Statement of Resolution
Recognizing that universal access to health care is a basic human right, LCWR and its members reaffirm their commitment to advocate actively for the adoption of a national health care policy that would ensure adequate and affordable health care in the United States.

Rationale
Although the issue of a national health care policy for the U.S. was addressed by LCWR in 1990, and because there is no pending legislation concerning this issue, it seems imperative that we once again take action to promote universal access to health care coverage for all persons, especially children and the poor.
· Almost 42 million Americans have no health care coverage.
· Access to good health care is necessary to good health and a basic human right.
· Good health requires preventive care and necessary treatment.
· Although piecemeal efforts such as portability of insurance, limited parity for mental health coverage, and some increase in children's health care is a fact of life, and may tend to divide populations against each other, the need to continue to work for a prioritized incremental approach to access for health care with the financial support for these and other vital pieces of health care coverage is greater today than ever.

Call for Specific Action
1. Members will become informed on the need for and benefits of comprehensive reform as a moral imperative and human right.
2. Members will identify, engage in conversation and support candidates for public office who are committed to comprehensive health care reform and other life issues.
3. Members will take this issue to local, regional and national organizations in which they participate and urge their commitment to this goal.
4.  Members will organize and participate in public debates, letters to the editor, etc. to surface real needs and make them known to our congress persons. 
5.  LCWR will collaborate with other groups working to ensure universal access to health care.

Additional Facts/Related Information 
NETWORK, July-Aug.,1997, "Is Comprehensive Health Care Reform Dead?" by Catherine Pinkerton, CSJ

Origin of Proposal:  LCWR Region 10 with support from Regions: 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 15

Budget:                    Depends on each region

Contact Person:      Roberta Brich, CHM, 319-323-9466
 

Statement of Resolution
The membership of LCWR will continue to call upon the United States government through Congress and the President to eliminate funding of and call for the closing (cessation not the moving) of the School of the Americas.

Rationale
The LCWR membership will take this action as a response of solidarity with our Sisters: Mary Kay Flanigan, OSF, Megan Rice, SCH and Rita Steinhagen, CSJ, who are currently among the “25 prisoners of conscience” being held in federal prisons for six months for peacefully and unlawfully re-entering Fort Benning in order to make a ritual statement that the School of the Americas should be closed because of the heinous and torturous actions of some of its graduates upon their own people as well as Maryknoll women and men, Jesuits, and lay people.

Call for Specific Action
The leadership of congregations represented in LCWR will request letter writing and congressional visits by members of their respective communities.  They will seek support and co-sponsorship of S.980 (in the US Senate) and HR611 (in the US House) both of which will be voted on during the Fall of 1998.  LCWR goal 1 states: “To work for a just world by using our corporate influence to effect systemic change.”  Obtaining closure of the SOA by votes of Congress would bring about systemic change in war tactics.

Additional Facts/Related Circumstances
1. Human rights observers, church delegations, peace organizations, have identified certain SOA graduates as being responsible for acts of torture, kidnapping, rape, disappearance, drug trafficking, and death squad activity throughout Latin America.
2. US Army School of the Americas (SOA) located at Fort Benning, Georgia, has trained nearly 59,000 military officers from all over Central and South America and the Caribbean, and currently the majority are from Mexico, at an annual cost to American taxpayers of nearly 20 million dollars.
3. Four former Salvadoran guardsmen convicted of killing Sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and laywoman Jean Donovan in 1980 have said that they acted on orders from military authorities.
4. In 1996 the US Pentagon released documentation that training manuals used by SOA 1982-1991 advocated executions, torture, blackmail, and other forms of coercion.
5. On August 16,1996, LCWR organized 550 members and others to protest at the gates of Fort Benning and called for the closing of the SOA.
6. This is the year of celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it is a fitting time to call for the closing of the School of the Americas.

Origin of Proposal: Region 11

Budget: No additional costs to LCWR other than printing it in LCWR’s Report. At local level: Stationary, envelopes and postage. Optional : Travel to Washington, DC, and Fort Benning, GA, (November 21-22,1998).

Contact Persons: Margaret L. Kvasnicka, CSJ, 612-690-7000; Ann V. Walton, CSJ, 612-690-7067; Margaret Belanger, CSJ, 612-690-7030; Pat Keefe, OSF, 507-282-7441.
 

Statement of Resolution
LCWR  membership will support and commit to working actively to insure human rights for immigrant people entering the United States because of political, social, and economic upheaval.  We pledge ourselves to education and advocacy on immigration policies and issues which affect the human rights of families, battered immigrant women, and undocumented as well as documented immigrant people.

