cross banner  
  Home About Us Worship Get Involved Youth & Children Education Human Concerns Questions  
     
 
 


 
 
 

Peace
And
Social Justice

  Take  Action Now


Take action on Current Peace and Social Justice Issues by contacting your elected representatives with the link provided below.

 


Click on this link:
ELCA Advocacy Website
for the address, phone and
email of your elected reps.

Raise Awareness
Write a letter about one of these important issues and email it to:
The Oregonian

 

Learn about the Health Equity Initiative

You're invited to join in a community dialogue about the root causes of health disparities and long-term solutions. Beginning in March, 2008, a PBS documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? will explore how inequalities in housing, health, jobs, and education - combined with a lack of power and control over one's life - can translate into bad health and even death. Watch the program, then join the discussion. For more information about the Health Equity Initiative visit the Multnomah County Health Department website.

  
 

Peace and Social Justice
Augustana members have endorsed many social justice issues throughout the history of our church. In witness to God’s call for justice and human dignity, we celebrate diversity, foster inclusiveness, and ensure equity for God’s people throughout our global village.

Our congregation is consistently proactive in the public forum on local, national and international issues. We share a commitment to serve the poor and vulnerable, and uphold our values on issues that affect people whose voices aren’t readily heard.

Recent activities in which we participated include:

  • Co-sponsoring and hosting the annual Interfaith Service for Peace.
  • Co-hosting the Interfaith Day for Fasting and Peace in Portland’s South Park Blocks.
  • Co-sponsoring the annual “Stop the War and Bring Our Troops Home” rally and peace march in downtown Portland.
  • Augustana members consistently voice their concerns on peace and justice issue to elected officials.
  • Serve as a Sanctuary congregation for all people.  Houses of worship are sanctuaries where we encounter God in awe and reverence, thanksgiving and joy.  Sanctuary also means a place of refuge. For more information about Sanctuary visit the website for the New Sanctuary Movement.
    Current Peace and Social Justice Issues

 

Action Item

Support the Refugee Crisis in Iraq  (Senate Bill 1651)
Since the start of the War in Iraq more than 2 million people have fled their country and 2 million more are displaced within.  The United has only settled 719 Iraqi refugees so far this year.  Senator Edward Kennedy (D.Mass.) proposed a bill on June 19, 2007 that would allow for 25,000 Iraqi refugees to enter the United States. To date no action has been taken on this bill.

Please contact Oregon Senators Wyden and Smith
 and ask them to take action on this bill.
 
Action Item

WIC funding is in Jeopardy  (Omnibus Appropriation Bill)
Please contact both Oregon senators and your U.S. representative to ask them to support the $5.96 billion needed tor the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).  If WIC appropriations are frozen at 2006 levels, Oregon's allocation will be cut by $6 million which will result in a monthly caseload cut of 15,000 Oregon participants.  Please contact your elected representatives today.  
Action Item

End the Genocide in Darfur Now. (The Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007)
More than four years have passed since the start of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.  As many as 400,000 innocent people have been killed and more than 2.5 million more have been driven from their homes.  We must act quickly and decisively to end this genocide before hundreds of thousands more people are killed.  The Darfur Accountability and Divestment Authorization Act, a bill allowing states to divest from countries that are helping to fund Sudan's military, passed the U.S. House by a vote of 418 - 1.  Now it's the Senate's turn. Tell your senator to support the Senate divestment legislation.  For more information about Darfur visit the Save Darfur or the ELCA Advocacy websites.
Action Item
 
Support for Humane & Just Immigration Reform (S. 2611, H.R. 4437)
Join the national debate and help foster a humane and just approach to immigration laws.  Write a letter or email your elected representatives and share your views with them on the type of Immigration Reform that you would like to have in the United States.  To read the texts of the current immigration legislation in Congress visit the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon website.  

   
     
 


Augustana Lutheran Church
2710 NE 14th Avenue, Portland, OR 97212
503-288-6174  Fax: 503-288-2911

Please email our webmaster if any links on this website fail to work properly
or if you have any suggestions to make our website more useful.