Police force Indonesian workers to disperse

Police have used "brutal force" to end a protest by women workers at the PT Micro Garment factory in Bandung, Indonesia.

"The Indonesian police sent around 300 personnel to dissolve the action of workers," reports a local YCW leader.

"The police forced the demonstrators to disperse and end the action immediately.

"The number of demonstrators are 186 workers and majority are women and some of them are pregnant. The situation are really bad and (there is) chaos now," the leader explained in an email calling for solidarity.

"The YCW Indonesia president (Ikin) took a decision to pull the workers from the location to avoid more victims," he explained. "Now the police still at the location to watch the situation and ready at anytime to hit the demonstrator at as the order of the employer.

"The employer now in the difficult situation due to bed quality of their production, even though they have change hundred of the workers but the their buyers are not satisfy with the quality of the goods. This week the employer is in Hong Kong to lobby the buyer to extend the shipping time of the order.

"Indonesia YCW is in critical situation now since the polices are really brutal hitting and kicking the workers and the employer making false propaganda using Christianity issue and force the neighbor against the workers," he continued.

"The call of YCW Indonesia is:

- Launch a financial campaign to help the workers of PT Micro Garment and YCW Indonesia

- Send your political pressure to the Indonesian authority (Don't send any letter to the employer)

- For the ILO delegation, please seriously bring this issue to the discussion (held the side event and invite the ILO officer and trade union and Indonesian minister)

- Please talk to Indonesian President (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in ILC). He will give special speech during the ILC since the International community think that Indonesia is the best sample for domestic workers protection program."

VHR Media also reports on the strike saying that 18 female workers fainted as a result of clashes with police.

Chairman of the Joint Labor Struggle Solidarity (GSPB) Micro Garment, Nana Ibrahim,said 18 women workers fainted during a clash between striking workers and policework and workers who will come to work.

"The atmosphere here is chaos. The police beat us," said Nana Ibrahim, chairperson of the Joint Labor Struggle Solidarity group (GSPB).

The PT Micro Garment workers have been on strike since 6 May and plan to continue until 6 June.

They are demanding a reduction of working hours to 10 hours per day and are protesting the dismissal of hundreds of workers because of the strike.

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See, judge, act NOT file: theologian tells Vatican conference

Addressing a Vatican conference to mark the 50th anniversary of Pope John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magister, Jesuit theologian Father Peter Henriot noted that the method recognized by the encyclical was see, judge, act, not see, judge, file.

Father Henriot, an American who now works in Zambia, was addressing the international congress "Justice and globalisation: From Mater et Magistra to Caritas in veritate" hosted by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from 16-18 May.

Applying the method in his talk on "Equity Policies," Father Henriot noted that the “'see, judge, act' advances active policies to advance equity policies for proper balance of
production and distribution of wealth."

"But please avoid the all-too-common: See, Judge, File!" he warned.

Australian Brian Lawrence, who spoke on the "valuation and remuneration of labour", noted the impact of the Church's teaching on labour issues dating from Pope Leo's encyclical Rerum Novarum.

"Another theme that comes through various encyclicals and Gaudium et Spes," noted Lawrence, who was a formernational leader of the YCS in Australia, "is the importance of starting from life.

"Applied Catholic social doctrine is a response to changing realities," he said, citing Mater et Magistra Paragraph 236 where Pope John XXIII refers to the see-judge-act.

Another Jesuit, Father Sergio Bernal Restrepo, from the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogota, Colombia was another to highlight the significance of the method.

"John XXIII proposed for this (social action) training, the use of the famous method applied by the then Monsignor Cardjn in his groups of young workers, namely the
SEE-JUDGE-ACT paradigm.

" Without ignoring the problems that the process can involve, there is no doubt that this methodology has been a force for good in forming individuals and groups committed to acting in history as conscious Christian citizens who are fully aware that they belong to civil society without contradicting their Christian identity.

"It is disturbing to discover how within the same Church that this way of acting and training in action, has met with strong resistance in conservative circles, who are often ignorant of reality and sometimes too committed to defending their own interests.

However, the Churches of Latin America have been able to defend this method, which was recently forcefully relaunched as a useful tool for pastoral action by the bishops gathered in Aparecida, Brazil," Father Restrepo said.

