Faith statement opposing HB 5319 camping ban

 

“The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” 1 John 4:20–21 Many followers of Christ across the state denounce HB 5319. Echoing the WV Council of Churches, we ask that legislators consider instead, “that the practice of the Christian faith calls us to minister to the homeless and others in economic distress through a variety of ministries including feeding, clothing, and housing programs.”  As followers of Christ, we believe in a God who created all beings and loves all creation. And in this nation full of plenty, Christians ask God to open our hearts so that when we see a person in need of a place to sleep, rather than wanting them to be disappeared into a jail cell, we look at them the way God would and ask, “How can I help?” Instead of legislation that offers help, the WV House of Delegates passed HB 5319 on March 3rd.  Under the bill, anyone found in violation of the “camping ban” would first be given a written warning; second violation would subject the person to a misdemeanor and fined $200; and third violation would be punishable by a fine of up to $500 and/or incarceration in jail for up to 30 days.  Believing that homeless people are to blame for their plight allows us to sleep at night, pray with others in our faith, and tell ourselves that the people experiencing homelessness aren’t the ones for whom our sacred texts call on us to care.  Churches and congregations who serve the homeless understand that criminalizing homelessness and a human being’s fundamental need to sleep will not end homelessness.  In fact we are certain that HB 5319 will create a revolving door between homelessness and jail, prevent people from getting on a path to stable housing, and make it harder for service providers and law enforcement to focus on solutions that center human dignity. We cannot disappear human beings, nor expect that people experiencing homelessness have the money to pay any fine.   The solution to people sleeping outside and living in encampments is access to housing and the services they need to get better.  We ask that WV state senators roundly reject consideration of HB 5319, a bill that is antithetical to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.  **If your judicatory, congregation, or ministry is willing to add its name in support, you can email Pastor Doug Dyson the new Executive Director of the WV Council of Churches at director@wvcc.org (quick turnaround with a March 10 deadline). Please include the name of your denomination, judicatory, congregation, or ministry organization, along with the city, as you would like it to appear. Click here to send a message to your Senator.

Stop the war in Iran

The AFSC issued this statement  Saturday when the US launched it's war against Iran. You can take action by clicking here.

 Today the U.S. and Israel launched an unprovoked war of aggression on Iran, dropping bombs on cities across the country and calling for regime change. While the death toll is not known, at least 80 children were killed after a strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran. Iran responded by firing missiles at Israel and U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. The Trump administration has said it will continue to bomb, and the death toll will surely continue to rise, with uncontrollable implications in the wider region. 

As a Quaker organization, we know that war is never the path to peace. We mourn the deaths of all the victims, and we hold their loved ones and communities in the Light. We call on the U.S. and people across the world to take immediate action to stop this from escalating into an endless and global war.

This war is immoral and illegal under both U.S. and international law. The justifications used by the Trump administration all center on blatant lies. Iran has no long-range missiles that can reach the U.S. Iran had not restarted nuclear weapons production and likely lacks the immediate capacity to do so. The Iranian government has repeatedly said that it has no interest in nuclear weapons and has been willing to negotiate despite repeated U.S. escalations. The Trump administration refused to negotiate in good faith and cannot use the inevitable “failure” of those negotiations as an excuse for war. According to U.S. law, the president must seek congressional approval before engaging in hostilities against another country. Congress is set to vote on a War Powers resolution in a matter of days. 

For years, the U.S. has been taking steps to increase the likelihood of nuclear war. The U.S. has let major nonproliferation treaties expire and is investing over $1 trillion in nuclear weapons over the next decade. The U.S. government is itself the greatest impediment to nuclear nonproliferation. 

President Trump says he wants regime change in Iran. History shows us that regime changes imposed by imperialist violence are devastating failures even on their own terms. Attempting this in Iran would almost certainly require a protracted war with U.S. troops on the ground and significant casualties.

The U.S. is also pointing to Iran’s human rights record as justification for these attacks. The killing of thousands of protesters by the Iranian government is horrific, but waging war against Iran will not bring peace or human rights. The U.S. government cannot claim the moral high ground while it disappears people at home, restricts political rights, and pursues a policy of murder and assassination in Latin America. The U.S. has no credibility to talk about human rights after more than two years of supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and unilateral attacks on neighboring countries. Last year alone, Israel bombed Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Qatar, and the occupied Palestinian territory. 

