June 20 Luncheon Speaker
PROPHETIC WHIRLWIND: Uncovering the Black Biblical Denstiny

PictureOnleilove Chika Alston

​​Author and Faith Leader, Onleilove Chika examines the Black foundations of the Biblical text, who is a Hebrew, the Torah’s call to justice and the connection between idolatry and injustice. This book reveals where many of The Lost Tribes of Israel went to escape oppression and what this means for the Black Freedom Movement of today. By profiling the Hebraic foundations of the African-American Church and over 15 African Hebrew tribes Prophetic Whirlwind reveals what the author calls The Black Biblical Destiny.

See also: www.propheticwhirlwind.com 
to see what Onleilove's work with a Torah-based understanding, and to see about her workshops, lectures, Bible Study curriculum creation, Articles, Bologs, devotionals, and Faith-Based organizing consulting

What does it mean
for Micah to say it's an
Interfaith Organization?

The Micah Institute and its Faith Leaders Luncheon proudly proclaims to be and interfaith organization and gathering.  Since our earliest beginnings Micah has been comprised of faith leaders that represent a number of the various faith communities of New York City.  While our name emanates from the prophet Micah of the Abrahamic traditions, our mission is one that is rooted in the primal values found in most tenets of faith; that is to work for justice, promote merciful practices and be a Godly witness to love and truth in the face of any power.
 
But to truly be an interfaith organization requires more than simply proclaiming oneself thus.  It takes a true commitment to being one in principle and practice as well.  The values of any organization that holds itself out to be interfaith and how it enacts those values are the true indicators of its real identity.  I acknowledge that to the casual observer or new arrival the Micah Institute can seem like a Christian organization.  The sheer number of Christian participants, compared to those of other faith traditions, could easily give this impression.  I suspect the same could be said for any number of organizations that seek to be interfaith.  What I want you to know is that the leadership of Micah is committed to the hard work of truly being interfaith.  Together we are examining what values we hold, how we put those values into practice and the effects of those practices on each member as we work together for a more just society.  Together we renewing our commitment to a set of principles that I believe are necessary if any organization truly wishes to consider itself interfaith.  I would like to share those with you here.    
 
Principles of a Vibrant and
Effective Interfaith Organization
  • Committing publicly and regularly to being a safe, open and welcoming space where people can speak freely based on a commitment to mutual respect;
  • Enabling diverse faith communities to reach out to learn more about each other, to get to know one another, and to respect each other;
  • Celebrating differences and diversity of faiths—within our communities;
  • Creating spaces for faith groups in our community to have positive interactions with each other;
  • Promoting the involvement of faith and spiritual groups within our communities in guiding, nourishing, and providing compassionate support to relieve pain and suffering; 
  • Seeking to listen to those who don’t naturally speak out, and encourage the willingness to be open to the “other”;
  • Lifting up and supporting programs and activities that the group might build on;
  • Encouraging the formation of other faith coalitions;
  • Inviting groups that don’t identify as faith groups to connect with us and join us in our commitment to compassionate action; and
  • Being willing to evolve in response to feedback from participants.
 
I know that there are other principles that could be added or offered up in other words.  But I would hold that if Micah or any other organization were to take these on they would be well on their way to faithfully doing God’s work together.  I pledged to make it my work while I am with you.
 
Grace and Peace,
 
Joel 
IT'S MAY

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Interfaith Iftar for Refugees
Iftar is the evening meal that Muslims eat after a day of fasting, from sunrise to sunset, during the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan is a month-long spiritual journey of spiritual growth and community building. The iftar may be with one’s family, but often the meal is prepared and consumed in a group. Also in New York, there are many larger Iftars celebrated in multi-faith community.
 
Thursday evening (May 9) an interfaith Iftar was held at Union Theological Seminary, sponsored by Union, Justice for All/Burma Task Force, Muslim Community Network, Muslims for Progressive Values and Peace Island Institute. The title of the evening was “Interfaith Iftar for Refugees.”
 
