetarian meals are served to the needy
NADEEM BADSHAH Sunday 08 December 2013 It is lunchtime at the Karamsar Gurdwara, where worshippers are tucking into the free food. But Sikhs are not the only ones enjoying the temple meals. Religious leaders report that an increasing number of non-believers are visiting their place of worship to eat, treating them as food banks while the effects of austerity and economic slump bite.
The Sikh Federation UK estimates that around 5,000 meals are now served to non-Sikhs by Britain’s 250 gurdwaras each week. They say the meals have been a lifeline for homeless people and overseas students swamped in debt.
Harmander Singh, who worships at the Karamsar Gurdwara in east London and is a spokesman for the Sikhs In England think-tank, said: “It’s noticeable: more people coming in and more people coming frequently. Some are working in low-paid jobs, cannot afford lunch and come here to subsidise living costs. They are also women with kids.”
He said that Sikhs welcome anyone into the gurdwara as long as they are not drunk, they remove their shoes and cover their head, adding: “It’s not a free buffet, it’s a way of serving the community.”
In the Karamsar Gurdwara’s dining area, most people sit on the floor while eating. The food is made round the clock by volunteers and funded by donations. In Sikhism, only vegetarian food is served in the gurdwara so the cuisine includes lentils, roti Indian bread, vegetables, yoghurt and Indian sweets.
Foodbanks fed 346,992 people across Britain in the UK last year, according to the Trussell Trust. The Sikh temples cannot help that many people, but the service is welcomed.
Among the 6,000 visitors a week lunching at the Karamsar Gurdwara was a group of overseas medical students.
One student from China, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “My friend brought me here. I found it very welcoming and peaceful. People were very friendly. They are taking care of me. I like the variety of the food. I haven’t seen this before I came to England. People seem to be very nice.”
Another student from India, who is Catholic, said: “For the last 10 days we have come here regularly. They have a welcoming attitude. People don’t discriminate. I was surprised to see a mini Punjab here. The food is like home-cooked.”
Amrick Singh Ubhi of the Nishkam Centre in Birmingham and vice-chair of the Council of Sikh Gurdwoaras, explained how their local community group does outreach work for people worried about visiting a place of worship.
“Nishkam Help is one example of a project to help feed people in the centre of Birmingham which has had to extend its provision to three nights a week and we have supported the initiation of similar programmes with gurdwaras in Leeds and Glasgow.
“The Birmingham Community Support Network has been set up to deal with the increase in demand especially as a result of the welfare reforms.
“We are hearing and seeing an increase of other nationalities frequenting gurdwaras specifically for langar.
“We have to realise that while we see our respective places of worship as a sanctuary, not all people will. We see that people of other faiths and none do mix, but there is always that apprehension of “the other” and until we break down those barriers and start working together that will remain so.”
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 19, 2013 9:41:28 GMT
Youngsters vexing a Sheikh
--Don't mess with the Druze. Funny how diabolical youngsters at that age can be...even funnier when a reaction takes place. One of their number had just received a clout from the broom. Much to the amusement of his mates. Oh well, they'l grow out of it--one hopes!!
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Feb 27, 2014 15:00:06 GMT
Sr Ems, giving life to the Church of the Poor | The Church’s Awakening
In the 70s and 80s, the “preferential option for the poor, the deprived and the oppressed” was the calling for church people.
BY MARYA SALAMAT Bulatlat.com MANILA — Nuns played an iconic role during the Edsa People Power Uprising. Sr. Emelina Villegas, ICM, is one of those nuns, even if she is not likely to say that. Her participation began since the imposition of martial law. Her involvement was propelled by the church’s reorientation toward the poor at the time, her congregation’s refocusing toward the oppressed, and her own search for actualizing the church’s teachings in practice.
 Sr Ems discusses the Church response in the historical struggle of the workers
in the Philippines at the Church-Workers Assembly, Sto. Domingo Church, QC.
(April 2013, Photo by M. Salamat / http://www.bulatlat.com)
Sr. Ems, as she is called by those who have worked with her, spent much of Martial Law years (and post-Edsa) with the progressive Filipino workers’ movement. It is the “militant” bloc, the red-tagged sector whose leaders happened to be the first victims of state violence post-Edsa (Rolando-Alay-ay double murder). The workers were also among the first sectors whose organizations were bound and gagged by new laws issued by the first post-EDSA regime (Herrera Law and Wage Rationalization Act).
