Calendar

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Consider your position in your community. What can you contribute to undocumented community members or migrant organizations?

Do you know any legal, mental health, social work professionals?

What about school employees?

We need EVERYONE to consider how they can mobilize support for vulnerable migrant families.

If you yourself don’t hold a professional position that is needed, consider this: Could you serve as a first-call, point person for someone who is detained? Reach out to them to initiate a supportive conversation.  Are you positioned to do child pick-up and safeguarding? Well-connected with community orgs or professionally situated to help with legal, medical or other needs?

See the attached flyer for more resources and ways to get involved.

Click the link on the right to learn more!

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

What to do if you are arrested, visited, or questioned by ICE

Say you wish to remain silent and immediately request to speak with a lawyer. Do not sign anything. Ask to see a warrant. https://www.nilc.org/resources/know-your-rights-what-to-do-if-arrested-detainedimmigration/

Ohio National Lawyers Guild Hotline: (614) 654-6477

Call this number if you are arrested during a demonstration or visited/questioned by ICE

Ohio Immigration Hotline: hotline@ohioimmigrant.org or 419-777-HELP (4357)

Call this number to share information about harmful incidents involving immigrants such as ICE arrests or raids, or to request resources and guidance on policy and legal matters.

Access ICE and CBP detention statistics

Scroll to bottom: https://www.ice.gov/detain/detention-management Watch this video for help interpreting the data: https://www.instagram.com/ reel/DLiQzYVRZGv/igsh=MWF3Y2s0NDZxbXh5aA%3D%3D

Keep track of immigration court data from Transactional Records Access Clearing House (TRAC)

Immigration info home: https://tracreports.org/immigration/ New proceedings filed: https://tracreports.org/phptools/immigration/ntanew/

Follow Austin Kocher on Substack to read about current immigration enforcement https://substack.com/@austinkocher/posts

The Ida B. Wells Foundation is pleased to join with the Baseball Heritage Museum and Neighborhood Connections to host a book signing for Mary E. Triece and the recent publication of her book entitled: Radical Advocate:  Ida B. Wells and the Road to Race and Gender Justice.  The Ida B. Wells Foundation, which started in 1998, is a mustard seed endeavor that has provided approximately $100,000 in small grants to grassroots projects for racial, economic, and social justice, nonviolence and youth work in Cuyahoga County.  Since 2022, some of the entities that have received IBWF grants are: LegalWorks, Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, the Kentucky Garden, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, Renovare, CAIR, and others.

 

Mary E. Triece, Ph.D. is a Professor in the School of Communication and the Director of The Women’s Studies Program.  Her teaching and research focus on rhetorical and feminist theories and criticisms, and social movement rhetorics.  Triece is the author of five books, several co-authored works, and numerous journal and peer-reviewed articles. Triece teaches classes on rhetoric and argumentation at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  

Also, Triece is a former President of the Board for the InterReligion Task Force on Central America and Colombia, a local human rights and solidarity organization that started 45 years ago as a result of an awakening to US complicity in the wars against the poor in Central America after the death of four US churchwomen in El Salvador, Jean Donovan and Dorothy Kazel, OSU, who were part of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese Mission Team, and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clark and Ita Ford.

Perhaps now there are more reasons than ever before to examine the life and role of Ida B. Wells.  She was a journalist and suffragist, who maintained an effective international anti-lynching campaign.  When exhibits are being removed and suppressed at the National Museum of African American History, when diversity, equity and inclusion programs are under attack, there is no better time than now to gather for a book signing reception.  The book:  Radical Advocate:  Ida B. Wells and the Road to Race and Gender Justice, by Mary E. Triece is a good primer on overcoming oppression.  It will give us tools to endure the long and continuous road to racial justice.

As an extra bonus, please come and learn about racial justice history right here in our midst at the Baseball Heritage Museum and League Park. Free tours of League Park will be available. 

Who:  Everyone--All ages

Where:  Baseball Heritage Museum, 6601 Lexington Avenue, Cleveland, OH

When:  July 19, 2025 from 4 pm to 6 pm

Agenda:

4:00 to 4:30-Meet and Greet- Short Tours of the Historic League Park

4:30 to 4:45-Freedom Songs-(Lift Every Voice and Sing/We Shall Overcome/Somos El Barco)

4:45 to  5:15-Interview of Author Mary Triece by Aiyana Taylor

5:15 to 5:30 -Audience Q&A

5:30 to 6:00-Book Signing/Reception/Closing Interfaith Prayer

Learn more & get tickets!

