An Act of Hope (1992) by Society of the Sacred Heart, United States

An Act of Hope province priorities for strategic planning

Society of the Sacred Heart — United States Province

FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART June 26, 1992 An Act of Hope: Province Priorities for Strategic Planning is the fruit of the reflection and prayer of the entire Province. It has grown from the insight and desires of our members to focus together on how in this day we might best put our energies and resources as the service of God’s people. At the same time, it is but a seed from which will grow our ever stronger commitment to seek together, in our on-going decision-making as a Province, the call of God to us today. The acorn can be for us a symbol of this fruit and seed, the fruit of our contemplation and the seed of our action, just as it was for Philippine Duchesne, our model of courage and faith. Let us ask God to nurture the soil of our planting, so that we will be undaunted in our response to the needs of our world. In hope and prayer, Rosemary Bearss, RSCJ

Act of Hope, Second Edition, July 2020 | Design: CEDC, Washington, DC

CONTENTS 4 8

AN ACT OF HOPE PROVINCE PRIORITIES FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING 8 12

15 18 20 22

Joining the Struggle of the Poor Working Against Racism, Sexism and Violence

CONSISTENCY WITH OUR PRIORITIES BACKGROUND NOTES REFLECTIONS

AN ACT OF HOPE The process of shaping Province priorities and developing a plan to carry them to is for us a sacred journey, for these priorities express our faithful decision not to accept the dividedness of our country and world, but to become in truth women who build communion. Naming the priorities and living them out is a profound act of membership. It is as a community that we seek wisdom to direct our energies in renewed fidelity to God’s call. Aware of a growing yet fragile sense that we know what is asked of us, we seek, too, the generosity and strength to choose the way with joy and even a bit of excitement. A unique opportunity invites us now. Another will not come soon. At this moment in our history we want to focus our energies anew, in an act of hope, in response to God’s call discerned through our charism and the needs of our time. We choose as Province to orient our life and apostolic service toward: • Joining the struggle of the poor for the resources and conditions essential for human well-being, recognizing that education is central to this effort and to our vocation; • Working against racism, sexism, and violence of every kind, recognizing in these forces a call to become, in truth, women who build communion. Further, • In order to realize our priorities we commit ourselves in our planning to make those choices that will help to make our lives and work consistent with them.

Certain central dimensions of our lives undergird these priorities and are constitutive of our vocation. Without them, we would lack both the contemplative vision to share the priorities and the spiritual strength to live them out. Specifically, these include a life rooted: • in prayer, contemplation and attention to the woundedness of humanity, • in our call to be educators grounded in the spirit of the Society • in our internationality • in ongoing discernment The voice of the Society of the Sacred Heart – the Constitutions, the Chapter of 1988, the Working Paper of the International Education Commission – and the voice of the United States Province in our ongoing reflection continually reinforce the following convictions. First, we strongly affirm the centrality of prayer and contemplation in our lives. They guide our response to human need, enabling us to see the face of God in the painful realities of the world and to respond whole-heartedly in faith. As we deepen our life of prayer and the desire to make known God’s love, we strengthen the foundation from which we act together, in union with the international Society and in solidarity with each other and those we serve. Second, throughout the whole Society and clearly reflected in this country is a renewed conviction that at the heart of our contemplative vocation is a call to be educators, women whose apostolic service is marked by faith, love, compassion, and a capacity for relationship. Our approach to and understandings of our educational vocation are lived out in a wide spectrum of ministries and settings. Third, the internationality of the Society reminds us constantly that the challenges we face in our own country, with its problems and urgent social issues, are part of a greater reality. We have access to a global perspective and network that draw us beyond our limited boundaries and call us to determine our course of action within the mission of the Society worldwide.

Fourth, communal discernment is a vital element of our life together that will not end with the naming of priorities and the development of a strategic plan. Dialogue and discernment must be ongoing as we seek ways to integrate the priorities into the living out of our charism in diverse ministries, even as the priorities themselves invite us to move beyond what seemed possible given our personal and corporate limitations. The call to contemplation, educational, internationality, and discernment are constant. They mark our vocations and touch our lives at all times. Our priorities are time-bound expressions of what they ask of us today.

