INTERFAITH ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL OHIO (IACO)
Helping Central Ohio Homeless: Join representatives from other faith communities to help serve meals at the Van Buren Shelter, 595 Van Buren Drive, Columbus, 43223, from 5:30 PM (introduction and tour) to 7:45 PM on Sunday, October 28th. If you are interested in joining the other IACO members who are volunteering, please contact Gwyn Stetler at
[email protected]
.
This is a great opportunity to serve those in need AND to get to know people from other faith traditions. For more information, see the SAC bulletin board or ask Pam Patsch.
UUJO ANNUAL ASSEMBLY - A New Way: Building a Moral Democracy, Saturday Nov. 17, 2018, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware OH:
UUJO's Annual Assembly will feature the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis as well as a number of workshops on topics such as immigration and sanctuary, anti-racism, economic justice and more. Keynote: "A Prophetic Voice for the Poor: Building a Movement to End Poverty" with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. She has spent the last two decades with grassroots, community-led, anti-poverty organizations working to build the movement to end poverty. Rev. Dr. Theoharis is Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Co-Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, and Coordinator of the Poverty Initiative. Registration will open the first week of October. Register at https://www.uujo.org/.
REPURPOSING PLASTIC BAGS:
Sometimes we forget to bring our reusable bags to the store and end up with plastic bags. Now you can donate your plastic shopping bags to the women in the Horizon Prison Initiative program at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. The women
use the plastic bags to make sleeping mats for the homeless. You can leave your plastic bags in the designated container next to the office in Fellowship Hall.
VOTE #YESON1 FOR A HEALTHY, SAFE OHIO:
This ballot measure was created for Ohioans by Ohioans. A vibrant, diverse and bipartisan coalition of nonprofits, faith groups, community activists, legal professionals, national policy experts, parents who lost children to addiction and people in recovery.This coalition joined forces to answer the question, "Can we improve community health and safety while reducing the prison population?" The answer: a resounding yes. The solution: Issue 1
Issue 1 -- which is a proposed amendment to Ohio's constitution -- reduces the number of people in state prison for low-level, nonviolent crimes and puts the money to better use by directing future savings to drug treatment and victim services. It does not change laws or funding for incarcerating people convicted of serious crimes such as murder, rape, and child molestation.
Specifically, the amendment:
*Changes low-level nonviolent simple drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors so people convicted of these crimes are held accountable locally instead of in state prison.
*Requires graduated responses, like community service, when people on probation violate minor probation requirements, like missing a meeting with their probation officer, instead of sending these people to prison.
*Authorizes the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections to provide earned time credit incentives to people in prison to rehabilitate themselves to reduce repeat offending.
*Directs all prison cost savings generated from this Amendment - estimated to be at least tens of millions of dollars annually - to local drug treatment programs, especially for people suffering from addiction and cycling in and out of the justice system, and trauma recovery programs for victims of crime.
