Sandy Sorensen reports from Trump’s Washington

The year 2017 was a particularly challenging one for faith-based policy advocates working for justice in Washington DC. It seemed that a new crisis emerged every week. Around every corner was yet another attack on the most vulnerable among us, another threat to justice and equality. Our national leaders cut us adrift from the world of meaningful global engagement and partnership. The effort to resist the alarming re-emergence of racism and xenophobia, to resist threats to a free press, to resist attacks on the poor, women, the LGBT community, people living with disabilities – our neighbours – left many of us worn and weary. The work has taken its toll, in body, mind and spirit.

The New Year has proven to be every bit as challenging. Here in Washington, we see our leaders lurching from deadline to deadline to fund the government, continuing rollbacks to the principle of healthcare access for all, closing the borders to asylum seekers and deporting children from the only home they have every known. Good governance and the common good have been abandoned for partisan gain and political posturing. And we, the people, count the cost.

This week, we were met with the chilling spectre of a military parade down the streets of Washington. In the United States of America. Who are we? We are a nation spinning without a moral compass. Our national leaders seem to have cast aside the constitution and the core values that knit us together…

Sandy Sorensen is Director of the Washington Office of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries

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This is an extract from an article that was published in the March 2018 edition of  Reform

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