Please, don’t forget to put CJM on your gift list                                       

                 during this Christmas Season of Hope

Dear CJM Members                                                                                                                                   December 6, 2004

 In this Christmas season, what will be your wishes for the coming year?  If you could change the world, how would you imagine it?  

Right now our world is filled with inequity. Too many people are hungry, poor, and exploited. We live in a world at war.  

But CJM’s members imagine a different world, and know it’s possible. That’s why you are a CJM member.  The coalition is the place to put that faith into action, to carry out the task of making a world of Peace and Justice through your solidarity in support of maquiladora workers.   

This year CJM celebrated its fifteenth anniversary – fifteen years alongside the maquiladora workers, fanning the flames of international solidarity that sustains workers’ hopes for a better future. At our annual meeting last month we extended our international ties beyond North America to Central America, Europe, and Asia. The two hundred participants at the meeting felt the power of international solidarity and the hope it offers despite all the difficulties we face.

CJM believes that building international solidarity is the flame that keeps hope alive.  Each of your contributions—your prayers, donations, time and talent--adds another spark to the flame that will one day ignite a social movement that cannot be stopped. 

In the New Year CJM will face many challenges: unemployment and the humiliation of corporations who violate workers’ rights with impunity and collude with the Mexican labor courts. The increasing mobility of corporations has created new challenges to follow them to the south of Mexico or even to China as they pursue the race to pay the most minimal misery wages. Right now workers in Delphi and TRW in Reynosa, Tamaulipas face plant closings and are requesting our help to stop employers from cheating them out of their severance pay and replacing them with temps. A friendly hand in solidarity from you will make a huge difference in helping many workers’ who are already standing up for justice do so more effectively.

This year we are a more united coalition than ever. A band of hundreds, we walk arm in arm with maquiladora workers in their struggles for human rights, supporting their resistance and organizing. As we go we are on the alert, with hearts thirsty for Justice and ears ready to listen to the voices of workers.  We ask for the Wisdom to know the right time to act and the Patience to wait with hands ready. 

In the coming year we know you will join us in reclaiming the real meaning of freedom, peace, and justice, raising our voices without fear and carrying our mission as the shield of truth. We pray this will be a year when Faith will help us identify every opportunity, Clarity will guide our commitment to defending lives with dignity, Courage will impel us, despite the risks, to speak out for justice, and Hope will keep the horizon of a better world in view.

Your support for CJM’s work keeps the flame of hope alive in the most meaningful way: by joining with workers today and preparing leaders for tomorrow--those brave ones who will speak up, reach out, nourish social movement, and insure it grows and continues.  By supporting CJM you not only envision the hope the Christmas season inspires--for peace on earth, for life ablaze with good will, justice, and dignity—you help to turn that  vision into reality.

Don’t forget CJM this Christmas!

Peace,