Congress must act immediately to assert its authority and stop further killing. Congress must also act to reverse the Trump administration’s imperialist “might makes right” foreign policy. Since December 2025, the U.S. has attacked Nigeria, Venezuela, and Iran while also murdering alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific. All of these actions make the world less safe while undermining international law and key multilateral peacebuilding systems. The U.S.—not Iran—is currently the most significant threat to international peace and security. 

But we cannot leave this to Congress alone. People should make their voices heard. Call Congress, take to the streets, protest, and engage in acts of nonviolent resistance to make it clear that the U.S. public does not stand behind this war. This moment demands all of us.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) promotes a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression. Guided by the Quaker belief in the divine Light within each person, we nurture the seeds of change and the respect for human life to fundamentally transform our societies and institutions. We work with people and partners worldwide, of all faiths and backgrounds, to meet urgent community needs, challenge injustice, and build peace.

A little good news...really

 

(This exploited dog has had enough.)

If, like me, you're looking for good news anywhere you can find it, here's a bit: for the first time in many years, union membership grew in 2025. And yes, this happened in spite of the Trump administration's war on federal workers. Numbers were up by almost half a million (463,000 to be exact). The number of workers covered by a union contract grew from around 16 million to 16.5. Much of that gain is in the public sector, but there were gains in the private one as well.

That's still not enough. We desperately need changes in federal labor laws to make organizing easier and make it harder for employers to retaliate. And we need to roll back state anti-labor legislation, restoring prevailing wages for state and local projects, sending "right-to-work-for-less' laws back to their rightful place in hell, and rolling back legislation that defunds public education.  Such policies are deliberately designed to reduce the bargaining power of workers and prevent organizing.

Still, it's a start. In the meantime, audacity and creativity by worker-organizers can prepare the way.

Two reasons to be in the reptile room tomorrow...

Since 2018 AFSC has been a part of the West Virginia Council of Church’s Compassion Calls Us Day at the legislature.   This year the call will be compassion for immigrants; people incarcerated; families without clean drinking water; and communities that would be impacted by proposed dirty, water guzzling data centers.  We'll add our voices to the din in the upper rotunda. Come on down, you'll be in good company with Reverend Ron English, Bev Sharp, Reverend Cindy Briggs Biondi, Ryan Kirkpatrick and Reverend Caitlin Ware. 

Also tomorrow at noon there will be a rally in the Attorney General's little rotunda when community members from Mingo, Logan, Mason, and Tucker counties will share their stories about how they stand to be impacted by proposed data centers, and why West Virginia cannot make the mistakes of the past.

Eduardo Galleano in Open Veins of Latin America wrote what is a pretty haunting mirror of our own history in Appalachia:  "Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others."   And so as the Zapatistas say: "¡Ya basta!" 

No rollbacks on child labor

  

(This column by Lida Shepherd was published today in the Charleston Gazette-Mail)

Welch, WV, September 1908 

A quick peak into the National Archives you can find photographs by Lewis Hine when he was hired by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in the early 1900s to take photos of children working.  Hine’s photos were a part of a national campaign at the time to advance laws regulating child labor, which eventually paved the way for labor laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act.  

Prior to FLSA, injuries and deaths of children were common.  Many of the children photographed by Hine were working to help support their families living in extreme poverty.  Some of these young kids in the photos worked in places like coal mines in Welch and the glass factory in Grafton.

A 1920 NCLC poster features Hine’s photos and reads: “Work that Deadens: These Children Are Working so that Their Employer May Make Money.” 

The famed labor rights attorney Clarence Darrow said, “History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.”  To his point, the West Virginia legislature has been advancing House Bill 4005 which would weaken child labor laws that many fought so hard over a century ago to enact.   

HB 4005 would eliminate state rules that enumerate which jobs are too dangerous for minors.  Under current state law industries cannot employ children under 18 in jobs like ore reduction works, logging and saw milling occupations, occupations involving exposure to radioactive substances, power-driven hoisting apparatus occupations, and mining, to name a few.   The bill would also remove requirements for direct supervision when children work with hazardous machinery.