Rationale
• Our Judeo Christian heritage impels us to hospitality to the stranger and the foreigner.  Over 200 years   the welcome of immigrants has been a sacred heritage as we read in the words engraved at the base of our Statue of Liberty:  "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free"  (Emma Lazarus).  We are a country of immigrants who have greatly enriched this nation by our diversity of cultural values, gifts, and talents.

• Today, immigration is defining issues of the 21st century.  Who is in and who is locked out of our country's borders are crucial questions.  While trade agreements allow free movement of capital around the world, people/workers are land-locked.  An alarming fact is that U.S. border with Mexico has become an increasingly militarized zone.

• The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and individual Responsibility Act,  expands the definition of criminality, expedites the deportation of asylum seekers and immigrants, allows mandatory detention, deprives immigrants of access to social services and  gives the INS very broad power over people at a most vulnerable time in their lives.  This results in abusive behavior, especially toward women, by INS agents and others; failure to allow immigrants access to phones, advocates, or translators; detention (in jails if detentions centers are not readily available) for asylum seekers; jail for actions formerly recognized as misdemeanors, immediate deportation at INS descretion without any legal recourse; and family breakups.  (America April 25, May 9, 1998)

Call for Specific Action
• At the fall regional meeting each chairperson will allow time for LCWR members to:
        1.  Write a letter to their congressperson: 
              a.  Asking that the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Individual Responsibility act be  
                   re-written to correct its abusive provisions  
              b. Supporting the Kennedy-Gephardt proposed legislation "The New American Citizenship
                   Act" (S.B. 1717) which articulates a vision of welcome to immigrants, implements an 
                  efficient  naturalization process and strengthens the role of community based organizations
                  in the naturalization process 
              c.  Restoring emergency services and public benefits to legal residents and access to social 
                   services for all immigrants without regard for their legal status.       
        2.  Write a letter to Doris Meissner, Director of the INS, demanding that:  
              a.  The agency develop effective way of meeting the complex needs of immigrants and 
                   asylum seekers,  
              b.  Agents be trained to respect the human dignity of immigrants, documented or not, 
              c.  A release mechanism be implemented for asylum seekers while their cases are being 
                   reviewed and,
              d.  Uniform standards applicable to all detention facilities be adopted.
• National Office staff will issue action alerts as appropriate.
• LCWR members will promote education and advocacy on immigration issues within our congregation, church and civic communities.

Origin of Proposal: Region 12:   Arizona, Arkansas,  New Mexico and Texas 

Budget:  None

Contact Persons:  Carmen Therese Lazo, MCDP (210) 532-0113; 533-5149;  Susan Mika, OSB (210) 732-8957;  Mariana Wood, OP; (713) 747-3310  Mary Agnes Zinni, OSB (830) 816-8504; Anne Finnerty, SHSp (210) 533-5149. Sample letter will be provided to the regional chairpersons.

Support Data for Resolution on Immigration:
Our Judeo-Christian heritage demands that we extend hospitality to the stranger and the foreigner. Catholic Social teaching, especially as outlined in Populorum Progressio gives foreigners and strangers a right to our advocacy and action on their behalf.

1.   "The naive but honest question we must ask is this:  Why in this new world is there free movement for goods and capital, but not for persons, especially for poor persons?  The wealthy seem to move and settle where they will. .......   Vatican II affirmed  'the right to have a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one's family belongs to everyone',  Pope Paul VI wrote... The right to emigrate for economic reasons is rooted in this fundamental understanding that the earth belongs primarily to God.  Secondarily, it belongs to the whole human family and , only in third place, to proprietors, who are,  properly speaking, only temporary stewards of God's creation."  "The Ethics of Immigration Reform."  Bishop Carlos Sevilla,  Origins, Apr. 16, 1998  
 
2.  "Welcoming the immigrant in the spirit of solidarity is not an act of charity but rather an act of justice...  A decision to take this stand in the current immigration debate, therefore, acknowledges the strength of the banquet metaphor as our true eschatological image.  An attitude that respects the inherent dignity and rights of the immigrant reflects an awareness of the underlying forces that cause people to migrate...... unlike the lifeboat image which limits itself to merely describing this situation and locks the discussion into one of competing self-interests, the banquet metaphor questions the existing circumstances and invites us. as men and women of faith, to creatively engage the challenge posed by the gap between the rich and poor."   Luis Tempe, SJ., The Lifeboat and the Banquet,  Jesuit Conference USA., 1616 P St. N.W. Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20036-1405.

