Taking it to the Supreme Court…Joni Sarles, Laura Solomen, Patti Absher, Wayne Nilseteun, John Kester, Katherine O’Kester standing up for DACA as the Dreamers present their case to our highest court. A decision is expected in June that will determine the future for more than 700,000 DACA recipients. Rally at ICE Headquarters in DC.

Ross Wells, Judi Kane, Patti Absher & John Campbell witness for increased funding for legal services for immigrants at the 2020 Mayor’s budget hearing. 

This is the place for you if you wonder how you can make a difference. The steering committee meets monthly to survey and select projects that the entire congregation can support.

How could we not be working to confront the unjust policies? Every day we see new rules and orders that separate families, keep children in cages, and, even pass along their confidential disclosures to therapists to ICE.  We are alarmed when honest, hard-working immigrants, who have lived in our neighborhoods for decades, are taken into custody and put into detention or deported.  

We realize that issues around immigration, affecting asylum seekers and refugees, are grievously complex. Yet, together, guided by our ethical principles and individual conscience, we chip away at the “Wall” and all it stands for as an affront to human dignity.

WES is a member of the Congregational Action Network (CAN) and Unitarian Universalist Social Justice which regularly sends an advocacy team to Capitol Hill.

Activities the Immigration Team is undertaking:

• Rosa Gutierrez Lopez and her three children in Public Sanctuary at a Bethesda church. WES volunteers regularly help maintain security with four-hour or overnight stays and other tasks that range from grocery shopping to excursions with the children 
• Support Dreamers, TPS and other advocacy visitors to Capitol Hill with meals and home 
• Develop project to reach candidates for political office (cards, phone calls, email)
• Respond/support rallies, marches & vigils
• Support for families, such as those impacted by ICE custody of breadwinner
• Team building with email alerts for marches, legislative hearings and rallys
• Study of history of immigration in the USA 
• Immigration film nights with post-film discussion
• Programs for youths and teens to heighten understanding of immigrants
• Visits to detention centers in Virginia and Maryland
• Reading & topic discussion of pertinent books such as “The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America” (participants do not need to have read the selected book to join the discussion)

Monthly meetings: WES Library, Third Tuesday, 7 pm

Ross Wells & Judith Johnson, Immigration Team leaders

Regular members, Katherine O’Kester, Sue Smith, Patti Absher, Pamela Levin, Kristin Hunter ….

Want to get involved? Email Ross Wells at rosswells@starpower.net.