Sister Stella L movie notwithstanding, why get involved with the progressive movement, and why with workers, of all sectors?
“Inserting” church community within the communities of the poor
In the 70s and 80s, “preferential option for the poor, the deprived and the oppressed” was the calling for church people. Pope John Paul II’s influential encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum and Laborem Exercens tackled the plight of the poor, the deprived and the oppressed, and the role of the church in catering to them. In 1973, recalled Sr. Ems, the congregation she belongs to, the ICM or Immaculati Cordis Mariae, gave them “the option to focus services on the poor.” Months before, on September 1972, then president Ferdinand E. Marcos had declared martial law, and soon there were mass arrests and a palpable culture of repression.
Sr. Ems said the ICM nuns began to pursue more actively the option to focus services to the poor in 1976. Pursuing the option prompted some bold moves. A number of nuns realized they could better pursue it living outside the convent.
In 1978, Sr. Ems declared that among the poor, it is with the workers she wanted to be. She considers the workers as the group or sector in society with “some consciousness”.
Sr. Ems spearheaded moves to transfer part of their sisters’ community into a workers’ community. They call it “inserted community.” They were still nuns, but to serve the people better, they left the physical security of their convent. They even shed the nun’s uniform veil – the main article of clothing that, outside the convent, distinguishes them as nuns.
She led in establishing a sisters’ community outside of the convent in the middle of a workers’ community in 1978. At the time, in Bagong Barrio, Caloocan, there were small and big factories such as Rubberworld, maker of Adidas sports shoes and clothing, employing more than ten thousand workers.
If they were to continue living in the convent, it would be impractical to shuttle back and forth from the convent to the community of the poor. And, the workers could not easily approach them if they were inside a convent.
Over the years, their “inserted” community changed location from Sangandaan in Novaliches, to Proj.7 in Quezon City, and then to Rosario, Cavite. From 1976 to 1978, some ICM sisters also started living in some indigenous peoples’ communities in Surigao del Sur.
At present, Sr. Ems said the ICM nuns still maintain “inserted communities.” Hers is currently in Camarin, in the tri-boundary of Caloocan, Quezon City and Novaliches. Other ICM nuns are with fisherfolk and women.
Helping those who help others
In 1978, it had been three years since the La Tondeña workers strike, which many nuns supported. It was like a “baptism of fire for the involved priests and nuns,” said Sr. Ems. The strike was the first industrial workers’ strike in the capital to defy the martial rule’s strike ban.
One ICM nun, Sr. Azon, had a significant participation in that strike, recalled Sr. Ems. When soldiers and policemen arrested some strikers, Sr. Azon clambered up at the back of the military truck used to bring the workers to custody. She held on as the truck made its way to the police precinct.
Sr. Azon was repeatedly asked to get off but she refused, telling the armed men that if she were to get off, “You might do something to them (the striking workers).” The other sisters, meanwhile, followed after the military truck.
Sr. Ems admitted that at the time (year 1975, La Tondeña strike), she had not fully understood yet the workers’ struggle. It changed only when she studied sociology in Belgium in 1977, under a post-graduate scholarship that was not considered as Ph.D. And it also did not require a thesis – it required the intermarriage of theory and practice, or her “lifework.”
“That’s when I learned to do ‘analysis,’ Sr. Ems said, stressing the word because until then, she said she had not grasped how incomplete their usual ‘analysis’ was. In Belgium, she said, she learned to analyze “without hiding anything or fearing for anything.”
In the Philippines, she said, analysis was “sugarcoated.” As an example, she said, “People here fear (Karl) Marx.”
Karl Marx was the author of Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto and other writings which charted and analyzed not only the direction of capitalist society but also of the past societies that existed in history. Based on his studies of laws that govern the rise and fall of various societies – using an analytical process called dialectical materialism – Marx projected the inevitable end of capitalist society, and the future society that would replace it. For that, Marx’s ideas were banned, ignored or vilified and consistently misrepresented especially in advanced capitalist states. But the workers movement took it up and used it as a guide in analyzing their situation and taking actions.
Karl Marx showed that the wealth in capitalist societies is actually derived from the exploitation of the working class. That even if workers were paid wages, they always generate more, and they are in fact being pushed to generate more. This generated ‘surplus,’ said Marx, was the source of capitalist wealth, and is used to amass even more wealth and power. Marx predicted that over time, with the capitalist society continuing to force more surplus by more intensely exploiting and repressing the workers, society’s progress will come at the price of a revolution.
