HELPING HAITIAN RAPE VICTIMS

Amnesty International is one of several humanitarian and human rights organizations which have issued reports addressesing the plight of woman who are being brutally attacked - raped by men preying on survivors in quake-damaged Haiti. Grassroots organizations are the only source of information on cases of sexual violence according to Amnesty International.The grassroots Commission of Women Victims for Victims, a women's group run by survivors of sexual violence, registered more than 250 cases of rape in several camps in the five months after the quake, but Amnesty believes that number is just the tip of the iceberg.

A new report by Amnesty International says Haitian women are the targets of armed rapists roaming camps that were set up to shelter more than 1 million quake survivors. The report identifies a trend of rape in some 1,200 camps set up to shelter more than 1 million quake survivors. Another 270,000 people died in the quake.

In the Amnesty's report, "Aftershocks: Women Speak Out Against Sexual Violence in Haiti's Camps," more than 50 survivors of sexual violence in post-earthquake Haiti share their stories.

Machou, a 14 year old girl said she was raped in a public toilet last March at the quake survivors' camp where she lives in Carrefour Feuilles, southwest of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

"A boy came in after me and opened the door. He gagged me with his hand and did what he wanted to do," she said.

"He hit me. He punched me. I didn't go to the police because I don't know the boy, it wouldn't help," she said. "I feel really sad all the time. ... I'm afraid it will happen again."

Such stories show that the Haitian government is not doing enough to protect women and girls, Amnesty International's Haiti researcher, Gerardo Ducos, said in a statement on the group's website.

"For the prevalence of sexual violence to end, the incoming government must ensure that the protection of women and girls in the camps is a priority," he said. "This has so far been largely ignored in the response to the wider humanitarian crisis."

Police presence has not been adequate in the quake survivors' camps, Ducos said, and there are reports that even the few officers who are on patrol have told rape victims they can't help them.

"There is no security for the women and girls in the camps. They feel abandoned and vulnerable to being attacked," he said. "Armed gangs attack at will, safe in the knowledge that there is still little prospect that they will be brought to justice."

Today's Amnesty International report is not the first word that rape and sexual violence are rampant in Haiti. Such attacks were even common before last January's earthquake, but they are believed to have grown exponentially after it.

Amnesty International is documenting a real time tragedy. Support for the work of Amnesty International can be made online.Contributions will make a real difference and help Amnesty International demand justice and end impunity wherever human rights violations occur.

MIS AMIGOS JUAN Y FELIPE

Juan and Felipe are two Mexican boys who live in Chicago. For nearly a month this summer, while I attended Christian Peacemaker School, I spent a few minutes in daily conversation with them. The boys, ages 8 and 6 responded to a question and answer routine I developed with them. I asked questions which included geography, history, numbers, and famous people. When I stepped out of the classroom for scheduled breaks they were most often standing at the fence with their own question: "Ask us some more questions mister? While I was in Chicago, their father was arrested and was held in jail for a short while. He was deported to Mexico because he was undocumented. Juan and Felipe live with their mother.

LIVE OUT LOUD!

Emile Zola has written,"If you ask me what I can do in this world, as an artist I will answer you, I can live out loud."

I like that! What does it mean for Christians to live out loud? To “live out loud” as a Christian allows one to enter various arenas of life with concern and voice for life. Loud voices of faith are useful ones when they rally human beings around issues such as the green-house effect, depletion of scarce resources, global concentration of financial capital, population explosion, marginalization of unskilled workers, internet-pornography and issues of peace and justice. Loud voices of faith are useful voices when they announce God's passion for the world and God's desires to bring salvation to it.

In the Celtic tradition the Holy Spirit is represented as a bird, but not the peaceful and serene dove landing on Jesus at his baptism. For their symbol of the Holy Spirit, the Celtic Christians chose the Wild Goose. Doves are docile and delicate, but the wild goose is intractable, and unpredictable. Instead of a soft coo, the wild goose is noisy and raucous. The goose is also a messy bird! And it seemed always to be on a pilgrimage. Jesus said that those Christians who were led by the Spirit were like the wind — you don't know where it comes from and you don't know where it's going. Perhaps Christians who take their clue from the wild goose are loose and free themselves. They live lives that are less than predictable. They live life to the fullest (John 10:10). They are wild and free, loud, untamable either by a world that would bind them with lies or by some denominations that would chain them with duty and obligation.

But what does it mean to live our lives out loud? It often means that we have to step out of familiar roles of institutional church membership. Church membership alone is not enough to establish God’s truth; we need ongoing theological reflection and faith in action. Scriptures, creeds, doctrines, offices, sacraments, and liturgies are all “means of salvation”. They are instruments of the Word of God which arouse and sustain faith in the power of the Spirit. But, as Zola writes, we need to “live out loud.” If Christians are not “loud” about faith, the church and her message will be condemned to irrelevance. People are attracted today to the voices and actions of Christians where they find credible responses to felt needs – whether material, communal or spiritual. The question is whether the response offered empowers such people to face their problems, or whether they provide escape routes into fantasy and compensation.

As a Christian I don't want my faith to be reduced to handing out religious tracks, preaching sermons, or entering buildings where I am not supposed to be to “evangelize”. I don’t want my religious life to get stuck in a place like that. For me, living life out loud has meant embracing the view that salvation is about everything, and sharing this message with everyone everywhere. Living life out loud has meant finding a way to create a place or presence for life in my everyday world--with family, with friends, and with strangers. I haven't been completely successful in figuring out how to do this. It is a process that changes as I change. It is a process that engages the world beyond my own everyday world.