THE CALL TO US AS RELIGIOUS OF THE SACRED HEART IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY As Religious of the Sacred Heart, we do not stand outside our national culture and institutions, which at their best hold out the promise of equality and opportunity for all, and at their worst perpetuate poverty, violence, racism, sexism and educational inequality. We know we often share in the prejudices and choices that our culture promotes. We also discover, however, within the most negative forces, our call to be women who seek to heal division and create communion. Moreover, the Catholic Church in the United States has a long tradition of work for justice and concern for the poor. In recent times, we have been particularly challenged by the pastoral letters of our Bishops on social justice, peace, racism, the economy, and most recently on the environment.1 While we know that we alone can neither change the course of poverty, racism, sexism and violence in our country, nor redress the inequities of American education, we know, too, that we have gifts and resources to bring to this endeavor. • Our charism and philosophy of education have touched the lives of thousands of women and men. We recognize, however, that we do not yet know how best to orient our educational vision, skills, and resources in the service of those who are materially disadvantaged. • Our educational vision has been deeply enriched by those who have been working with minorities and the oppressed for years. We recognize, however, that we are just beginning to find ways to let their experience educate and transform us all.

• Love for and commitment to young people has always marked our educational mission. We recognize, however, that we could play a more significant part in helping young people who are poor gain access to the education they need. • We have struggled to live in solidarity with the poor for many years. We recognize, however, that a more radical transformation of our lives is necessary if we are to be truly in communion with the marginalized in our society. • We have sought to collaborate with and empower the disempowered. We recognize, however, that we need to let them challenge our understandings of power and collaboration if we are to avoid promoting and sustaining the status quo. • Though we are few, working in diverse ministries, we have the capacity and will to make a difference. We recognize, however, that unless our lives and actions are consistent with our words, we diminish this capacity.

WE RECOGNIZE, HOWEVER, THAT UNLESS OUR LIVES AND ACTIONS ARE CONSISTENT WITH OUR WORDS, \ WE DIMINISH THIS CAPACITY.

PROVINCE PRIORITIES FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING JOINING THE STRUGGLE OF THE POOR Statement

We choose to emphasize in our lives and our service joining the struggle of the poor for the resources and conditions essential for human well-being, recognizing that education is central to this effort and to our vocation. Today more than ever we acknowledge that the poor, the vulnerable, and the dispossessed have a claim on our resources and our energies. We have become more knowledgeable about the dynamics of poverty in the United States, the isolation of marginalized groups, and the distortions of our political economy. We understand with new clarity how factors of class, gender, race or ethnicity, and nationality status combine to determine access to, or exclusion from a wide range of goods and services, especially the basic goods of security, control over the means of subsistence, and participation in the fundamental institutions of society. We are particularly conscious that the inquiry of the educational system has devastating consequences for poor people. Education is normally the path to empowerment and selfsufficiency, yet in the United States today both the public and private sectors, by either tuition or funding base,2 favor those who are economically secure. That is, education in this country favors those already well positioned to benefit from a wide spectrum of opportunity, be that education, social, cultural or economic. Such fundamental injustices are felt acutely by young people who are poor, so many of whom describe themselves as literally without hope. Their anguish moves us profoundly. Perhaps they, more than any other group, have led us to take significant steps in the direction of solidarity with the poor.

The Challenge to Us as Religious of the Sacred Heart

From its origins, the Society has understood the profoundly formative power of education. This basic conviction is unchanged, even if our categories of thinking are no longer those of the 19th century. Not surprisingly, our collective reflection in the Province over the past several years has focused more and more often on the failure of our system to provide basic educational opportunity to poor people. Struggling to come to terms with this realization, we have recognized that our own educational service as a Province is not yet sufficiently directed to those who suffer the double deprivation of poverty and discrimination. In this sense, it mirrors the inequity of the larger system. We are increasingly disturbed by this realization. The sense of ourselves as educators, in the deepest sense of that word, is central to our identity as Society. We have always believed in the transforming power of the the education we offered; periodically we have re-evaluated its effectiveness in the light of changing needs and social realities. Today we are called to look deeply again, to assess our work with courage and honesty, to discover to what extent we serve the status quo or seek to change it. As educators, we join the struggle of the poor in an act of hope. The question is: How? We cannot do this form a distance. The experience of the past twentyfive years shows that our perspective is shaped by where we live, where we work, and the persons with whom we relate. And the clear preoccupation in our corporate reflection with “linking” and “bridging” of ministries points to our desire to go beyond the present boundaries of relationship in our effort to be in solidarity with the poor. Choosing to join the struggle of the poor means gradually coming to act “from within and with” rather than “from without and for.” In listening to the poor, we will learn what they really need, and help them to find their own voice. Thus when we advocate for basic rights, we will be less inclined to take control, to do for others what we think best for them, to use our power and resources in ways that do not foster mutuality. As we become more present to the world of poor people, we will not presume to decide what they need without their active involvement, for one of the most dehumanizing effects of poverty is the lack of control over the direction of one’s own life.