Where Sr. Emelina studied Sociology, she said everything was “lantaran” or exposed for examination.
“They really showed us the place of workers, the proletariat. That’s when I realized: If you want to help the poor, the poorest of the poor, then you must help the workers. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to do only dole-outs.”
So, when Sr. Ems returned to the Philippines, she told herself: “If I wanted to help, I would help workers who by their nature will help others.”
Looking back now to more than three decades of life spent in the workers movement, Sr Ems learned that workers could indeed be helped and that they would indeed help each other and along the way, help other sectors, too.
Mother superior ignores red-branding, becomes labor advocate, educator
After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial, one of the first protests was held by the church, Sr. Ems told Bulatlat.com. They held a mass in Sta. Cruz Church. She said she joined that protest mass, although at the time, she did not know yet which way her involvement would eventually turn to.
At the time, Sr. Ems was mother superior or overall head of all ICM sisters in the Philippines. As leader of nuns, she attended to them, visited the 33 ICM sisters’ houses all over the country. She had no particular assignment but to take care of the sisters.
But even with her duties as mother superior, Sr Ems took part in the activities of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMSRP), specifically those with the labor sector. She was one of the ICM sisters who founded, with other religious groups such as the NCCP, Imus church diocese, CBCP, NASSA and AMSRP, the Church Labor Institute of the Philippines (CLIP).
Unfortunately, Sr. Ems said, talks linking CLIP to the communists prompted the bishops (CBCP-NASSA) to distance itself from CLIP, and the AMSRP to lie low.
She said “anti-communist propaganda was strong at the time and because of that, the Philippines especially the bishops were extremely fearful of communism.”
But Sr Ems and other nuns, the NCCP and others who remained with CLIP continued to bring the workers closer to the religious. They brought the workers who were good at speaking and explaining their plight to schools to speak or serve as resource persons. Teachers went on “exposures” to the workers’ sector.
“Soon they (other nuns) realized, these are people, too. They are all right,” Sr. Ems said.
Unionists became close to the nuns that at Christmas, they would conduct “haranang bayan” in convents. Here, some workers’ cultural groups sang with nuns.
For a time, from 1976 to 1980s, “exposures” with workers groups were very active, recalled Sr. Ems. ICM sisters, for example, visited Tondo and stayed there for a few days. As their mother superior, Sr. Ems said some nuns became angry at her: “You’re exposing us to poverty, but what about our chastity?”
But such sacrifices as staying with workers’ families in the slums, which lack toilet facilities and space for privacy, even for short periods, comprise only a fraction of the nuns’ “fearsome experiences.”
Sr. Ems recalled that Juan Ponce Enrile, defense minister during martial law, once sent for them for questioning. As such, along with preparing themselves psychologically for exposure trips to workers’ communities, nuns had to practice also how to conduct themselves, or how to answer the soldiers, if they arrived and started questioning the nuns.
Still, the nuns had had lots of funny experiences too, said Sr. Ems. “All in all, the nuns were grateful to these experiences for having broadened their lives.”
After her community of sisters started renting a house in the middle of a workers’ community in Sangandaan in 1978, Sr. Ems recalled many happy times in that house.
The sisters’ “inserted community” was a multi-purpose support to many workers then, functioning as training school for unionism, for cultural production, for unwinding.
The place also served as meeting place for workers, such as from Rubberworld. In Sr. Ems’ words: “We integrated with them. We lived with them.”
Sr. Ems praised the patience of labor organizers with them. “As nuns, we knew nothing of the world of factories or unionism.”
As they got to know this world a little bit more, Sr. Ems said, their fear of what these people were doing, their dread even of the word “communism,” was soon erased. At the time, Sr. Ems repeated that the religious sector was especially wary of workers because they were identified with unionism.
She said the nuns learned a lot from tagging along with Mr Felixberto Olalia, considered as “grand old man of Philippine labor movement.” And later, with his son who also became a labor leader (as well as a lawyer) Rolando Olalia.
(Felixberto was founding chair of progressive labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno [KMU]. He was arrested during Marcos’ crackdown on unions in 1982. He died soon after from illnesses he contracted as a result of being in solitary confinement, with only the cold, hard concrete floor for bed. Rolando Olalia took over as KMU chairman, but he was brutally murdered in 1986, allegedly by ultra-rightist soldiers holding on to military supremacy despite a people-power-installed and supposedly civilian Aquino government.)