3.  The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Individual Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) contains provisions that expand the definitions of criminality so that actions formerly classified as misdemeanors are now felonies and the new  classification is retroactive.  IIRAIRA also allows mandatory detention for asylum seekers and when INS  runs out of detention space, the individuals petitioning for entry are placed in jail.  The immigrants encounter a wide range of legal barriers.  INS has broad discretion in conducting searches,  in not permitting petitioners adequate translation, access to attorney, advocate or phone,  in separating family members and in deporting without due process.  The individual agent is often the sole interpreter of the law.  (See America,  April  29 and May 9, '98)    The law  has placed enormous pressures on charitable agencies who advocate for and otherwise assist immigrants.  All this has created an enormous backlog in processing cases (up to 21 months) and leaves those petitioning for entry very vulnerable.

4.  Under the aegis of fighting drug trafficking, the southern U.S. border has become increasingly militarized.  4x4 vehicles, helicopters, airplanes and other high-tech equipment are readily available to the INS because Congress and the Administration continue to allot more funding and to deploy more agents along the border. "Raids" on businesses suspected of hiring undocumented are more common and often result. not only in the deportation (without any recourse or contact with friends/family/attorney) of immigrants,  but also in illegal searches of some American citizens. (Raids sometimes result from a tip by an employer who wishes to escape payment of wages or of "coyotes" who have transported the immigrants across the border at unreasonable costs).

5. "In its welfare reform legislation, the House of  Representatives has voted to deny most legal immigrants eligibility to non-emergency Medicaid,  SSI (with few exceptions), AFDC, Food Stamps, and programs associated with Title XX,  Social Service Block Grants."  (The Lifeboat and the Banquet) 
 
6.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that:  Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person (Art. 3);  Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his/her own, and to return to his/her own country (Art. 13);  Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution (Art. 14); The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State (Art. 16); Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of him/herself and his/her family including food, clothing, housing, medical services........(Art. 25).

7.  LCWR should support the  Kennedy-Gephardt "New American Citizenship Act" (S.B. 1717)  which would
- give the U.S. Attorney General three months to produce a backlog reduction plan with target dates for elimination of the backlog
- cap the naturalization fee at $150 until INS reduces the backlog of pending naturalization applications
- Authorize the appropriation of funds for backlog reduction and INS naturalization technological and infrastructural support
- Require the U.S. Attorney General to develop a plan to redesign the naturalization process so that the entire process takes less than six (6) months from application to oath.   (La Prensa, San Antonio, TX.,  March 15, 1998, pp. 1 & 3). 

LCWR should oppose the Smith-Abraham Bill (H.R.2837) which includes measures that will  further restrict immigrants' rights and increase the  human and financial costs of entering the U.S. 
 

Statement of Resolution
LCWR and CMSM join in the worldwide movement to cancel the crushing international debt of impoverished countries by: participating in the Jubilee 2000/USA Campaign, educating Conference members and the public regarding the key debt issues, and advocating for specific actions by the U.S. government and world monetary organizations.

Rationale
1. The more than 4,000 missionaries from our US religious institutes, whose work brings them into direct contact with poverty around the world, have sensitized us to the debt’s dramatic impact on people. Alleviation of debt is critical to lifting the burden of poverty.
2. The biblical tradition calls for a Jubilee year, when slaves are set free and debts canceled. This vision leads us to see the alleviation of debt as a critical issue for our time, especially as we celebrate the second millennium of Christianity. We join our voice with the voices of many others: John Paul II, various Vatican agencies, international Catholic institutions, our US Bishops, and interfaith groups throughout the world. 
3. Religious see the restoration of relationships based on justice and peace as central to their identity. The relief of international debt touches uniquely on right relationships. CMSM and LCWR members see this as a unique opportunity to speak with a moral voice and use our corporate power to influence systemic change.

Call for Specific Action
1. CMSM and LCWR members will join the Jubilee 2000/USA Campaign and promote education within their congregations and ministries on issues related to debt.
2. Because the Jubilee 2000/USA Campaign petition is a key part of the campaign, CMSM and LCWR members will sign the petition individually and circulate it to their congregations. The form marked with the conference name will enable us to track our corporate effort.
3. The LCWR Global Concerns Committee, the CMSM Justice and Peace Committee, and national office staff will continue to educate the conferences about the debt of impoverished countries, keep the conferences informed about member activities, and strategize on further corporate action.
4. LCWR and CMSM regions, members, and national staff will engage in advocacy with the  U.S. government, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other national and international organizations as specific opportunities arise.

Origin of Proposal: LCWR Global Concerns Committee with support from Region 7 and CMSM Justice and Peace Committee.

Budget: Costs are included in conference budgets.

Contact Persons: Ted Keating, SM, 301-588-4030; Judy Cannon, RSM, 301-588-4955; Nancy Sylvester, IHM, 734-241-0092.