Experience in the world of the poor will intensify and refine our commitment as educators, for it is in heeding the deepest call of our vocation, to make known God’s love, that we find ourselves immersed in the search for solutions to urgent social and educational problems.

Implications

To direct our lives and apostolic service toward joining the struggle of the poor, we need to include, as elements of planning and policy development in our strategic plan, ways to: • Understands what we need to change in our lifestyle and attitudes, in order to have access to the world of poor people and to know what is in their deepest interests. • Make it our ordinary pattern, over time, to live in poor/working class neighborhoodsracially and ethnically mixed, as possible • Direct our service more explicitly to those deprived of good education because of poverty and discrimination • Examine how we approach leadership, collaboration, and the use of power, and open ourselves to be changed in our ways. • Include extended community and ministry experience with the poor during the initial formation years • Search out formation and professional training (initial and ongoing) that will give us some competence and creativity in directing our efforts toward education of the materially disadvantaged. • Draw upon the informed experience of RSCJ and others with whom we have collaborated or may collaborate in the future. This includes, for example, those who have worked in inner-city schools, rural or migrant worker schools, adult education and tutoring programs for poor people, counseling and advocacy with public school systems, summer programs for inner-city or rural children, prison ministries, parish programs, community multiservice centers and other neighborhood settings; those responsible in Network schools for the implementation of Goal III; those skilled in structural analysis. • Evaluate how our modes of direct service alleviate some of the consequences of poverty and how they address of its structural causes

• Consider this priority when choosing degree programs, fields of study, sabbaticals, renewal programs, research topics, and universities. • Make available to poor people, on a full or part-time basis, some of our special competencies which are usually unavailable to them (e.g. psychological counseling, retreats and spiritual direction, learning disability diagnosis, medical and legal expertise, etc.) • Join the critical debate and dialogue about the quality and financing of education in our cities and states, and take part in the process of reform. • Link in our local areas with existing community organizing efforts that specifically target leadership and empowerment from within. • Use the means available to us, as Society, to move our schools both programmatically and structurally in the direction of this priority. • Use the means available to us, individually and corporately, to move the various institutions with which we are associated in the direction of this priority. • Become more knowledgeable about the ways in which US government policy and the operations of US corporations (including decisions about the environment) affect the well-being of people in other countries. • Gain skills in policy-making and lobbying through experience with advocacy groups that work with and on behalf of the poor.

TODAY MORE THAN EVER WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE POOR, THE VULNERABLE, AND THE DISPOSSESSED HAVE A CLAIM ON OUR RESOURCES AND OUR ENERGIES.

WORKING AGAINST RACISM, SEXISM, AND VIOLENCE OF EVERY KIND Statement

We choose to emphasize in our lives and in our service working against racism, sexism, and violence of every kind, recognizing in these forces our call to become, in truth, women who build communion. Our country professes the equality of all, but its fundamental institutions and practices continue to privilege one race, one gender, one class, certain cultures and citizenships, and one particular view of the place of the United States in the international order. We have a growing understanding of the ways in which the attitudes, practices, and structures that institutionalize racism and violence in our country relate both to the subordination of women and to the dispossession of some socio-economic groups and some so-called “minorities.” To privilege some by harming or dispossessing others is surely violence of the most basic kind.3

The Challenge to Us as Religious of the Sacred Heart

The persistent racism, sexism, and multiple forms of violence that characterize our national experience pose a fundamental challenge to us, called as we are to live in the United States our charism to become women who build communion. Our reflection as Province underscores a deep concern about racism, sexism, and violence; about the connections between these forces and that of classism; and about the personal institutional, and systemic aspects of these social disorders. Choosing this priority demands that we be truly contemplatives in action, women who know that our vocation requires ongoing discernment if we are to link the deepening of faith with the alleviation of evil forces that obscure God’s love, both for ourselves and for those with whom and for whom we serve. We are challenged very specifically in terms of the Gospel, our mission of education, and our call to build understanding and unity among people and groups. Significantly, we acknowledge that we have only begun to recognize and probe the rrots of these evils within ourselves as individuals and among us as members of the Society.