Proponents for legislation to roll back longstanding state-level child labor protections say that this is to better align with federal standards.   As the word “standards” implies, federal law under the Fair Labor Standards Act is the floor not the ceiling.  For example, federal child labor standards do not include time and hour restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds, establish rest or meal break requirements, or require work permits for youth to be employed.

Proponents also try to paint this bill as expanding apprenticeship programs, however our state’s Youth Apprenticeship Programs already allow 16 and 17-year-olds to safely obtain on-the-job experience.  And while we are on the subject of apprenticeship programs, I have to say that using the apprenticeship program argument for HB 4005 is pretty rich.  

Many of those supporting this bill also pushed to repeal our state’s prevailing wage law in 2016.  Since then, according to a report by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute, the number of active registered apprentices has fallen by 28 percent in West Virginia, relative to neighboring states with prevailing wage laws. 

So who are the proponents of HB 4005?  I’m really glad you asked.  HB 4005 and other bills like it are a part of a coordinated national effort led by billionaire-backed groups like the Foundation for Government Accountability, to undermine worker rights and weaken government's role of protecting public safety and the most vulnerable. 

Bills like HB 4005 are straight from the authoritarian playbook of Project 2025 where one of their policy objectives is to “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.”  In simple terms, changing “hazard-order regulations” means letting kids as young as 16 to work in hazardous jobs.  

Project 2025 cynically suggests, “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.”

The narrative suggesting that young people everywhere will now have the “opportunity” to gain important job experience could not be farther from the truth when you consider who is impacted by the deregulation of child labor.   Since rollbacks around the country, more and more kids are being mangled or killed.  A 16-year-old boy in Wisconsin died working in a sawmill after he became entangled in a machine, a teenage boy in Pennsylvania died after getting pulled into a woodchipper, and another teenage boy was maimed at a Perdue slaughterhouse in rural Virginia.   

These are a few tragic examples among many, and each one of them underscores the fact that the children most subject to dangerous conditions are not looking for “opportunity” but they are looking to merely survive.  Deregulating child labor laws allows industries unfettered access to a more exploitable workforce. 

According to the Economic Policy Institute, at least sixteen states have now introduced cookie cutter legislation nearly identical to HB 4005.  But take heart.  West Virginia lawmakers have the power to stand up to these efforts to allow corporations to profit on the backs of our kids, even in the most dangerous jobs.   They don’t have to put West Virginia on the race to the bottom where the laws privilege profit over protections for our kids and their families.   

They can be clear-eyed enough to see that HB 4005 is as the Economic Policy Institute says is part of “a massive and generational project to remake the economy into one that gives corporations license to extract exorbitant profits from increasingly unregulated and dangerous child labor.”

Lewis Hine wrote in 1908 about his experience taking photos of children working, "There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers.”

If our legislators truly prioritize the safety and well-being of our kids, they’ll find the political will to leave our child labor laws alone, and prevent history from repeating itself.

In loving memory of Jane

Rick and I were really sad and stunned earlier this week when we heard the news that a long time friend Jane Hearne died unexpectedly.  Over the years we got to enjoy time with Jane and her husband Gene at WV Friends gatherings.  Jane had a quiet strength I always admired.  She reminds me of the sun in Aesops fable, when the sun and the wind compete to see who is stronger, and the sun with its steady warmth wins.  Jane made you want to hear what she had to say, but it was always an invitation. She delighted in sharing about her prolific garden, and time around the dining table with her grandkids. She struck a graceful balance between delighting in the joys of life and a strong stance against what keeps so many from doing so too.   I will miss Jane a lot.  I love imagining her spirit eternally around her garden, and shining through the lives of her kids and grandkids.  You can read her obituary here.

Jane’s daughter Carrie Ella reached out to Rick and me and said she was a long-time reader of the Goat Rope.  So with that I’ll be writing the next installment soon, and inspired by Jane, I’ll try to find that balance between joy and outrage.  The legislature is in town so it might tip the scale a wee bit towards outrage, but I think Jane would understand.

Looking for light

 This piece was written by AFSC colleagues Lewis Webb, Amy Gottlieb, and myself about looking for light in dark times on the occasion of the observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In 1968, during his “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared: 

 “The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around. ...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.’” 

Today, it is dark enough to see the stars. The Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants, working people, and democracy itself have brought us to this dark moment. But in that darkness, there are stars that shine with love, flicker with hope, and guide us toward freedom. 

