February 26, 2019, President Donald J. Trump declared a National Emergency, thus by-passing Congress.  He did this in order to build a wall on the boarder between Mexico and the United States.  Estimated cost in excess of $5bn. It is the opinion of Pax Pneuma that the system is BROKEN, and that there are greater emergencies in America that need attention, far more important than a boarder wall.  We have listed five!

Homelessness and Poverty

• 554,000 homeless people are living on the streets of America. 120,000 of that number are homeless veterans. 138,500 have a serious mental health issue.
• 50 million people live in poverty, with little hope of mobility for them or their children.
• 40 million people struggle with hunger, including more than 12 million children.
• 58% of food insecure households participate

Racism

• Racism is alive and well because Black and Latino men and women are not valued because they don’t have spendable income.
• Racial profiling and police brutality is still an issue.
• Inequality in education. Lack of funding, resources and quality teachers ensures a poor outcome.
• Inequality in housing and health care based solely on race and gender.
• Employment—Unspoken quotas, low wages, no benefits.
• King realized later that it was human rights more than civil right that was needed. Equality and equity.

Judicial System

• Forty-seven words. The entire 13th Amendment, one of the most well-known of our entire Constitution, is just 47 words long. It could literally fit on a Post-it note. Yet, about a third of those words aren’t about ending slavery, but are shockingly about how and when slavery could receive a wink and a nod to continue.
• Their free or nearly free labor represents, according to Alice Speri, “a $2 billion a year industry that employs nearly 900,000 prisoners while paying them a few cents an hour in some states, and nothing at all in others.
• The misdemeanor system is loaded against the poor. Fines, interest and sundry charges leave the people loaded with debt.

Immigration

• S. net immigration—legal and illegal, rates in the bottom third of the 50 countries with the highest per capita GDP in the world.
• Since 1990, Congress has not updated the quotas for the legal immigration system. During that time, the population of the United States has increased by 30 percent, and the economy has doubled. Quotas—to the extent that they exist at all—should be linked to economic growth (in the case of employment-based immigrants) or population growth (in the case of family-sponsored immigrants), so they don’t immediately become antiquated.
• 800,000 children and young adults are in the DACA program and living with uncertainty. If the government cancels the program they will lose everything and be deported to a country they do not know.

Global Warming

• Each day manmade greenhouse gas pollution traps the same amount of heat energy as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.
• The warming atmosphere leads to more extreme weather, severe storms, extremes of heat and cold, floods and droughts.
• Warmer water temperatures cause glaciers and polar ice caps to melt, raising sea levels and releasing more trapped methane.
• Seasonal clock disruption for crops, flowers, and wildlife.

These are not the only issues, but they are the five that we have chosen to highlight. As Christians, we have to rise up and take action.