• Some members and Areas of the Province call us to admit that we need to surface and deal with racist and even violent attitudes and practices within our own religious community. • Some ask us to address the ways in which we tend unconsciously to be classist, in attitudes, practices, institutions, and understandings of apostolic service • Some ask us to recognize the ways in which, despite our long tradition of service on behalf of women, we still inadvertently reinforce attitudes and practices that keep women subordinated in society at large and in the Church. Even as we acknowledge these insights and seek to address the issues that they raise for us, we also want to develop a clearer sense of actions that we can and should take in order to work against the forces of social destruction in our country. The full consequences of choosing this priority as Province will become apparent as we call upon our skills, imagination, and collaborative experience. Moreover, if the grace of our charism truly calls us to build communion, we must draw upon it as a source. It is not a matter merely of fostering harmonious sentiments, but of building relationships based in equality, respect, and reverence for the other, and of developing practices and institutions that break down patterns of violence, domination, and destruction.

Implications

To direct our lives and our apostolic service toward working against racism sexism, and violence of every kid, we need to include as elements of planning and policy development in the strategic plan of the Province, ways to: • Educate ourselves and others about: • the reality of racism in the United States, particularly from the viewpoint of those who suffer it; • ways that the media and other forms of social communication perpetuate racist sexist, classist, and violent perspectives; • the tradition and practice of non-violence as a religious act; • classist assumptions and attitudes that may permeate our understanding of our identity as RSCJs and our apostolic service

• Examine the ways in which education either promotes or counters the ignorance and fear in which racism is rooted, and take action in the various settings where we find ourselves • Appraise the ways by which the institutions where we serve (e.g. parishes, schools, health facilities…) especially those for which we have direct responsibility, include/exclude people of color, and take appropriate action in the light of this appraisal • Become skilled in effective methods of conflict resolution, meditation, and peace-making • Promote genuine forms of multi-culturalism that can serve to revitalize our country’s democratic ideal and heal the deep wounds in our society. • Use the means available to us to ensure that the structures of schools (e.g. sources of funding, allocation of resources, admissions and hiring policies, curriculum standards, decision-making authority) support the priority of working against racism. • Collaborate with those working to: • change the attitudes and structures in both Church and society that promote and support sexism; • protect the disadvantaged and dispossessed from abuse (e.g. women, children, the elderly, the disabled, the undocumented, the poor, members of minority groups); • protect and repair the earth’s ecosystems • Deepen our knowledge about the ways in which racist and violent attitudes in the United States translate into racist and violent decisions, practices and polices abroad, and collaborate in actions designed to counter these patterns

THE PERSISTENT RACISM, SEXISM AND MULTIPLE FORMS OF VIOLENCE THAT CHARACTERIZE OUR NATIONAL EXPERIENCE POSE A FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGE TO US

CONSISTENCY WITH OUR PRIORITIES Naming priorities for our Province will mean nothing unless we come together in the common vision that underlies them. We wish therefore to hold ourselves accountable for their realization, in mutual support and trust. Thus we commit ourselves in our planning to make those choices that will help to make our lives and work consistent with our priorities. This commitment includes, but is not limited to, the following: A. A more communal approach to discerning and living the demands of the Society’s mission in the United States today. Our desire to be women of communion suggests that we address our differences with respect, hold ourselves open to dialogue, and be challenged by one another as well as by those with whom we collaborate. Our hope is that we will draw fresh resolve from such interaction. Thus, we need to: • gather regularly, as RSCJ, to pray, to share what we have learned, to encourage one another, to critique our best efforts, and to plan the next steps to implement our priorities: • probe our significant differences, working through that which divides so that we may serve more faithfully together; • base the periodic review and revision of our strategic planning on the interplay among experience, prayerful reflection, action, and evaluation in view of the mission of the Society and our priorities; • learn new forms of being and living in, community, especially as we strengthen our bonds with the larger community of faith; • develop feminine modes of teaching and learning; • commit ourselves and help one another to live more simply for the sake of the Gospel and the imperatives of social justice.