In communities standing up for immigrants nationwide, that light is unmistakable. Thousands of people are on the front lines every day—documenting ICE abuses and violence; accompanying immigrants to school, medical appointments, court hearings, and immigration check-ins, and speaking up to demand humane immigration policies. Even in cities that have been directly targeted by militarized government forces, people have shown that they are willing to confront armed, masked officers to protect their neighbors and communities. They are proving what we know to be sure: our communities are stronger with immigrants.  

As Dr. King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”  

In the struggle for economic justice, communities are building power through both advocacy and direct action. Trump’s budget bill made drastic cuts to health care and food assistance while giving more tax breaks to the wealthy. But a majority of people in the U.S. support a different path that ensures all people can thrive. According to recent polls, most people support labor unions and increasing the minimum wage. There’s also strong support for  affordable child care and housing, debt-free education, and Medicare for All. But people aren’t just advocating for change—they’re creating it. They’re forming mutual aid networks to share resources and meet each other’s immediate needs when the government won’t.   

As Dr. King demanded in 1967:  

“Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.”  

In working for peace and justice, communities are resisting authoritarianism and violence in all its forms.  

People of faith are holding vigils to bear witness to oppression and affirm the power of love when put into action. Young people are protesting attacks on their rights and civil liberties on campuses and in the streets across the country. With our voices and votes, we are demanding our elected officials defend the rule of law and democratic principles. Together, we are building nonviolent movements that prove real security comes from caring for one another, not through violence or force.   

This is the “garment of destiny” Dr. King described. We are all tied together, and what affects one affects us all. The way forward requires us to keep building these connections, to understand our struggles are shared, and to protect and care for each other in all we do. 

In 1965, Dr. King said: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”   

We are building that society now—through every act of accompaniment, every demand for justice, every refusal to give in to authoritarianism. The stars are visible. Our path is clear.  

Hope in dark times?

by Lida Shepherd, director AFSC WV Economic Justice Project

I was listening recently to an interview with Rebecca Solnit, purveyor of “Hope in the Darkness” and she was talking about how hope doesn’t come from ignoring reality, it comes from honesty.  With that in mind I will refrain from any “happy new year” greetings, because it has been a gut-punching and despair-inducing new year thus far.   

ICE agents killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, our country dropped bombs on Venezuela, ICE agents are disappearing people from our communities in West Virginia and around the country --- meanwhile billionaires are looking to rake in more even more profit as stocks are up for weapons manufacturers and oil companies like Chevron.   

Feeling like we are in the inescapable grip of the merchants of misery is enough to make you weep.  While there is a lot about which to feel really really uncertain, here is Solnit again: “Uncertainty leads to possibility: Despair often assumes the future is fixed. But history is full of surprises and turning points.”  

I’ve been re-reading these days about nonviolence resistance and strategy in the face of authoritarianism (for obvious reasons), how the overreach of tyrannical regimes can actually provide those turning points, and how people always have more power than we might feel.  

Solnit has instructive advice for tamping down the anguish that we might feel right now: “Connect with others: Hope grows when it’s shared. Joining movements, communities, or simply leaning on friends creates a sense of belonging and power.” 

To that end here are ways to connect with others around West Virginia who care as much as you do: 

Follow ICE watch activity in WV here.  

Tonight (1/9) in Charleston

Tonight in Keyser

Sunday (1/11) in Clarksburg

Monday (1/12) at the WV Capitol

Wednesday (1/14) in Charleston

If all that weren’t enough, the WV State Legislature kicks off next Wednesday, January 14th.  Here are some Advocacy Days to note (full list here): 

1/19: Fairness WV Day 

2/17: Local Food and Farm Day 

2/23: WV Environmental Day 

2/24: Black Policy Day 

3/2: Leading for Justice Day 

3/4: WV Library Day 

3/6: Reproductive Rights Day 

Kenny and I hope to see some of you around “the well” at the Capitol, where commiseration is had and gossip is shared.  In the meantime, I’ll try to remember what Solnit says about practicing hope daily: “Some days hope comes easily; other days it doesn’t. That’s normal. Journaling, noticing progress, limiting bad news, and showing up in community are all ways to keep practicing.”