Statement of Resolution
We, members of LCWR/CMSM, commit ourselves to work for human rights in the United States in particular by advocating for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Rationale
1. This mobilization makes practical LCWR and CMSM goals to work toward a world without violence. Using our corporate power to challenge the violence of the death penalty joins us in the network of voices calling for a moratorium.
2. “We maintain that abolition of the death penalty would promote values that are important to us as citizens and as Christians. . . .Abolition sends a message that we can break the cycle of violence, that we need not take life for life, that we can envisage more humane and more hopeful and effective responses to the growth of violent crime. . . . Abolition of capital punishment is also a manifestation of our belief in the unique worth and dignity of each person. . . .We believe that abolition of the death penalty is most consonant with the example of Jesus, who both taught and practiced the forgiveness of injustice . . . .”  U. S. Bishop’s Statement on Capital Punishment, United States Catholic Conference, 1980.
3. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the basic international statement of the inalienable and inviolable right of all members of the human family. Under the Second Optional Protocol to the Civil and Political Covenant, States must take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty.
4. The UN Human Rights Commission in April 1998 has called for a moratorium on executions reporting that some US states carry out executions in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner that does not spare juveniles, retarded or mentally ill persons.
5. The American Bar Association in February, 1997 has concluded that “the administration of the death penalty is a haphazard maze of unfair practices with no internal consistency” and has called for a moratorium on executions.

Call for Specific Action by Individuals and Congregational Leaders
1. Write letters to editors concerning the injustice of the death penalty.
2. Urge groups we are in collaboration with to take public stands for the moratorium.
3. Write to the President, Members of Congress, Governors and State Legislators, asking their support for the moratorium.

Call for Specific Action by the LCWR/CMSM National Leadership
1. Issue a public statement that LCWR and CMSM favor a national moratorium on the death penalty.
2. LCWR Global Concerns Committee and CMSM Justice and Peace Committee will continue educating and advising on the national level. 
3. Collaborate with other groups who are working for a moratorium.

Additional Facts/Related Circumstances
1. CMSM/ LCWR Theme recognizes human rights at the heart of our mission.
2. At the heart of the death penalty debate is the question of the government’s right to take a human life.

Origin of Proposal: LCWR Regions 7 and 11, CMSM Justice and Peace 

Budget: Within ordinary administration expenses.

Contact Person: Kathleen O’Brien, IHM, 734-241-0092; Patricia A. Keefe, OSF, 507-282-7441; Ted Keating, SM, 301-588-4030

Statement of Resolution 
That LCWR, in solidarity with the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), affirm and adopt the ‘Declaration of Solidarity of Women Religious Leaders’ passed at the UISG meeting in Rome, May 3-7, 1998.

The statement is as follows:
We, women leaders of Catholic Religious Institutes representing women religious around the world, ublicly declare our solidarity with the poor throughout the world and in particular in impoverished nations that are suffering because of the crushing international debt.  We endorse the Jubilee 2000 coalition that is calling the heads of governments of lending countries to reduce the debts of the most impoverished nations and take effective steps to prevent such a high level of debt building up again.

As leaders committed to the respect for life, we call for a moratorium on the death penalty by all nations.

As women committed to the human rights of all women and children, especially their right to be free of violence, we oppose the sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly for economic gains.

We the 700 women religious leaders participating in the Plenary Meeting and reflecting on the theme: Women Religious, “Builders of an Alternative Future, Journeying Onward in New Solidarities”,  promise to work within our own religious communities and countries on these important issues of society.

Rationale
These three issues of the debt, women and the death penalty directly affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people and nations.  These issues are of national as well as international importance.  The statement was passed unanimously  by more than 700 women religious leaders gathered in Rome.  We recognize the need for a moratorium on the death penalty while we work toward its abolition.

Call for Specific Action
1. The LCWR members approve the solidarity declaration at the 1998 Assembly.
2. The leaders of each LCWR congregation identify at least one action their institute will take to effect change in each of the three issues presented: debt reduction, death penalty moratorium, and eliminating the sexual exploitation of women and children and report these actions to the National Office.
3. The National Office, through its committees and networking, provide periodic updates on the current status of the issues and a report on activities identified by LCWR institutes.

Origin of proposal: Group of more than 25 LCWR members (see attached list of names)

Budget: Cost of mailings.

Contact Persons:  U.S. Members of UISG: Gertrude Foley, SC, 412-836-0406 Ext. 612; Andree Fries, CPPS, 314-240-6010; Dolores Marie McHugh, BVM, 319-588-2351; Anne Munley, IHM, 717-346-5439; Helene O’Sullivan, MM, 914-941-7575.
 

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) has approximately 1,000 members who are the elected leaders of their religious orders, representing 76,000 Catholic sisters in the United States. The Conference develops leadership, promotes collaboration within church and society, and serves as a voice for systemic change.