Read also, Part 2: Sr Ems, Learning with, from workers | The Church’s Response (http://bulatlat.com) - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2014/02/26/71721/#sthash.H2EU2Owr.dpuf
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Feb 27, 2014 15:13:47 GMT
FEBRUARY 26, 2014 Learning with, from workers | The Church’s Response
The progressive workers movement was historically one of the most consistent in leading protests and strikes against the Marcos dictatorship.By MARYA SALAMAT Bulatlat.com Read also, Part 1: Sr Ems, giving life to the Church of the Poor | The Church’s Awakening MANILA — When Sr. Em’s community of nuns joined the labor movement in the late 70s, they focused on helping with workers’ education. “We taught them how to make their group studies more interesting,” she said.
At first, all they had were chalk and doors for blackboard. She and two other nuns helped the workers improve their teaching methods. “They (workers and labor organizers) provided the content; we provided the teaching materials and encouragement.”
From teaching sessions with just one or two workers, they were soon teaching bigger groups, Sr. Ems recalled. She noted that once a group of workers were given (trade union) education, it seemed to have a ripple effect. It continued with other workers who were also encouraged to join study sessions.
Sr. Ems and worker-educators held training sessions every Sunday; often in the nuns’ rented house.
The nuns’ community also helped in educating the workers’ wives. Sr Ems explained that some wives tend to question the activities and sacrifices of their unionist-husbands.
“You can’t eat unionism; you can’t use it to buy milk,” the wives would tell their husbands. Others accused their husbands of meeting with other women, when they were only attending union meetings that lasted till midnight.
“Even we couldn’t understand at first how the unionists could neglect to develop their wives’ social consciousness – when apparently they know how to lead fellow workers into joining unions and mass actions,” Sr. Ems said.
Apparent impact
What was the immediate impact of all those hard studying together? Sr. Ems noted that in the 80s, when workers had managed to form unions and sign a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with their employers, they struggled also to gain some paid hours for union education and external activities. These, she said, became no longer the union officers’ privilege. Ordinary workers had to also enjoy it.
One of the biggest groups Sr. Ems and fellow labor educators gave much of their effort to since 1978 were the Rubberworld workers. After continued union education since 1978, they had fought to have provisions for workers’ education and training in their CBA by 1986.
Sr. Ems credited to labor organizers’ perseverance and broad trade union education – without mentioning her part in it – the workers’ achievement in 1983, the year they had established a “good union with its own office, social services like nursery, group buying of basic goods so that workers could avail of it at a relatively cheaper price.”
In those days, the ICM sisters were active in workers education, attending to some of their health matters, developing women workers’ leadership abilities, even helping them develop cultural groups.
Sr. Ems noted that most union leaders at the time were male, even when women made up the majority of the firm’s workforce. She called for training women to take on more active roles in union and community leadership, beginning with learning to speak before an audience. Sr. Ems took pride in the fact that in the beginning, they sometimes had women workers who shook with fear when speaking before a crowd, but who were later able to shed this fear.
According to Sr. Ems, their “inserted” workers’ community was also instrumental in forming cultural groups in unions. With training, these cultural groups were soon singing their own compositions, performing for nuns in convents and for fellow workers in other establishments.
“When there were strikes, cultural committees of some unions would visit and sing with the strikers. They would also teach other workers in cultural work so when they leave the picketline, the strikers have their own cultural committee,” Sr. Ems recalled.
With the experience of her sisters’ community, Sr Ems helped form with other religious groups in 1981 the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER), where she served for more than a decade as the first executive director.
Heading EILER, she and other nuns and priests, members of the academe and known labor leaders, helped spread what they call as genuine trade unionism (GTU) all over the Philippines. The course was considered as the basic course to learn “genuine, progressive and anti-imperialist unionism”.
The progressive workers movement was historically one of the most consistent in leading protests and strikes against the Marcos dictatorship.
With other religious groups, Sr. Ems also helped to pool support for workers and unionists as the Marcos government struck down hard on critics and unionists. With Fr. Joe Dizon and other religious, for example, she helped form the National Coalition for the Protection of Workers’ Rights, and in 2000s, the Church-Workers Solidarity.
From her experiences in workers’ communities, Sr. Ems shared that when educated and trained, workers did not just work for their plight in the workplace. “Among themselves, they have creativity. They can develop their own cultural and socio-economic services.”