B. A focused effort to include in initial and ongoing formation preparation regarding the social educational needs that our priorities address. It is important that our perspectives on, and apostolic response to, issues be both evangelical and informed. Therefore, this effort calls for formal education (study of the Social Teachings of the Church, Theology, Social Sciences), experience (immersion in the reality behind the issues, living and working among poor or dispossessed people), and social analysis in the light of faith. Thus we need to: • give careful consideration to our priorities as part of deciding fields of study, immersion programs, forms of professional training and renewal programs; • grasp the impact of, and become actively involved in shaping, social communication, given the power of the mass media to mold popular perceptions, values and attitudes, especially regarding social and environmental issues, both domestic and international; • learn more effective ways of communal discernment as we come to act in deeper union with those seeking to respond the Church’s call to social justice and peace making. C. A concerted effort to assess and to strengthen, specifically along the lines of our priorities, those institutions for which we have special governance and administration responsibilities. This will help to ensure the institutional vitality of the Society’s mission in the United States at this time in history. Thus we need to: • examine different understandings of the phrase “our institutions”; identify, clarify, and communicate the specific relationship that the Society of the Sacred Heart, US Province, has with each institution, including the nature and extent of its authority and responsibilities • determine, according to the means available to us, educational and assessment initiatives related to our priorities.

D. An analysis, evaluation, and reallocation of our material resources to align them more closely with our priorities. According to the spirit and direction of the Society, our material resources are to be used in the service of mission. The “Interim Guidelines for Financial Decision Making” (see Appendix) recommended by the Assembly of Delegates and adopted by the Provincial Team (1991) set criteria for decisions concerning these resources. It is important to note that the Interim Guidelines also assure resource allocation for the basic needs of the membership, and for contributing to the life, administration, priorities, costs and ministries of the International Society. The financial resources and assets that we, as a Province, are called to put to the service of mission, in a way consistent with our priorities, are of two kinds: • resources under the legal ownership of the Province and its corporations. • institutional assets for which the Society has specific legal and moral responsibility. Thus we need to: • evaluate our allocation of resources in a spirit of stewardship, to test its consistency with our priorities; • seek to reduce certain expenditures, live more simply, and generate necessary revenues (e.g. through realization of our employment/ministry potential, development efforts for our priorities, etc.); • allocate our material/financial resources with preference for that which supports our priorities most directly

WE COMMIT OURSELVES IN OUR PLANNING TO MAKE THOSE CHOICES THAT WILL HELP TO MAKE OUR LIVES AND WORK CONSISTENT WITH OUR PRIORITIES

BACKGROUND Over the last several years, we have heard expressed with increasing insistence the need to “set our faces in a direction” together and to act as a Province with new energy, enthusiasm, and a positive sense of risk. The voice of the Society of the Sacred Heart, in its Chapters and Commissions, has given us the foundation for this direction in its recognition of the gospel invitation to work on behalf of and alongside those who are poor, oppressed, and marginalized. The Assembly of Delegates, the Social Analysis project of 1990-91, and our ongoing process of discernment focused on the priorities toward which we were moving. The Assembly of Delegates, meeting in 1990 and 1991, raised issues about our freedom and ability to renew our apostolic energy and the quality of our lives. In this forum three convictions became clear: we want to be more simple and mission-oriented in the way we live and use our resources; we have a growing sense of co-responsibility for our life as a Province, directional decisions, and the use of resources; we are struggling with a renewed understanding of the meaning of community. The Assembly expressed the need for more concrete and effective ways of participatory decision-making that count not only on our unity but on the richness of our differences, and on our willingness to let go of, to overcome, that which divides. The Social Analysis Reports and accompanying commentaries are energetic and startlingly clear. Prayer, personal experience and reflection, and a search for the root causes of much human suffering took place throughout 1990-91 in the various Area. From different situations, circumstances, and approaches to analysis throughout the Province has come a convergence of perceived critical issues and a sense of common call. Reports in which Area groups proposed issues for Province-wide consideration, underscore our growing awareness of deepening poverty and social division all around us. Drawn together, these Reports present a profile of systemic injustice as well as a sense of conviction about the challenges we face.

