Center for Law and Justice – The Daniel Society

The Daniel Society Statement on President Trump’s Ban on Refugees

Our country is facing a national identity crisis. In only one week, we have seen our country divided in ways that many of us have never seen. At this historical crossroad, we are questioning who we are as a country and the values that make our country exceptional. One of those values is our belief that all men are created equal, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.

Executive orders signed by President Donald Trump during his first week in the White House call into question our value of equality. These orders severely target immigrants living and working in our neighborhoods and refugees fleeing persecution and war.

The Daniel Society stands with immigrants and refugees. We welcome immigrants and choose to love our neighbors. Our neighbors are immigrants and we are immigrants.

(Photo credit: Genna Martin / seattlepi.com/AP)

Over the coming months, The Daniel Society’s Center for Law and Justice will take steps to support immigrants and refugees, including:

Providing free neighborhood-based immigration legal services to low-income immigrants
Expanding our Central America Asylum Project to represent more children who fled persecution in Central America
Hosting community workshops that educate immigrants about their Constitutional rights
Facilitating roundtable “talks” with immigrants to create action plans for policymakers

However, we cannot do this work alone. We urge you to get involved with us or other organizations that are working to strengthen immigrant communities. Let’s send a message that America still is, and always will be, a welcoming country.

Download our statement here. To learn more about our work and progress, visit us at http://www.danielsociety.org/law-justice-initiatives.

Giving Voice and Power to Minority and Immigrant Communities

People are angry, and understandably so. They are concerned about stop-and-frisk

tactics, attempts to dismantle sanctuary cities, and threats to deport two million undocumented immigrants. The impact of these tactics is felt primarily in low-income, minority and immigrant communities. In New York City, for example, African Americans are disproportionately stopped and frisked. In fact, 54% of the population who were stopped and frisked in 2015 were African Americans. Expanding stop-and-frisk tactics on a larger scale could unjustly target blacks and Hispanics, and further strain the relationship between the police and the communities they are obligated to protect.

Furthermore, cutting federal funding to sanctuary cities and deporting two million people are real threats to immigrants. They are causing tremendous fear and uncertainty among the immigrant community. They also raise the question of how to ensure that the voices from these communities are included in the policymaking process. Now, more than ever, residents of these communities need to mobilize, express their shared concerns, and offer policymakers ideas for ensuring fair and compassionate outcomes.

Mobilizing communities, however, is not an easy task. According to The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, there is a gap in civic engagement among low-income communities. Individuals with higher income and higher educational attainment are more likely to be politically engaged. Furthermore, Hispanics and Asians are less likely to be civically engaged, even when controlling for family income and educational attainment. The civic engagement gap perpetuates the unequal distribution of political power, where political influence is often concentrated within the upper and middle class. Consequentially, the interests of low-income and immigrant communities may not be fully represented when policies that affect them are created.

To address this problem, The Daniel Society’s Center for Law and Justice (CLJ) will launch its civic engagement initiative to include more people from immigrant communities in the policymaking process.

“I recognized how often critical policy decisions are made that directly impact low-income and immigrant communities,” said La Toya McBean, president and founder of The Daniel Society. “Yet, sadly, those communities and their viewpoints were often not represented when such decisions are being made.”

To ensure that the perspectives of low-income and immigrant communities are included in the policy-making process, CLJ established its 4-step approach to civic engagement:

Over the next several months, the Center will facilitate several neighborhood round-tables in the Brooklyn East New York community. Each round-table will bring together 12 community residents to discuss their concerns and ideas to address racial inequality, upcoming changes to immigration laws and policies, and how their communities may better work with local law enforcement to keep communities safe.
From these discussions, CLJ will develop action steps for change.
CLJ will then advocate for these ideas on the local, state and federal level, and collaborate with advocacy organizations with a similar mission to fight injustice.
Finally, CLJ will stay closely connected with the communities by reporting its progress to the community to ensure that residents are kept engaged in the process.

This civic engagement initiative will empower community members with the tools and strategies to continue the civic dialogue and engage others in their neighborhood to join their call of action.

Together, We Can Do Great Things For Others in 2017!

15 years ago when I had an idea to start an organization to help the poor, I never imagined that it would become “The Daniel Society,” a 501(c)(3) organization that brings hope, healing and purpose to people living in extreme poverty. We have made tremendous progress over the past several months to advance our mission. Looking ahead, 2017 promises to be an even more important and exciting year for us because our work will launch in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and low-income communities in the U.S. that are grappling with injustice.

At the heart of our mission is “hope.” Hope means believing in a better tomorrow by envisioning a different outcome for ourselves, family and community. We teach people the practical steps of developing hope because our work will not succeed unless they also decide to believe in a better tomorrow. This is why our Collaborative Hope Building model is so important.

“Healing” is our second mandate. Our Center for Global Initiatives (CGI) is designing a Rural HIV/AIDS Children’s Initiative to provide lifesaving treatment and ongoing medical monitoring to vulnerable children living in the impoverished Western Province of Zambia. We are also establishing The Daniel Society Global Health Fund to raise funds and awareness for this initiative.

Helping people understand a greater “purpose” for their life is our third mandate. CGI will launch The Daniel Society Women’s Economic Development Club of Lusoke Village in 2017. This project will promote the economic well-being of women and families living in extreme poverty in Zambia. We are also developing a rural poverty initiative for implementation in other regions like China.