The hour from the beginning of the event to sundown, when the Muslims are free to eat, was filled with a panel discussion on The Spiritual Journey of Refugees. Representatives of the three Abrahamic faiths each explained how their communities value and support refugees. Hakan Yesilova, editor of Fountain Magazine and a Muslim, pointed the Prophet Muhammad was himself a refugee when he was forced by the religious elder to leave Mecca. Matthew Dalamore, Assistant Director for Integration at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, explained how Jesus was always calling on his followers to “invite the stranger in,” or “love your neighbor.” And Micah’s own Rabbi Michael Feinberg raised the Jewish exodus from Egyptian slavery, making all Jews at that time refugees, and closing with a powerful prayer from the Passover Haggadah (the prayer book used for Passover).
 
As sundown arrived, final prayers were said by the Muslims and a multi-faith feast was enjoyed by all. Lots to talk about!

MICAH LOOKS AT REPARATIONS:
IS IT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO WORK FOR THIS JUSTICE?

PictureThe Rev. Dr. Mary Foulke
​Reparations is the process to remember, repair, restore, reconcile and make amends for wrongs that can never be singularly reducible to monetary terms. The process of reparations is “an historical reckoning involving acknowledgment that an offense against humanity was committed and that the victims have not received justice.
  • Quoted from Bernice Powell Jackson, former Executive Minister for Justice Ministry of the United Church of Christ.
​
It was exactly 400 years ago when the first captured Africans were sold in an auction, by Dutch traders, who brought their human cargo to North America in a Spanish ship. This was, at least in the land that would become the United States, the start of one of the cruelest and most shameful parts of our history.
 
In the four centuries since that auction, an immense debt has accrued to the victims of the brutal economy of slavery.
 
A lively discussion of Reparations, to the African American community was brought to the April Micah Faith Table luncheon, by our featured guest speaker, The Rev. Dr. Mary Foulke, rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Harlem. She laid out the history of reparations from “Forty Acres and a Mule,” discussed during Reconstruction, to the three-year journey of “Lamentation (2018), Apology (2019) and Reparations (2020)” that is being conducted by the Episcopal Church in New York.
 
At the May Micah Table, we will discuss how Micah can get involved in working for reparations. Reparations requires that we all look at how we and our institutions contributed to and possibly benefitted from slavery and what we can do to “repair” the damage done. Please take some time before the luncheon to familiarize yourself with the issues around reparations. Here are several useful sources of information:

  • Ta-Nehisi Coats, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic Magazine, 2014. References Deuteronomy 15:12-15.  (click here) 
  • Ta-Nehisi Coats, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (One World), available on Amazon (click here).
  • Reparations… The Time is Now, from Coming to the Table (for free downloadable .pdf, click here). comingtothetable.org 
PictureHousing activists and tenants rally at Abyssina Baptist Church for Housing for All (photo: Joan Roth)
If you know one thing about New York,
you know that the
​
RENT IS
​TOO DAMN HIGH!
 
By Rev. Clyde Kuemmerle
 
As discussed at our last two Micah Table meetings the big HOUSING FOR ALL event happened at Abyssinia Baptist Church on April 11th and it was jammed with residents determined to enact affordable housing laws. The enthusiastic crowd secured testimony and commitment from their state elected officials to support the nine Universal Rent Control Laws.  Many City officials spoke as well including: Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and Comptroller Scott Stringer. They were strong and aggressive in their condemnation of what housing looks like in New York City in 2019. Rent payers gave testimony of their personal experiences of bad actors in three languages. And we prayed. Then everyone marched down Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to the State Office Building at 125th Street singing and chanting with a band. The rally continued there.
 
Sadly though, only a dozen of our number were there and had come alone for the most part. We, the Micah Community that collectively committed to this effort, need to step up on this important issue. If we are not capable of meeting our obligations, I suggest we reconsider our method of operation, if not the very purposes we espouse.
 
Laws proposed to lower rents
 
Last year in the statewide election, the city electorate expressed their support for Universal Rent Control Laws by defeating six of the eight democrats who voted with Senate Republicans in support of housing laws supported by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). REBNY controls housing policies at both the state and city level. Now there is the very real possibility of changing the State-controlled rent laws in New York City and for other endangered municipalities across the State. Both the Assembly and the Senate have a Democratic majority and it appears we have sufficient support to pass all nine changes to rent laws in New York.
 
Phase One of HOUSING FOR ALL is enactment of the Universal Rent Control Laws. To ensure support by our own state elected officials charted buses will to leave for Albany on Tuesday May 14, 2019 – details of time and location will be widely circulated.
 