Caritas International President Cardinal Oscar Maradiago Rodriguez was another to highlight the method.

"The reality in which the principles of the (Church's) Social Doctrine is applied is a local reality, namely the social, cultural, economic and political lives each ecclesial community," Cardinal Maradiaga said.

"It is  in the midst of the practicalities of the life that Christian men and women experience that they they analyse events and judge them in the light of the Word of God and the Social Doctrine in order to make concrete findings for action," Cardinal Maradiaga explained.

CELAM, the Conference of Latin American bishops, teaches this method as part of its training for social pastoral agents.

"Each training module consists of three parts which follow the see-judge-act methodology," Cardinal Maradiaga continued.

"The program is targed at pastoral agents involved in the social dimension of the Church who have completed secondary studies," he added.

Meanwhile, Brazilian Professor Daniel Seidel noted the role played by the Cardijn movements - University YCS, YCS, YCW and Rural YCW - in promoting democracy in that country.

"Since its foundation the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) has been active agent for the consolidation of Brazilian democracy, and was preceded in this role by the specialised youth Catholic Action movements," he told the conference.

"In this perspective and in response to the dicrediting of Brazilian politics during the 1990s, the CNBB in 1996 launched a Fraternity Campaign, which carried over from the Lenten campaigns that were launched in 1964, on the theme of 'brotherhood and politics'. Following the see-judge-act method, the campaign proposed as a concrete action to launch the first popular initiative law passed in the Brazil national congress."

"One million and thirty nine thousand signatures were collected from 1996 to 1999 resulting in the adoption byu Parliament of the Law 9480/99 (in only 29 days!). This Law makes it an offence to buy votes and to use government administrative machinery during an election campaign," Professor Seidel noted.

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French YCW rethinks its worker character

Two hundred leaders of the French YCW are meeting this weekend for an extraordinary general meeting to reflect on the worker character of the movement.

With French society having undergone deep sociological changes over the last few decades, the YCW is seeking to redefine its worker dimension in a bid to respond better to the concerns of young people from traditionally working class areas, La Croix reports.

Issues on the agenda include: "Who are the young workers of today? Who are the invisible young people who are absent from the social instititutions of the nation?"

A media release from the French YCW emphasises that "it is vital today to give a voice and an existence to these young people". Hence the need to rediscover the vocation of the movement, says La Croix.

The issue was raised during a national meeting last October, says national president Stephane Haar. "Job insecurity, individualism and isolation have spread to the extent that people no longer believe in the collective or community aspect and so we have become isolated," he said.

"For the last 80 years, society has continued to evolve and this has made it difficult to determine the target group of the YCW. Worker consciousness has also become more difficult to identify," Stephane Haar said.

"Based on this questioning of the concepts of "worker" and "working class", the YCW now wishes to reach a renewed understanding of what it means to be a young worker and to define his or her position in French society. Today we have millions of young people who are invisible and excluded," he concluded.

SOURCE

La JOC souhaite redéfinir la dimension ouvrière du mouvement (La Croix)

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Cardijn taught the Church to See Judge Act

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption by the Church of the See – Judge – Act method as part of Catholic social teaching and practice.

Pope John XXII formally recognized the See Judge Act method in his encyclical Mater et Magistra published on 15 May 1961.

In a statement, the Cardijn Community International recalls that it was the late Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement, who had suggested to Pope John that he issue an encyclical to mark the 70th anniversary of Pope Leo's XIII landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum.

In response, Pope John requested Cardijn to provide an outline of issues to be addressed in the encyclical. This he did in a twenty page memorandum submitted to the pontiff.

When Mater et Magistra appeared just over a year later, the encyclical noted that “there are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice.” (Paragraph 236).

“First, one reviews the concrete situation,” Pope John wrote, “secondly, one forms a judgement on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles.

“These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act,” the encyclical continued.

“We believe that even Cardijn was surprised to discover the extent of this recognition in the encyclical,” commented Cardijn Community International convenor, MJ Ruben.

“Since then, the See – Judge – Act method has been recognized and adopted by the whole Church,” Ruben continued.

“It shows how Cardijn was a teacher for the whole Church – not only for young workers,” he said.

“It is another reason that we hope that Cardijn will one day be recognized as a Doctor of the Church,” he concluded.

