JEWISHLIFESOCIAL ACTION
Collective Clout Carries California by Stephanie Kolin and Julie Chizewer Weill
Trust Act rally photo by Bret Hartman / brethartman.com; Jerr y Brown photo: Reuters / Off ice of Mayor Eric Garcetti
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ebecca Altamirano, a teacher and member of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, chaperoned a group of high school students on a Civil Rights Movement-themed trip to the deep South that taught them the importance of not being “silent witnesses” whenever they encountered injustice. Shortly after they returned home, she says, “My student Carlos*, 18, looked out of his window and saw a couple being beaten up. Determined not to be a silent witness, he reported the crime to the police, helped them find the criminals, and, at great personal risk, even testified against the perpetrators. But when the police learned that Carlos was an undocumented immigrant, they arrested and deported him to Mexico, where he knew no one. Eventually, his sister used the money she was saving for her education to bring him back to the U.S. Still, we all knew that unless California enacted immigration reform, he could be deported all over again. That’s when I realized I had to get involved to fight for the rights of people like Carlos.”
RABBI JOEL SIMONDS OF UNIVERSITY SYNAGOGUE SPEAKS UP FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM AT A LOS ANGELES RALLY.
MASS RALLY IN SUPPORT OF THE TRUST ACT, LOS ANGELES.
♦♦♦ Last year, Reuben Bank’s friend Wilmar stopped showing up at soccer games. “As a Rabbi Stephanie Kolin is the Reform CA lead organizer and co-director of the URJ’s Just Congregations. Julie Chizewer Weill is Coordinator of Institutional Advancement at Just Congregations.
GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN SIGNS THE TRUST ACT INTO LAW, OCTOBER 3, 2013.
reform judaism
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key member of our club soccer team, this raised red flags,” says Reuben, 17, a high school junior and member of University Synagogue in Los Angeles. “I soon found out that his dad, who owned a successful tiling business and had lived in the U.S. 15+ years, had been pulled over for having a broken taillight, and was later arrested for being an undocumented immigrant. Wilmar’s dad was jailed for six months before his lawyer got the charges dropped, and meanwhile my friend had to quit our team to get a job to make ends meet for his family. That’s when I realized: There needs to be immigration reform so families like Wilmar’s will not be torn apart.” Reuben then discovered that one of his rabbis, Joel Simonds, was involved in Reform CA, an organization of Reform leaders and congregants throughout the state of California committed to working together to address a variety of social injustices, starting with the plight of the state’s 3 million undocumented immigrants. “I went to a local Reform CA event at my synagogue and then got involved,” Reuben says, “writing to my congressional representatives about the issue and co-writing a program at URJ Camp Newman that taught my fellow campers about immigration reform. I saw that I wasn’t the only one who cared about this issue; my * Name has been changed to preserve anonymity.
spring 2014
2/19/14 2:36 PM