She said, for example, that the workers she knew had helped to organize their communities and neighboring factories. “They have formed, for example, the likes of United Neighborhood of Sauyo (then a factory belt). Sr. Ems recalled that the basis of unity, the orientation of such neighbourhood association, was unionism.
“For its members, it is more political. Those days, urban poor issues were considered as workers’ issues,” she said.
Not only were the workers in the neighbourhood organized by the unions in those days, Sr Ems said they also managed to organize through their communities the professionals residing in the area. In mobilizing for rallies, which had later developed into people power, Sr Ems said these professionals also joined them.
With unions active in many aspects of their life in the workplace and their communities, their having “solidarity relationships” with their counterparts in other countries also followed, Sr Ems said. While she and fellow nuns in her community resided in Sangandaan, they facilitated a number of “workers’ exchange” with Belgium, Germany and some countries in Asia.
With Germany, they had exchanges that very specifically focused on workers in car manufacturing and sports shoes and clothing such as Adidas.
Post-Edsa smokescreen
Looking back, when nuns and workers were still sort of breaking the ice between each other, Sr. Ems smiled at the memory of how some workers had caught the nuns’ attention and compassion.
“I see workers approaching congregations, but the religious and the lay would say: ‘We don’t want to get involved with you, you’re violent.’ And the workers would reply: ‘Okay, Sister, can we just give you names and numbers to call in case something happened to us? Like a phone brigade?’”
This way, Sr. Ems said, the nuns were able to help in the workers’ mass actions.
With another group of nuns who were more contemplative, Sr. Ems recalled, progressive labor organizers would call them and say, “Sister, we’re about to go on a march. Please pray for us.”
When another group of nuns told the workers, ‘We can’t go marching,’ the workers would say, ‘it doesn’t matter, Sister. We brought drinking water in a jeep, can you ride with it and take charge of distribution?’
“Sisters could not say no to workers,” Sr. Ems said. She related that workers also approached the Augustinian nuns, known then for being conservative.
“Ay naku, you are communists,” the Augustinian nuns reportedly said.
“But Sister, if a hungry communist worker is hungry, would you refuse to feed him?” Nuns in a way have something like a doctor’s Hippocratic oath.
Despite the hardships and the ups and downs of getting involved in the progressive movement and workers movement in particular, while still active in her other tasks as a nun, when asked if, given a chance, she would do things differently, Sr. Ems said no, except maybe, start her participation earlier in her life. She was in her early forties, already a mother superior, when she first got involved. Today, Feb 26, she is celebrating her 78th birthday. She still teaches Theology, she remains active as member of the Board of Ibon Philippines, of the consultancy organization Masai, of EILER and Center for Trade Union and Human Rights, and also of groups opposed to privatization of the Philippine Orthopedic Hospital.
Nearly three decades after the first people power uprising, Sr. Ems looked back at the experience of the Filipino trade union movement and the progressive bloc in general, and she wonders what kind of grouping is needed for this army of mass retrenched and unemployed. She asked, “Can there be a global union of the unemployed? Can solidarity groups be formed again?”
Given the post-Edsa years of anti-strike, anti-union conditioning of workers, she rues what seems to be the young workers’ lack of awareness of their rights. “Until now, they seem to be afraid of picketlines and labor strikes.”
After the first Edsa, the first Aquino administration lost no time in amending labor laws to the detriment of the workers movement. Nowadays, Sr. Ems notes that in the Church-Workers Solidarity, for example, the members are mostly unemployed. They are workers or unionists retrenched by the thousands so the company could bust the union and resort to contractualization.
Regarding the current President Benigno Noynoy Aquino III, son of the Post-Edsa 1 president Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, she said: “It is like we have a smokescreen.” She recalled how, after Edsa and after the fall of the dictatorship, some people, including some of her fellow religious, seem to think the problem has been solved and it is now past the time for activism.
In her capacity as a convener of Church-Workers Solidarity, Sr Ems looked back to the time when the Filipino trade union movement was more vibrant and strong. She urges the remaining unionists now to persevere, to never lose touch with the sisters whom she said can still be called upon to provide support if only the workers would not stop finding ways to reach out to them.
(http://bulatlat.com) - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2014/02/26/sr-ems-learning-with-from-workers-the-churchs-response/#sthash.RoGrDt6i.dpuf |
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Oct 26, 2014 18:27:10 GMT
Photo courtesy Secular 2014 l  |
|