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See, Judge, Act – Fifty years of Catholic social practice

This month marks the 50^th anniversary of Pope John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magistra, which in its turn recalled the 70^th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's groundbreaking social encyclical Rerum Novarum on the condition of the workers.

Few today, however, will remember that it was Joseph Cardijn who proposed the writing of this encyclical to Pope John during an audience he had with the Pope in March 1960. At the pope's request, Cardijn prepared a twenty page dossier of ideas and suggestions for the envisaged encyclical.

Fourteen months later on 15 May 1961, even Cardijn was surprised when Pope John published Mater et Magistra which specifically adopted the famous See – Judge – Act method that he had championed throughout his life.

“There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice,” Pope John wrote (Paragraph 236) in the encyclical.

“First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgement on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.”

Acting upon Cardijn's inspiration, Pope John thus specifically incorporated the “See – Judge - Act” method into Catholic social teaching and practice.

Four years later in an address to the Second Vatican Council, Cardijn, now a Cardinal, would insist on the importance of this legacy.

“I have shown confidence in [young people’s] freedom so as to better educate that freedom”, Cardijn told the Council in an address on religious freedom.

“I helped them to see, judge and act by themselves, by undertaking social and cultural action themselves, freely obeying authorities in order to become adult witnesses of Christ and the Gospel, conscious of being responsible for their sisters and brothers in the whole world,” he said (20 September 1965) in a phrase that recalls the famous definition of democracy adopted by the Sillon (Furrow) movement of Marc Sangnier as the system of “social organisation that tends to maximise the civic consciousness and responsibility of each person”.

Indeed, Cardijn's “see, judge, act” formula neatly summarised the “method of democratic education” in “study circles” that the Sillon had pioneered in France at the turn of the 20^th century.

"Every citizen must know the state of the nation; when the situation is evil, he must seek solutions; and lastly, having found the solutions, he must act,” wrote Marc Sangnier outlining the enquiry method used by the Sillon as early as 1899.

But it was Cardijn who perfected the method and made it the foundation stone of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement from where it would be adopted later by so many other lay apostolate groups and movements.

“Leaders and members learning to see, judge, and act; to see the problem of their temporal and eternal destiny to judge the present situation, the problems, the contradiction, the demands of an eternal and temporal destiny; to act with a view to the conquest of their temporal and eternal destiny,” as he told delegates to the First International Congress of the YCW in 1935.

Cardijn indeed saw himself as a teacher and educator of young workers. Fifty years after Mater et Magistra, we can see clearly today that he was also a great teacher of the whole Church.

As we celebrate the half century of the “See – Judge – Act encyclical”, we renew the call made in 1998 by former leaders of the International YCW for Cardijn to be recognised as a “Doctor of the Church”.

Cardijn Community International

20 May 2011

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Cardijn and Rerum Novarum

This month we remember not only the 120th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's landmark encyclical on the condition of the workers, Rerum Novarum, but also its successor encyclicals, which together have helped build the foundations of Catholic social thought and teaching.

Today, Rerum Novarum is well recognised as the first of the Catholic Church's social encyclicals. For the first time, the Church formally recognised the right of workers to organise in trade unions. The encyclical also laid out the elements of a just wage that would orient workers' demands for many decades into the future.

Published in 1891 at the height of the European Industrial Revolution, Rerum Novarum was also a key formative document in the life of the young Joseph Cardijn who was later to found the Young Christian Workers movement. Aged nine years, he read the encyclical aloud to his illiterate father.

It was a document that would have a decisive impact on his whole life as an advocate for the workers, particularly young workers.

Later, in 1931, when Pope Pius XI, published the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno to mark the 40th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, he made specific reference to Cardijn's emerging YCW movement.

“The ranks of the workers themselves are already giving happy and promising signs of a social reconstruction,” Pope Pius XI wrote. “To Our soul's great joy, We see in these ranks also the massed companies of young workers, who are receiving the counsel of Divine Grace with willing ears and striving with marvelous zeal to gain their comrades for Christ.” (Paragraph 140)

Thirty years later, Cardijn would suggest to Pope John XXIII that he also write an encyclical to mark the 70th anniversary of Rerum Novarum.

“It is time the Church talked about work again,” Cardijn told Pope John during a private audience in March 1960. “The issue is not the same now in 1960 as it was in the time of Leo XIII or Pius XI.”