Phase Two is enactment by NY City Council of anti-displacement legislation covering residents and businesses when sites and neighborhoods are rezoned. Based on empirical data, when neighborhoods are rezoned with 70% market-rate housing, rents within the community will soar.
 
Enactment of Phase One and Two are linked. Our members are doubling up and/or paying over 50% of income for rent. Exorbitant rents are causing increasing homelessness, destabilizing neighborhoods and displacing the workforce who are members of faith communities and unions.
This must cease. It starts with our members of faith communities and unions raising their voices in city council and the state legislature for enactment of affordable housing legislation. Please encourage your members to take the ride to Albany in support of Universal Rent Control Laws.   
 
Urgent Message: Micah, please encourage members of your faith communities to join us on the chartered bus to Albany on May 14, 2019 to support enactment of Universal Rent Control Laws. 
 
                       GET ON THE BUS
                THIS IS THE TIME TO ACT

​Yemeni Bodega Owners Boycott the New York Post

PictureMicah member Dr. Debbie Almontaser (center) joined members of the Yemeni American Merchants Association and others outside the News Corp offices in New York. They are calling for a boycott of the New York Post. (Photo by Alice Chambers via NY City Lens)
FROM VOICES OF NY
SOURCE: NY CITY LENS
APRIL 15, 2019
​
​On April 13, some bodega owners in the Yemeni American Merchants Association in NYC started a boycott of the New York Post by not selling the newspaper in their stores. The paper’s April 11 front page had an image of the World Trade Center attacks with a quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar saying that 9/11 was “some people did something.” Its
headline read: “Here’s your something – 2,977 people dead by terrorism.” In a media advisory, YAMA wrote that it strongly condemns the “editorial decision to weaponize images of 9/11 to provoke hatred and fear.” On March 23, the Minnesota representative said at a Council on American-Islamic Relations event, in relation to Muslims being treated as second-class citizens, that CAIR was founded after 9/11 “because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

On Sunday, YAMA board secretary Dr. Debbie Almontaser joined members of the organization at a press conference in front of the News Corp building in midtown Manhattan, the parent company of the New York Post. Alice Chambers covered the event for NY City Lens.

Yemeni bodega owners are among the best organized Muslim groups in New York. The Merchants Association represents about 5,000 bodega owners in the city and sprung out of a mass protest against President Trump’s travel ban in 2017.
“This was the first time for our community to rise, to exist,” says Ayyad Algabyali, advocacy director at the merchants’ association. “Grass roots are powerful,” he added.

As of Sunday, the group estimates that several hundred Yemeni bodega owners have decided to boycott the New York Post by refusing to sell it in their stores. It may take some time for them to sever distribution contracts with the Post, but in the meantime, they are simply not putting the papers on their newsstands. A bodega in Manhattan might be expected to sell 80-90 newspapers a day, according to Algabyali. Multiply this across the city and the Yemeni merchants’ association might wield enough economic power to get the Post to give into their demands.

Go to NY City Lens to see how the YAMA campaign emerged in under a day and read more from the press conference.
​
Tags: New York Post, Yemeni American Merchants Association
MICAH
FAITH
TABLE

MONTHLY LUNCHEONS


​Third Thursday
of most months
The Riverside Church
120th & Riverside Dr.
Manhattan
Room 10T

2019
(first half)
​
​June​ 20
NEW MICAH COMMITTEE
TO WORK ON HEALTH JUSTICE

​​The new Health Committee of the Micah Institute aims to provide information on health services available to diverse neighborhoods in all boroughs as well as strive to bring equity and justice to health systems that are part of the lives of all New Yorkers, including immigrant communities.  We see health as a whole-person issue affected by lifestyle, nutrition, exercise and mental state.  Our definition of Health Services is expansive, including allopathic medical services, allied medical services, alternative and complementary health services (including respect for traditional and indigenous methods), mental health services, lifestyle information, and the use of arts in physical and mental health.  Furthermore we recognize that environmental factors, from poverty to rigid mind-states to pollution and racial/cultural environmental injustices, are key systemic factors in health that must be remedied. This new committee will be co-chaired by Dr. Martha Eddy and Eugenia Espinosa.


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