Get tickets here!

source: Jubilee Community House in Nicaragua

July 19 marked the 46th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. In 1983, a young engineer from Oregon, Ben Linder, went to Nicaragua to bring electricity to war zones in the north where U.S.-funded Contra guerillas attacked villages in the dark; electricity made them safer. Four years later, while working on plans for a hydroelectric plant in San José de Bocay near the Honduran border, Ben and two Nicaraguan colleagues, Pablo Rosales and Sergio Hernandez, were ambushed and murdered by the Contra on April 28, 1987. Although many other international solidarity workers had been killed, Ben was the only U.S. citizen to be killed by the U.S.-funded Contras.

Join us to hear about the mission of Casa Benjamin Linder and the development of family and community-based tourism in Nicaragua, and how it contrasts with other travel of today and of past decades. Becca Renk of Casa Benjamin Linder will lead a discussion with other featured speakers who will describe recent travel under the current model, compared to past experiences.

The Nicaragua Webinars series is hosted and sponsored by Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, NicaSolidarity.com.  You can sign up to receive the coalition’s bi-weekly newsletter, action alerts, and other event notifications at bit.ly/NicaSubs.

Grateful thanks to all our series co-sponsors, who help spread the word about our webinars!  If your organization would also like to co-sponsor, email NicaraguaWebinars@gmail.com.

Sign up for this webinar on July 27 here: bit.ly/NicaJuly27.

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ogcWfSw-RUy7Gs5NtI1RMQ#/registration

CASA BENJAMIN LINDER

https://www.casabenjaminlinder.org/

Located near downtown Managua, Nicaragua, Casa Ben Linder is a large, tree-filled property tucked into a quiet neighborhood just two blocks from a main street.

Casa Benjamin Linder hosts week-long study tours, where participants volunteer at a local project, learn Spanish, or take an afternoon’s historical tour. Whatever your interests and time-frame, we bring Nicaragua’s story alive through art and anecdote, and take you on a discovery of this amazing country, in the capital and beyond.

Income generated from the stays of travelers, tourists and solidarity workers goes to help cover the Casa’s operating costs. All of the rooms of the guest house are furnished with unique wood pieces made by local workshop Nicaragua Naturally. As part of our educational mission, Casa Benjamin Linder offers guests fun, educational tours all over Nicaragua. Why not turn your vacation into an opportunity to learn something about Nicaragua?

Casa Benjamin Linder is operated by the Jubilee House Community and it’s project in Nicaragua, the Center for Development in Central America.

Named in memory of Ben Linder from Portland, Oregon

The Casa is dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Linder; a young engineer from Portland, Oregon, who moved to Nicaragua in 1983 to contribute his skills to the popular Sandinista Revolution. He was a clown and a unicyclist who worked with the poor circuses in Managua where he is still remembered fondly today. As an engineer, Ben worked to bring electricity to war zones in northern Nicaragua where U.S.-funded Contra guerillas attacked villages in the dark - electricity made them safer.

After building a successful hydroelectric plant in El Cua, Ben began work on a new plant in San Jose de Bocay near the Honduran border. While measuring a stream near Bocay on April 28, 1987, Ben and two Nicaraguan colleagues, Pablo Rosales and Sergio Hernandez, were ambushed and murdered by the Contra. Although many other international solidarity workers had been killed, Ben was the only U.S. citizen to be killed by the U.S.-funded Contras.

The Casa Benjamin Linder property was purchased in 1988 by a group of U.S. citizens living in Nicaragua who organized demonstrations against the war in front of the U.S. embassy in Managua every Thursday morning. They named the house for their hero and martyr, Ben Linder, and it became a gathering space for U.S. citizens in solidarity with the Nicaraguan Revolution.

When the Contra War ended in 1990, the group began hosting regular Thursday morning educational talks at Casa Benjamin Linder, a practice that lasted for 25 years. The Casa was also home to FUNDECI, which was founded by Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman to work with the poor. Padre Miguel was a Liberation Theologian and a great lover of Nicaraguan Revolutionary art. In the 1990s when murals in Managua were being painted over in an attempt to erase the Revolution, Padre Miguel commissioned eleven murals at the Casa, included four murals that honor Ben's life.