The Social Analysis process led to three major insights about the reality of our country: 1) Conditions of poverty are growing worse, with devastating consequences, but all are not suffering equally. This intensification of poverty is not just a by-product of the recent downturn in the economy; rather, it results from political and economic decisions made during what was for some a more affluent time. Whole groups of people suffer from inadequate housing, health care, employment, nutrition, income, and education; they are conscious of their inability to participate in the basic institutions of society. Here as elsewhere in the world, the burden of poverty is heaviest on people of color, on women, on children. 2) Violence and racism are pervasive and intertwined. Those who are poor, especially people of color, suffer disproportionately the effects of both, as well as discrimination in employment, housing, education, and immigration. Likewise, the least powerful are most apt to be victims of violence. On a societal level, abusive power structures and violence glorified in the pursuit of personal and “national interests” provide fertile soil for the politics of racism and isolation to flourish. 3) Our country’s educational system, both public and private, fails those who suffer from poverty compounded by discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or nationality status. Moreover, by favoring the economically secure at the expense of the poor, American education feeds into the cycle of systemic poverty and institutionalized racism. The priorities that have emerged from our corporate reflection are closely interrelated. They result from a heightened awareness of division and woundedness in our country, a recognition that our political economy establishes and sustains two separated spheres of existence rather than one “common weal.” We may name this dividedness in two different ways (“opposing interests” those who “belong” and those who are “marginalized,” the powerful and the powerless, or the “haves and have-nots”), but however we name it, we have discerned here both the power of evil at work and the Spirit-filled challenge to live the Gospel ever more faithfully.

NOTES 1 Several groups in the Province urged that concern for the environment be included in our priorities, since clearly this is a topic that will assume major proportions in the decade of the 1990’s, having global dimensions as well as local implications. It seems, however, that there is still a task of consciousness-raising about environmental issues to be done within the Province, given the relatively small number who addressed the topic. Non-inclusion of a priority on the environment does not mean that this is unimportant; on the contrary, it is a “cutting edge” issue. It did not seem adequate to insert a few sentences about the environment, more or less artificially, in the text of the paper, although references to it have been made where appropriate. This Note is meant to draw attention to the importance of the subject, and to suggest that we find ways to increase our knowledge and broaden our understanding of actions to be taken. There is a special challenge here to us as educators. A good starting point, suggested by one group, is Renewing the Earth, the US Bishops’ statement on the environment issued in 1991. This statement draws attention to many aspects of the dialogue now underway, including: the connection between concern for person and concern for the earth; the biblical version of creation; the perspective of Catholic social teaching; the links between ecological concern and justice for the poor; population issues; the concept of responsible stewardship. 2 Legislation actually supports inequity and discrimination by the widespread practice of funding schools through neighborhood/local property taxes rather than through state or regional systems. This practice virtually assures that higher income areas will have higher quality schools, and lower income areas will have inferior quality schools. The system itself hen, assures and reinforces unequal access, de facto social segregation, and privilege for the well off. 3 While we may not be able to draw the exact connections between racism and violence, we know that these forces of social destruction are interrelated. Racism is probably the most painful societal condition facing us as a people. Its roots are deep ans strong; the structures that embody it take many forms and are remarkably resistant to change; its manifestations are complex and interrelated. They include: discriminatory attitudes and practices against persons of color in general, certain ethnic and religious groups in particular; xenophobic and ethnocentric perspectives; the relationship between one’s racial or “minority” status and the likelihood of being a victim of violence or a subject of punishment by the courts. The most telling evidence of the extent of racism in our country remains the extent to which a person’s race or ethnic identity determines that individual’s socio-economic class.

Despite the long and continuing struggle for civil rights, many neighborhoods, schools, and jobs remain segregated in fact. In education, for example, a simple analysis of student bodies along racial and ethnic lines leads to the inescapable conclusion that children of color are enrolled overwhelmingly in public schools, and, in urban areas, in the worst of these schools. The inequality in the provision of goods and services by both the public and private sectors is not only egregious, it is racially and ethnically discriminatory.. No region of the country has a monopoly on racist practices; no region has achieved racial justice or eliminated racial and ethnic tensions. With regard to the manifestations of sexism in our country, we are coming to understand the strong correlation between gender and class, that is between being a woman and being poor; and we continually uncover the web of connections between gender and violence, that is, between being a woman and being the victim of violent abuse. We see, in other words, that our country is rife with violence of every kind: militarism, sustained by the operation of the military-industrial complex; racial and ethnic strife; economic violence; domestic violence; violence against women; child abuse; physical violence, directed or random; violence related to alcohol and drug addiction; and abuse of the earth and its ecosystems. One contradiction of our culture is that we think ourselves as a peace-loving people, yet violence and even a fascination with violence, mark our country.

We have heard expressed with increasing insistence the need to “set our faces in a direction” together and to act as a province with new energy, enthusiasm, and a positive sense of risk.

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