In the U.S., our Center for Law and Justice (CLJ) is working on exciting neighborhood-based initiatives to confront injustice in New York. In 2017, our Central American Asylum Project will help more children fleeing gang violence by providing pro bono legal representation. We will launch our Advocacy and Civic Engagement work to address justice and immigration concerns facing our country. This work will advocate for fair and compassionate policies impacting low-income communities. To be most effective, we will collaborate with people, organizations and governments.

In 2017, we plan to grow our operations by hiring staff, expanding our donor base and diversifying our resources. My team and I are excited about using our passion to fuel our work, end global poverty and restore justice in communities facing inequalities. I invite you to join our Society today by giving a tax deductive gift in any amount or give $20.00 each month.

Together, we can do great things for others in 2017!

News The Daniel Society Statement About the U.S. Election 2016

On Tuesday, November 8, 2016, our country elected Donald J. Trump as our 45th President. The election outcome has led to various protests across the country and has raised concerns about the rights and future of poor and immigrant communities. On the campaign trail and in recent media interviews, President-elect Trump has promised to take aggressive actions to deport 2-3 million undocumented people. Although the target of this deportation plan is what the new administration calls “criminal arrestees,” it is unclear whether this plan will negatively impact other immigrant families.

Regardless of who is in the White House, The Daniel Society Center for Law and Justice will continue to vigorously fight for fair and just policies impacting people living in low-income and immigrant communities. We are developing a Civic Engagement Initiative that will give people a voice in public policies that will undoubtedly impact them. Furthermore, our Welcome Home Legal Aid Initiative will help immigrants understand their rights and achieve a status of freedom.

Read our full statement here. To learn more about our work and to support our efforts, visit us at www.danielsociety.org.

Why Not End Extreme Poverty?

“The end of extreme poverty is at hand—within our generation—but only if we grasp the historic opportunity in front of us,” argues internationally renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs in his seminal work The End of Poverty. I join the optimism and idealism of Mr. Sachs to believe that people can—and should—be lifted out of extreme poverty. Unlike other causes that were born out of anger or fear, the fight against poverty is motivated by a different force: compassion. However, compassion that leads one to actively fight to end extreme poverty cannot be attained from a distance. For me, this type of compassion was born out of my proximate experiences with people living in extreme poverty and my faith.

In 2005, I was invited to join several other 20-something year olds on a missions trip to Beius, Romania. We all worked on Capitol Hill at the time, but this wasn’t my first time abroad. After college, I had spent a year in China teaching English to Muslim college students. I had also visited other countries like Myanmar, Thailand and South Korea. Unlike any other place I had visited, Romania had the most profound impact on my journey to compassion for people living in extreme poverty. Remarkably, it was a premature baby that communicated this powerful message of compassion to me.

Under Romania’s former communist dictator, Ceausescu, many abandoned children lived in state-run hospitals. Although the country has implemented new policies and practices to tackle this crisis since Ceausescu’s fall in 1989, it was still very much a problem in 2005 when I visited one of their hospitals. Our team was on a carefully guided tour that day, which meant that we could only use a particular elevator to visit the floor where the children were housed (although, sadly, we knew that what we saw that day weren’t a reflection of the true conditions faced by the children who were housed on other floors).

I didn’t expect compassion to possess me that day, but it did, and it happened as I held a premature baby, whose twin sibling was asleep in another bassinet. The babies were abandoned by their mother shortly after delivering them in that hospital. As a young, idealistic woman, I could not understand how a mother could possibly abandon her two babies in a state-run institution. What I learned that day is that it wasn’t uncommon for a poor woman to check herself out of the hospital and leave her newborn behind.

And in an instant, without a murmur or cry from this baby, the power of compassion possessed me as I held that baby and became proximate to the consequences of extreme poverty. I returned the U.S. and immediately began plans to start a nonprofit organization called The Daniel Society to help poor families live a better life. It would take 10 more years to develop the scope and mission of The Daniel Society, and this is where my faith comes in.

My Judeo-Christian faith has taught me that we are to be kind to the poor. But what does it mean to be kind to “the poor?” For me, it simply means that we have a responsibility to extend this awesome power of compassion to them in practical ways such as providing clothes, food and clean water to them. The Daniel Society will do this through our Refugee Basic Needs Initiative.

Next, we want to welcome the immigrant and make them feel at home in our country. The Daniel Society is designing a Central American Asylum Project to provide pro bono legal services to children fleeing gang violence in their home countries, and a Welcome Home Legal Aid Initiative to assist low-income, immigrant communities in New York City.

My faith has also taught me to take care of the sick. Through our Compassion-In-Action Initiative, The Daniel Society is developing an HIV/AIDS public health initiative for implementation in Zambia, Africa next summer. This initiative will target poor young women, children and incarcerated individuals living with HIV/AIDS.

And last, we want to remember those in prison, and as such, we are tailoring a prisoner reentry program through our Renewed Purpose Initiative. This initiative will teach young men how to reconcile with their family, community and law enforcement.

Eleven years ago when I held that premature abandoned baby, I never imagined that the power of compassion would overtake me and lead me to start The Daniel Society. It seems foolish to think that a baby holds such power. But this is the power of those who are facing extreme poverty. They hold the power to end extreme poverty by imparting compassion that compels others to advocate on their behalf. This is why I am optimistic, and why I believe extreme poverty could end.