Dear Justice-Seeker,

Enjoy the February edition of MFSA Voices! There is a lot of organizing and visioning happening across the connection of the United Methodist Church. Look for ways to plug into the conversation in your annual conference and in your MFSA communities. There are several national gatherings coming up in the next few months. See info below.

You make our collective work possible by your witness for justice every day in your church, community, and Annual Conference. MFSA does not receive any financial support from the United Methodist Church's giving channels. 100% of our budget is funded through your membership dues and your generosity in giving. Please consider making a gift to MFSA. 

Peace and Justice,
Bridget Cabrera

MFSA is partnering with Crossroads, a non-profit that focuses on dismantling systemic racism and building antiracist multicultural diversity within institutions and communities, to conduct a full organizational racial audit. Our goal is to be better structured to perpetuate justice and equity throughout the MFSA network and whatever form the church takes next. And if we are successful we will be able to help the church through a similar process.

This 3-day training (February 15 - 17) will equip you with a framework for examining organizational culture and moving toward antiracist org transformation. Please click here to learn more and register to participate.

Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Equal Pay Day

On February 11, 2020 at 2PM Eastern we will observe Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Women’s Equal Pay Day. Please join MFSA and a coalition of Women's Equal Pay Organizations on social media to raise awareness of how AAPI women and girls experience the wage gap and increase visibility of work and wealth disparities in AAPI communities that are often rendered invisible in mainstream conversations about the wage gap. Simply follow MFSA on facebook and twitter and at 2PM Eastern on Feb, 11, 2020 long on and share our posts to your networks to help us raise more awareness.

Background

Together, racial and gender discrimination combine to produce economic injustice for many AAPI women: In 2019, AAPI women made $0.90 to as low as $0.50 per dollar that white non-Hispanic men took home. Several AAPI ethnic subgroups experience some of the widest wage gaps among all women.  For instance, Hmong and Cambodian women earned on average only 61 and 57 cents, respectively, for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men made. 

Even when controlling for factors such as education and experience, the pay gaps persist and start early in women’s careers and contribute to a wealth gap that follows them throughout their lifetimes. Not being paid an equal wage exacerbates other challenges, such as getting health care, especially for immigrant AAPI women. 

The “model minority myth,” or the idea that all AAPI women are the same -- high-achieving immigrants with stable incomes -- furthers the misconception that we don't need additional resources or support. This is far from true: many AAPI immigrant women struggle to afford necessities such as health care because of racial wage disparities, which are obscured by this myth and hidden in data that lumps all AAPI people together.

Policy Solutions

We demand research, advocacy, and policies that acknowledge our lived experiences so that each member of the AAPI community can achieve pay equity and economic security. We call for data equity and the implementation of best practices for AAPI disaggregation in pay equity research. We support comprehensive equal pay policies on the state and federal level, including the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act would ensure protections against retaliation for salary negotiations, prohibit employers from screening based on salary history, and provide other remedies for those filing sex-based wage discrimination claims.

We also support the HEAL for Immigrant Women and Families Act. Immigrant women currently rely on a patchwork of health care due to the five year bar on accessing Medicaid, CHIP, and Medicare, and undocumented folks are barred from and buying insurance from the ACA marketplace. The HEAL Act would remove those barriers and help ensure that everyone can get the health care they need, no matter how long they have lived here or how they came to this country. Health care access for immigrants is an economic justice issue for AAPIs, plain and simple. 

Prayer from Interim Board President, Rev. Andy Oliver 

Last week, Rev. Andy Oliver, interim president of MFSA's board of directors, gave the invocation to the Florida House of Representatives session. It was a reminder to us all that people who have been marginalized by unjust systems and laws were not born an “issue” or political or controversial. God created all in God's image and called us good. His prayer was an invitation to the legislators to stop politicizing marginalized peoples' very existence. It was also an invitation for both the oppressed and oppressor to experience liberation.

Church and Society has launched a new website for the Social Principles that features the revised Social Principles document in eight different languages (English French, Spanish, Kiswahili, Portuguese, German, Ilocano, and Swahili; Korean and Tagalog translations coming soon!) along with videos and educational resources.

Every 3-4 weeks they will be discussing a different section of the revised Social Principles and introducing new resources for how you can use the Social Principles in your ministry context.  Want to learn more, please sign up: https://www.umcsocialprinciples2020.org/updates.

GCORR presents a free online course
Implicit Bias: What We Don’t Think We Think

Based off of the popular Implicit Bias Workbook, GCORR has created an online course for anyone who is interested in learning and teaching others about implicit bias.

GCORR invites pastors, teachers, and anyone who is interested in learning and teaching others about implicit bias to take this free on-demand online course. This course is designed for you to take at your own pace and includes bonus content specifically for preachers.

REGISTER FOR RMN Conference CONNECTION2020

We are steadfast in our commitment to LGBTQ justice, not only where The UMC currently exists, but across the expanse of any future expressions of Methodism or denominations birthed out of the Wesleyan movement. Given that commitment, we invite you to join us in Nashville this February to bless one another’s liberative work and to accomplish the following:

1. Mobilize Reconciling individuals who want to resist, reform, and build something new

2. Resource and train Reconciling Churches and Communities to resist the Traditionalist Plan and affirm LGBTQ people in their local context

3. Gather General Conference delegates to strategize toward GC2020

As a former LGBTQ reverend in the UMC and an interdisciplinary scholar, Elyse Ambrose offers a unique lens to sexuality and gender justice in faith communities. Her trainings consider robust meanings of the word “inclusion” as participants examine biblical, theological, and ethical foundations of Christian approaches to sexuality and gender, and focus on aligning their praxes with just ways of relating.
She is available to visit your faith community for half-day trainings for spaces seeking to approach gender and sexuality in more intentional, intersectional, and justice-focused ways. Learn more about Dr. Ambrose and her work at elyseambrose.com.