Today, our vision at Casa Benjamin Linder is to preserve and promote the spirit that led Nicaraguans and international solidarity workers to become a part of the Revolution.

The house is a solidarity center and gathering space where the murals can be appreciated by all, and where we promote Nicaraguan art and family life through regular events like art workshops and children’s theater through our partnership with the Guachipilin Puppet Theater.

casabenjaminlinder@gmail.com

+505 8700 9703

Wednesday, August 6, 2025 marks the 80th Anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. We will commemorate this day with a Silent Peace Walk in downtown Cleveland. Eighty people dressed in white, the color of mourning in Japan, will solemnly and meditatively walk from Cleveland Public Library’s Eastman Reading Garden to Willard Park and the Free Stamp. We will remember the Hibakusha, the “bomb-affected people,” seeking water to ease their suffering. At sunset, we will light candle lanterns, declaring our intention that there will never be another nuclear war. No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis! No More Hibakusha!

We need your help. We invite you to SIGN UP HERE to join in the Silent Peace Walk and help us to spread the word so that we can sign up at least 80 walkers.

This 80th anniversary commemoration Silent Peace Walk has been initiated by Cleveland Nonviolence Network, IRTF, and Cleveland Peace Action. We welcome other groups to add their names as endorsers and help sign up walkers.

The walk:

We will gather at 6:30pm at the Eastman Reading Garden betweeen the two buildings of the library (old Main Library and Louis Stokes Wing) 525 Superior Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44114 .

For the first hour, we will have a few gathering activities (fold paper peace cranes, listen to inspiring spoken word, a land welcome/grounding,  participate in a centering message to get us into a meditative space). Gathering at the Cleveland Public Library’s Eastman Reading Garden, we will begin our walk (everyone dressed in white) at 7:30pm, meditatively walk from Cleveland Public Library’s Eastman Reading Garden to Willard Park and the Free Stamp. The approximate route is 1.5 miles

PARKING

Parking on Cleveland streets is free after 6pm. Our volunteers have counted approx. 80 free on-street parking spots (not including handicapped spots) on these streets:  

Lakeside Ave: in front of City Hall (601 E Lakeside); between E 9th and E 12th; in the parking lot of the Water Department/DoubleTree Hotel  (north side of Lakeside at E 12th).

St Clair Ave: between E 6th and E 9th, between E 9th and E 12th.

MORE INFO ABOUT HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION

Pax Christi USA has posted an updated Apology Petition to the People of Japan to commemorate the upcoming 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombings on August 6-9, 2025.

https://paxchristiusa.org/2025/07/10/apology-petition-to-the-people-of-japan-on-the-80th-anniversary-of-the-us-atomic-bombings/

About the Petition

On August 6, 2016, during a prayer service of repentance and nonviolent witness to commemorate the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in front of the White House, an apology petition was read and presented to Mr. Mimaki, a Hiroshima A-bomb survivor (hibakusha). The witness was sponsored by the Dorothy Catholic Worker, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore and Pax Christi USA in cooperation with other faith-based peace and justice groups. More than 700 people signed the petition. In September 2016, Mr. Mimaki delivered the petition to the mayor of Hiroshima and later was presented to the Hiroshima Peace Museum. To mark the 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Japan, an updated petition was signed by more than 240 people and was sent to and received by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to Nihon Hidankyō, the main A-Bomb survivors (hibakusha) organization in Japan and 2024 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The original petition was composed by people connected with the Catholic Worker and is the fruit of years of public witness by nuclear abolitionists who met and were inspired by many hibakusha. The petition was co-sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, the Isaiah Project, the Sisters of Mercy Justice Team, Little Friends for Peace, Jonah House, the Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area, and Pax Christi USA. The petition has been used each year at Aug. 6-9th commemoration witnesses at the Pentagon and White House. Please sign and incorporate the use of the Petition in local acts of nonviolent witness and circulate widely. 

This updated petition for 2025 has been revised to include new developments regarding the increasing danger of nuclear war, a papal proclamation regarding the immorality of possessing nuclear weapons, and the TPNW. It will be sent to the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to Nihon Hidankyō, and church leaders.

