Author: Geneva Blackmer

Green Umbrella’s Faith Communities Go Green Team invites you to take the Plastic Free EcoChallenge throughout the month of July!

Have you considered using reusable grocery bags, but have not remembered to take them out of your car before going to the grocery store?
Have you thought of reducing your plastics usage, but have been unsure of where and how to start to make the biggest impact?
Have you been interested in learning what happens to the plastics once you put them in your recycling bin, but haven’t had the time or motivation to do so?

If so, you are not alone. Many of us have the best of intentions, but have just not formed these good, environmentally-friendly habits yet.

Joining the Plastic Free EcoChallenge can help you form some of these good habits.

Our team “Cincinnati Area Faith Communities Go Green” will be one of several hundreds of teams from all over the world, competing to see who can make the biggest impact in reducing their plastics usage.

The goal of EcoChallenge is to help us change our behavior towards a greener lifestyle, while doing so in a fun, collaborative, and mildly competitive environment.

You can choose your level of involvement. You can sign up for, say, one one-time activity that you may spend an hour doing in the entire month. Or, you can sign up for a few daily activities and some one-time activities.

Click Here To Read More

Our community leaders often say: an act of hate towards any one community is an act of hate towards all.

As upstanders in our community, we assert that Cincinnati is no place for hate. With the re-emergence of white supremacy in the wake of the 2016 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Cincinnatians came together and formed the Cincinnati Regional Coalition Against Hate (CRCAH). With rising division across our nation, it became critical to mobilize. Nineteen founding organizations created this non-partisan coalition; an allyship committed to vigilance against hate activity by supporting impacted communities and fostering acceptance, compassion, and justice for all across Greater Cincinnati. Today, there are more than 40 partner organizations working together to educate the community and monitor incidents of hate in our community. Our rapid response model allows us to effectively respond to hate activity within 24 hours by leveraging a diverse network as the connective tissue between communities thereby providing key resources specific to any particular community. Whether incidents occur on the street, in the workplace, or at school, CRCAH is able to tap into community leaders as needed.

By: Navkiran Chima

This opinionated-editorial was adapted from a speech given by Navkiran Chima, founder and President of Miami University’s Sikh Student Association, at the Candlelight Vigil on April 22nd for the victims of the FedEx hate crime / mass shooting in Indianapolis, IN held at the SEAL on Miami University’s campus.

A link to an article covering the vigil can be found here: https://www.fox19.com/2021/04/22/miami-u-students-hold-vigil-sikh-lives-lost-indy-shooting/

The news of the shooting in Indianapolis was heartbreaking and infuriating. Gun violence is a repeated and unchanging problem in our country. The xenophobic, racist, and targeted nature of this shooting was an act of hate and white supremacy, but furthermore it was one against my community and my identity. My family and I are always potential victims.

It feels like we are in a vicious cycle of anti-Asian hate crimes and racist police brutality. The deaths of Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, George Floyd, and Ma’Khia Bryant were all products of systemic racism. The murder of eight people in this mass shooting, four of them Sikh, is a product of hate. When are we able to catch our breath? When does the disregard for black and brown bodies end? When will the proliferation of hate cease? It is devastating that we as a nation have become numb to these crimes due to their recurrent nature.

The Cincinnati Regional Coalition Against Hate (CRCAH) is a nonpartisan alliance of organizations committed to being vigilant against hate activity by supporting impacted communities and fostering acceptance, compassion, and justice for all in the Cincinnati region. The CRCAH is in an exciting new phase of growth and is seeking a part-time program manager to lead direct victim/incident support services as well as fundraising efforts, program development and community engagement activities to fulfill its mission. The CRCAH is convened by the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center (HHC). The program manager will work closely with the executive committee of the CRCAH and will be supervised by the CEO of HHC.

This position will require 20-25 hours/week and may grow into a full-time position. The hours can be flexible, but the candidate will need to be available at anytime should incidents arise.

