CLUE: Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice leaders at a march earlier this year.
We gather to pray for peace with justice.
We pray for an end to the unjust use of state power against the people of God, especially immigrant workers seized from their places of honest work in our city and region.
When there is resistance to unjust power, we pray that it will be peaceful.
Now that federal forces have been called in prematurely – possibly with the aim of making the situation worse for political purposes — we pray that military commanders and those under their command will act with the true courage of restraint.
But amid our prayers, we must face facts.
The government is doing what its apologists claimed it never would – raiding our workplaces, such as a shirt factory downtown, where people work ten- hour days to support their families.
Fourteen members of one of our Episcopal churches couldn’t be in church this morning on the Day of Pentecost. Their government ripped them from the arms of their families at home and the body of Christ at church.
Our siblings in Christ are not criminals. They accepted offers of honest employment from United States enterprises, in defiance of a busted immigration system that politicians just won’t fix.
We must now conclude that the government intends to send federal muscle to seize 11 million or more United States workers who are a structural part of our economy — such as Central American workers who, with their forebears, have been harvesting food for our tables in the Central Valley for nearly 100 years.
It now appears no undocumented immigrant worker is safe on our streets.
No amount of prayer can counteract depraved and stupid policies if their authors will not act with decency and good sense. Only those who caused this crisis and provoked this unrest can end it.
So we must pray tonight that they will. We pray the angels of heaven will still the hands of those who sign unjust orders targeting United States workers and their families.
God of compassion and justice, give the people of the United States a better understanding of the plight of the undocumented immigrant worker. Inspire us to demand that our leaders undertake the long-overdue work of regularizing their status. Taking advantage of their labor while giving them no means of security or political representation is our nation’s greatest civic sin. Lord, have mercy upon us. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who came to free the prisoner and care for those whom power had forgotten. Amen.
[The remarks I prepared for a prayer vigil Sunday night at City Hall that was canceled because of security concerns.]