The church is also struggling with living its life out loud. In a historic change, non-celibate gays and lesbians can now lead parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Everyone doesn't like the decision. But you know what I think? I think the 549 delegates to the ELCA Assembly last August who voted for this change were actually trying to live their lives, and their faith out loud in the model of Jesus Christ. That's what I think. In a manner that is loving, supportive, and open-minded, but definitely out loud.

OBAMA WATCH

Is President Barack Obama's presidency saving capitalism? Timothy Egan in the New York Times, claims that President Obama has indeed saved capitalism. Egan argues that under the Bush watch, America experienced the worst stock market decline in history. As Bush flew home to Texas, the net worth of American households had shrunk. If you needed to finance a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead. In a recent appearance on The Ed Show on MSNBC, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter credited President Obama with preventing another Great Depression. Host Ed Schultz pointed out that Obama is not receiving credit for recent gains in the stock market. Alter said: "He saved them. He saved their fortunes. We were headed for a depression. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month when he took over. If we'd stayed on pace, we would have had another Great Depression in late 2009. He saved them." History will, no doubt, regard the Obama administration as a presidency that saved America at a crucial point.

CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKER TEAMS - A DELEGATION TO HEBRON

In 2006 I traveled with a delegatation of Christian Peacemaker Teams to Paslestine and Israel. I recently found notes I made while in Hebron.

August 5, 2006 - I visited Hebron as a team member of a delegation of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). Tonight, we were alerted to something happening two doors down. Up to six Israeli soldiers entered a house and began a search. By invitation, three CPT members entered the house to accompany the familily living there. When directed to leave by the soldiers the CPT members refused. The soldiers searched the home and left. It seemed to be a routine search, maybe even a training mission for new soilders. The men waived their automatic weapons as if they were expecting a terrorist to sprang on them. I observed some of this from an adjourning terrace.

As we began our trip to Jerusalem the next day, we left behind a town where people live under occupation. In this place some people are largly confined to their apartments as prisoners would be to their prison cells when darkness comes. Freedom of movement is largely a dream. Streets are empty at night with shops locked by 7:00 PM. The sounds of children playing, men talking, women calling from balcony to balcony are missing. Only the sounds of dogs chasing the one is heat breaks the stillness of the night. And from the roof tops one can see several observation posts. There are walls everywhere.

HEALTH CARE DEBATE - THE MISSING VOICES OF CHRISTIANS

The President and some members of Congress took a step in the right direction with health care reform. Some of the loudest objections to that health care step comes from those who have good health care plans, and even from some wealthy people. Health care in America is failing those who are on the margins of society. The health care system fails the poor. According to the US Census Bureau "The number of Americans without health insurance rose to 46.3 million last year as people began losing jobs and coverage in the current recession." The fear of getting sick and needing a doctor or hospitilization is very real. Heath care discrepancies perpetuate themselves from generation to generation and few people are able to break out of their predefined destinies.

Christians have too often thrown their lot in with free market Darwinism. In this system high performers rapidly outcompete low performers, accumulate collective power, use this power to entrench themselves in institutions, and marginalize the rest. This contributes, I think, to the expanding influence of prosperity preachers and even faith healers, who offer affordable, alternative cures. Historically, Christian have been in the public square advocating for justice. Christians gave voice to the Civil Rights Movement, and to ending the Vietnam War. Apartheid and Anti-Semitism were declared by some Christians to be heresies for various reasons. More Christian voices are needed in the health care debate.

This is one of the biggest issues facing the USA today, and Cristian voices are missing. As Christians and citizens, we must call for a more civil tone in this debate and call for a return to the goal of the common good. Christians can give encouragement to elected leaders, calling on them to create structures that serve the needs of some whom Jesus loved best, and once spoke of in these words: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matt. 25:40 NRSV).

ALBERTINA WALKER - "QUEEN OF GOSPEL"

Before we had a t.v. in our home in rural Opelousas, Louisiana we listened to Bill "Hossman" Allen on WLAC Nashville, Tennessee. Every Sunday night the 50,000 Watt CBS affiliate signal reached most of the Eastern and Midwestern United States. African American listeners in the Deep South were the intended audience of the program. It was on Bill Allen's Sunday evening broadcast that I first heard the names Thomas A. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Sallie Martin, Kenneth Morris, Rosetta Tharpe, and Albertina Walker. Albertina was singing with the Williams Singers and touring with Willie Webb and The Robert Anderson Singers. In 1951 at age twenty two Albertina organized the CARAVANS. The rest is an amazing part of Gospel Music history.

Of course, we remember Albertina Walker through songs like "Please Be Patient With Me", "Lord Keep Me Day By Day", "Joy Will Come", "Put A Little Love In Your Heart", and "I Can Go To God In Prayer", all recorded in the 1970s.

Albertina Walker’s music ministry inspiried several generations of Americans, and her voice reached a worldwide audience. She loved gospel music and worked for it’s preservation. In 1988 she created The Albertina Walker Scholarship Foundation, a scholarship that provides financial assistance to college students who have completed at least one year of music study.

She is already missed, but her voice and performances are clicks away on YouTube. We can also preserve her legacy by purchasing her music.