In hope for a disarmed world,

Art Laffin, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Washington DC

SPECIAL INVITATION FROM THE CATHOLIC WORKER IN WASHINGTON DC 

“Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil.” (Epitaph at bottom of the Hiroshima Peace Park Memorial Cenotaph and Peace Flame to remember all the victims of the atomic bombings)

Dear Friends, 

 To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the sinful and criminal U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, in concert with Pax Christi, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Little Friends for Peace, the Isaiah Project and other peacemakers from the DMV, invites you to attend a prayer vigil/witness on August 6th outside the Pentagon, and on August 9th, outside the White House. 

During our public witness, we will read an updated Apology Petition to the people of Japan that was previously signed in the past by 940 Americans to repent for the U.S. use of nuclear weapons in 1945. Please sign and circulate this updated Petition which Pax Christi USA has posted on their web site: https://paxchristiusa.org/2025/07/10/apology-petition-to-the-people-of-japan-on-the-80th-anniversary-of-the-us-atomic-bombings/

We will also remember and pray for the victims of these unspeakable nuclear atrocities and all those who witnessed the destructive power of nuclear weapons use, testing and mining--hibakusha, pacific islanders, Native Americans, downwinders, and all other victims of nuclearism--and call for nuclear abolition. 

Nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal. Pope Francis declared that the very possession of nuclear weapons is immoral and 73 countries have now ratified the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force on January 22, 2021, thereby making nuclear weapons illegal under International law. The nine nuclear-armed nations — the U.S., Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — have not signed the treaty, nor has any nation from the NATO alliance. 

On January 28, 2025, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. This is due to the existential threats of nuclear war and the climate crisis, bio- and cyber threats, nuclear proliferation, state-sponsored disinformation and Artificial Intelligence. The Ukraine war and recent Israeli and U.S. attacks of Iran has further exacerbated the nuclear peril. 

 In 2024, the nine nuclear-armed states spent $9.9 billion (11%) more on their nuclear arsenals than the year before, a total of $100.2 billion, or $3,169 per second on nuclear weapons. In the past five years, from 2020-2024, these countries spent $415.9 billion on their nuclear arsenals. The United States had the biggest increase from 2023-2024, at $5.3 billion, and spent more than all of the other nuclear-armed states combined, at $56.8 billion. China remained second, at $12.5 billion, and the United Kingdom came in third, spending $10.4 billion. The U.S. nuclear arsenal upgrade now underway is estimated to cost $1.7 trillion over the next several decades. 

 The Navy has contracted with General Dynamics to build the Columbia class nuclear subs to replace the existing Trident fleet. Twelve Columbia class subs will cost over $130 billion and the first of these subs will be named the USS District of Columbia. As these exorbitant  resources are spent on weapons of mass murder, 120 people died without the dignity of home last year just in D.C. 

The USS Florida Trident nuclear submarine, now refitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles, was deployed on November 5, 2023 to the Middle East, in support of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. And the USS Georgia Trident sub was recently used to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at several Iranian military sites. We join our voice with all those urgently calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to all U.S. military aid and weapons to Israel and U.S. complicity in the genocide, forced starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, an end to apartheid and the occupation of Palestine, and for a just peace for Palestine and Israel. We call, too, on the U.S. and Israel to make peace with Iran!

 As we call on the nation to repent for the nuclear sin, abolish all nuclear weapons, ratify the TPNW, and redirect exorbitant military and nuclear expenditures to meet urgent human needs, we do so in solidarity with actions taking place around the U.S. and worldwide. 

The Hibakusha plead to the world: “Humanity and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist.” 

Martin Luther King, Jr. exhorts us: “The choice today is…either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

 Pope Francis declares: "Nor can we fail to be genuinely concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices. If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned…The total elimination of nuclear weapons is...a moral and humanitarian imperative of our time.”  

Please join us and share this invitation widely. 

Organizers of the Aug 6-9 commemoration vigils include: Assisi Community, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Isaiah Project, Little Friends for Peace, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, Pax Christi USA

When: Wednesday, August 6, 2025 (Anniversary of the U.S. Nuclear Bombing of Hiroshima) @ Pentagon 7-8 AM

 Where: Pentagon Designated Protest Zone on the Southeast Side of Building (Take South exit from Pentagon Metro station--Walk a short distance on sidewalk toward South Parking Lot--vigil site is on left behind fencing)

 When: Saturday, August 9, 2025 (Anniversary of the U.S. Nuclear Bombing of Nagasaki) @ 10 AM

 Where: Outside the White House on Pennsylvania Ave. (North side)