Caring for Our Common Home

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am Sara Nelson, co-founder and Executive Director of the Romero Institute, progeny of the 20 year Washington, D.C., Christic Institute, and I welcome you to the first issue of our newsletter series! Every month, we will share insights with you on important events, on our various projects, and on deeper truths we’ve discerned in our nearly five decades of history making, faith-based justice work. I’m thrilled you’ve joined us in our endeavor to grow a community of compassion, and to spearhead effective solutions to the climate crisis and systemic injustice.

Who are we? Let me share with you a very brief introduction to our interfaith nonprofit law and policy center, the Romero Institute, and to our predecessor, the Christic Institute. The paths of our three founders converged when a nuclear union rep named Karen Silkwood was found dead in her wrecked car on the night of November 13th, 1974, with dents and paint chips from another vehicle on her rear bumper, and with her evidence of deadly plutonium contamination of the workers and the public missing from her car. After a national campaign and litigation, our legal precedents stopped all private nuclear power plants from being built since 1979. Fr. Bill Davis of Jesuit Headquarters, renowned Constitutional attorney Daniel Sheehan, myself, our allies, and a growing team of brave hearts began a sacred mission to challenge structural injustice that continues today.

We have led litigation, policy, education, and grassroots organizing to win structural solutions in, among others, the Pentagon Papers case, Watergate, Wounded Knee, the Karen Silkwood case, the prosecution of the KKK and the Nazis in Greensboro, N.C., the first Sanctuary Defense case, the historic Iran Contra case, the defense of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the spearheading of our Lakota People’s Law Project and anti-Dakota Access Pipeline defense/offense case at Standing Rock, the development of Green New Deal-style policies in California, and our current Let’s Green California campaign to pass climate legislation leading other states and nations to a carbon zero future.

_{Members of the Romero Institute and the Dolores Huerta Foundation (including Dolores herself!) celebrating a step forward for our bill, California Senate Bill 1230.}

Stopping climate change is a moral imperative. Climate change is the greatest injustice ever perpetrated on the human family, and it is already devastating the poorest people who did not cause it. You and I did not create our beautiful blue and green planet and all its burgeoning life forms, out here on an arm of the Milky Way galaxy. You and I, however, are alive today and this human caused travesty is on our watch. We have an absolute moral responsibility to seize the reins and stop climate change.

The above projects may at first seem unrelated, but they are rooted in the same simple, radical belief: each and every human being is of equal value. The highest mission of both the Romero and Christic Institutes has been to apply this maxim of justice, and advocate for the rights of all people. We are known for building broad alliances, being on the frontlines, “speaking truth to power”, and winning.

While Danny and I follow the Jesuit Catholic tradition, our organizations and campaigns have always been interfaith because we know most religions and moral philosophies share this same message; a message that Pope Francis shared with all people of Earth in his 2015 encyclical which is the inspiration for this first newsletter, Laudato Si, On Care for our Common Home.

Laudato Si, On Care of Our Common Home, is Francis’s plea to not just Catholics, but to every person on Earth to awaken to the destruction, misery, and hopelessness caused because “we continue to tolerate that some consider themselves more human than others, as if they had been born with greater rights.” (Pg. 55) He even names the global north as the culprit, unsurprising since the United States has nearly single-handedly caused the climate crisis. He also points the way forward: "We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family.” (Pg. 34) These deeper truths are the foundation for a shared dialogue on how we can create our collective future in alignment with Mother Nature and sustainability, in the spirit of both compassion and human freedom.

One of the most extraordinary things about his plea to humanity to care for our Common Home is that it includes a direct order to all Catholics, 1.4 billion people and nearly 20% of the global population, to take to the streets in the struggle for social and environmental justice. Danny and I, with the help of philanthropist Mark Sims, launched our climate justice initiative in January, 2016, and, with our top-notch teams and allies, have stopped literally tens of millions of pounds of carbon from being emitted in our region.

The challenges today are daunting, but people have risen before to defeat greed, chaos, and destruction. Institutions on Earth are created by humans, and we can make good course corrections, if we work together with communitarian consciousness. Saint Romero said,” Each of you has to be God’s microphone.” He also said, “If they kill me, I will rise again in the voice of my people.”

Let’s be a growing voice for good and build a human movement that preserves life on planet Earth for our children and grandchildren. Let’s lead from the flame in our hearts.

We’re so happy that you are joining us on this sacred mission!

Turns out, love is the answer,

Sara Nelson

Tune in to this two-part interview to hear Danny Sheehan and Sara Nelson, co-founders of the Romero Institute, share their perspectives on the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning constitutional protections on a woman's right to choose, the importance of justice, the evolution of humanity, and more!

This month's episode covers the following:

• Who We Are
• The Romero Philosophy
• Our History: Silkwood to the Statehouse
• The Societal Impacts of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Ruling
• Who is Responsible?
• What Can We Do?

Laudato si' is just one spiritual call for recognizing our common humanity. In recent years, representatives from nearly all the world's major religions have issued similar statements on the need for a global convergence of hearts. Yale has compiled these messages from our wisdom traditions on their website, which we have linked below for you to read for our first Romero Reads. Let them renew your hope and vigor in our united struggle! - S.N.

Let's Green CA!'s flagship clean car incentive equity bill, SB 1230, has been sailing through the California Legislature, and we're thrilled to share that the Assembly Natural Resources Committee voted to move it forward yesterday! If you haven't been following, SB 1230 passed out of the State Senate with seven new coauthors and the endorsement of the influential Senate Climate Working Group — both strong signs of future success!

From here, just one more committee will hold a hearing on it before a final vote. Should it pass both votes, SB 1230 will then head to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk for his signature.

Click here to support SB 1230 and learn more about this important bill.

While the country deals with the ramifications of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a new piece of proposed federal legislation could help show the scope of and start the healing process from another crime against humanity: the Indian boarding school era.

This period of active cultural genocide against the Indigenous peoples of North America resulted in the deaths of uncounted thousands of Native children and grievous generational trauma and lasting harm to Indigenous families and ways of life. The proposed the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act would be a first step toward curing the toxic belief in the supremacy of one group of people over another.

Click here to tell your elected representatives to support this important legislation!