Undocumented woman marks a year inside Maryland church


Next to Rock Creek in Bethesda, Maryland, sits a six-acre church campus shrouded by old cedar trees. For a year and two weeks, this has been Rosa Gutierrez Lopez's home, sanctuary and site of confinement. This year, for the second time, it is where she will spend Christmas.

Gutierrez Lopez, 41, was the first undocumented immigrant in the Washington area to seek protection from deportation at a house of worship - one of the "sensitive location" categories where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are discouraged from conducting enforcement activities.
And the 'Pastor' there hangs out with scum like Van Jones.

Meanwhile, the church's 1,000 or so members have learned to practice what the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, the senior minister, calls "the fragile art of hospitality." More than 200 volunteers, from Cedar Lane and 26 other D.C.-area congregations, help facilitate the day-to-day lives and logistics of Gutierrez Lopez and her family.

"It has been an adjustment - both for Rosa and for the community," Janamanchi said. "We can talk about these issues, intellectualize, but to see, actually see . . ."
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/...d-14930567.php

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi
Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, I joined UUA President Susan Frederick-Gray and other interfaith leaders at a press conference in Washington DC for the launch of the new Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Led by the Rev. Dr. William Barber, former president of the North Carolina NAACP and leader of the Moral Mondays Movement, the campaign seeks to unite tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and the nation’s distorted morality.

At the press conference, Rev. Barber was joined by the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis from the Kairos Center and religious leaders from many different faith traditions including, the United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian Church (USA), Union for Reform Judaism, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Fifty years ago, in December 1967, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held a similar press conference in Atlanta to launch the Poor People’s Campaign to amplify the urgent needs and oppressive conditions that weighed on black and white people living in poverty, particularly in the Deep South.
https://www.cedarlane.org/blog/rev-a...-moral-revival