“No-one could have foreseen then its present dimensions, its universality, its technological aspect, its influence on every race and on young people generally. An encyclical dealing with the world of work today would have an impact even greater than Rerum Novarum or Quadragesimo.”

“But it needs to be a positive encyclical, open to the collaboration necessary,” Cardijn told the Pope, warning him gently against a document that would simply condemn various evils.

“Write your ideas and send them to me,” the Pope told Cardijn.

The result just over a year later on 15 May 1961 was the encyclical Mater et Magistra.

This was the encyclical that would formally endorse the “see, judge, act” method as part of Catholic social teaching.

“There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice,” Pope John wrote (Paragraph 236).

“First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgment on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.”

Later this teaching would also be taken up by Vatican II, notably in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

For this reason, the Cardijn Community International plans to promote a three year campaign to mark the 50th anniversary of Vatican II from 2012-2015.

In a world where the industrial revolution has reached every continent to become a truly global phenomenon, let us recall Cardijn's own contribution to the Church's social thought and practice.

- Cardijn Community International, 17 May 2011

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Thai labor leader arrested

Thai labor leader Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a former YCW fulltimer in the Rangsit region, has been arrested on charges of lèse majesté, or the crime of insulting the king.

This accusation can lead to a maximum of 15 years in prison and is criticised for being used to silence political opponents and human-rights activists, notes the Clean Clothes Campaign in which Somyot was involved.

"The Clean Clothes Campaign signals that charges of lèse majesté have over the last two years increasingly been used to silence labour-rights activists," a CCC statement says.

"Last year Somyot was arrested and detained for three weeks for holding a news conference where he and others called for the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva following the bloody repression of red-shirt protesters in 2010. Clean Clothes Campaign supporters worldwide sent protest letters against his arrest to the Thai government. Soon afterwards, he was released.

"We understand that this time the launch on April 28 of a campaign to collect 10,000 signatures to remove the lese majeste article from the Thai criminal code was the immediate cause of his arrest, although the arrest warrant against Somyot apparently dates from February this year. He denies the charges of lese majeste, and was never informed about an arrest warrant issued against him, let alone that he tried to flee the country in an effort to escape his arrest, as was claimed by the authorities. Still, he has been refused bail, and the Criminal Court agreed with the Department of Special Investigation to extend the detention of Somyot until May 13.

"Somyot is founder of the Center for Labour and International Solidarity Thailand (CLIST) and worked with the CCC on numerous campaigns and Urgent Appeals, including the landmark Eden case in the mid-nineties and the MSP case in 2006.

He worked as a project coordinator for the International Chemical, Engineering and Mining Union Federation (ICEM) before devoting his time more exclusively to journalism and human-rights activism.

"The CCC joins the Asia Floor Wage campaign, Asia Pacific Worker Solidarity Links, AMRC and labour unions in Asia in calling for his immediate release," the statement continues.

The day before his arrest on 30 April Somyot and other members of the Democracy Net network had submitted 10,000 signatures to call for abolish of Lese Majeste law, the TrinleyChodron blog adds.

"I would not be the last victim as long as we are still trapped in the rule which is essentially a dictatorship, but is falsely portrayed as a democracy to the world. I shall fight for freedom until my last breath. I may agree to shed my freedom, but not my humanity," Somyot said in a statement from a holding cell, at the Crime Suppression Division, Bangkok on 8.30 am, May 2, 2011.

SOURCE

Without freedom, humans are not human (Trinleychodron)

Thai human rights activist imprisoned for second time (Clean Clothes Campaign)

VIDEOS

Interview with Somyot Pruksakasemsuk (Ratchaprasong News/YouTube)

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Karol Wojtyla met Cardijn at Pontifical Belgian College

Young Polish priest Father Karol Wojtyla lived at the Pontifical Belgian College in Rome from 1946 to 1948 while he was doing his doctoral studies at the Angelicum.

There he met Monsignor Joseph Cardijn who also stayed at the college during his regular trips to meet Vatican officials and the Pope.

“Karol Wojtyla was very interested in this pastoral movement aimed at young workers. He was very interested in bringing this experience to Poland, especially when he became a bishop,” says Father Dirk Smet, who is the current rector of the College.

SOURCE

The first residence of Karol Wojtyla in Rome (Rome Reports)

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