Please Click Here for More Information.

by James P Buchanan, PhD

At the core of every faith tradition is a reverence for creation. This is a belief that creation is sacred and thus should be both honored within the tradition. Care for creation should is foundational to the moral vision of every religious tradition. In recent years more and more attention has been paid by all of the world’s faith traditions to what that the moral responsibility entails and how faith traditions can play an important role in- confronting the growing climate crisis. This is not only based in the recognition that the climate crisis is an existential threat, it is also a theological imperative.

To help our faith communities better realize this imperative and the resources available to them, Green Umbrella (https://greenumbrella.org/) the regional sustainability alliance of Greater Cincinnati, is providing a new platform for collective, interfaith action.

Green Umbrella, has over 200 member organizations and over 200 individual members who are passionate about enhancing the environmental health and vitality of our region. Their mission is to lead collaboration, incubate ideas and catalyze solutions that create a resilient sustainable region for all. Working together they envision a vibrant community where sustainability is woven into our ways of life. Green Umbrella serves a 10-county region in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Thank you members and friends of InterfaithCincy for pouring your support to our open letter issued by our board chair Lee Wong, US Army (retired), with over 20 years of active-duty service (24/7) to the nation.

With nearly 90 advocacy groups and individuals from the region co-signing this letter, we stand in solidarity and with the resolve that together we say NO, loud and clear, to hate, to violence, and to racial discrimination and biases.

But that’s not enough. We must take actions to prevent the next tragedy from happening. While we can go through the routines and let ourselves be buried in the entanglement of processes and bureaucracies, we can take these actions to move forward:

1. Endorse this letter and condemn publicly the violence and microaggressions on Asian people.
2. Call for legislation to establish clear definitions of hate crimes towards Asian people. Current federal laws make it extremely difficult to define and prosecute a hate crime aimed towards Asian people in this country.
3. Call for tougher penalties on first-time violations of hate crimes. Many offenders walk free without any penalty.
4. Increase the visibility of Asian Americans in senior and top leadership in both the government and the private sectors.
5. Promote diversity, inclusion and awareness of Asian culture and history, especially the history of Asian immigrants and their contribution to this country. We offer webinars that talk specifically about the history of East Asian countries and business etiquettes. Please encourage your colleagues to join us.

White supremacist group vandalizes banner, leaves stickers
BY HUNTER ELLIS AND CHLOE SALVESON, MANAGING MULTIMEDIA EDITOR AND STAFF WRITER

Xavier Police (XUPD) and the Bias Action Response Team (BART) are investigating the vandalism of a “Black Lives Matter” banner displayed in front of Bellarmine Chapel, and stickers promoting the White nationalist group Patriot Front were found posted across campus earlier today. The vandalism on campus happened concurrently with an admissions event at which many prospective students toured Xavier.

An XU Alert Me message sent this evening alerted students of the vandalism and stickers, specifying that there is no evidence at this time to indicate that the stickers were placed by a member of the Xavier community. Part of the message read: “Xavier is aware that material from a group that advocates extremist ideologies (were found on campus)… and that a Black Lives Matter sign was vandalized… XUPD has removed the material and is investigating the situation. Hate has no home in the Xavier community.”

The banner, which read “Racism is a Sin: Black Lives Matter” has allegedly been sliced twice with an unspecified object, before it was taken down by XUPD on Saturday afternoon.

by Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr. Texts: Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9, 22-23 and Psalm 146

After several days of sheltering in place with my immediate family, I returned to my Ohio home. At once, I I was greeted by two old friends who were waiting for me at my place. They were not human beings. Instead, they were piles of dust, behind two doors.

So, as I looked at the piles of dust, trying to decide which one I would attend to first, I imagined one of them saying to the other in an enthusiastic tone, “I have decided that I am better than you. This means , I am worth more than you, and I am more important than you.” So then, I imagined the other pile of dust being startled and issuing a rather stern rebuke: “Say what? Aren’t we both just piles of dust? How are you any better than me?”