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From: jad@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (john.a.dinardo)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human,alt.activism,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.asian.american,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Lobbying for Refuge for the Vietnamese Refugees
Keywords: "Give us your tired, your poor", but above all, your imperiled.
Message-ID: <3672@cbnewsl.ATT.COM>
Date: 16 Jan 90 20:13:39 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 58


To all who will volunteer to join me in this Congressional
lobbying campaign:

This is the message I am mailing to the 238 pastors and 
rabbis who lead congregations of followers in just one section of
my Congressional district. I got the names and addresses of the
churches and synagogues from the yellow pages of my telephone directory. 
The letter is yours for the taking. Put your name in place of mine.
You can retain it, or revise it, or rewrite it. But deliver it!
Explanatory documentation ought to be included in your mailing,
such as the articles from the Jan. 11th issue of the New York Times
and the Dec. 25th issue of Time magazine (both). You can find and
photocopy these news sources (and more) at your public library.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Disciple of Christ,        [for pastors]
Dear Follower of God,           [for rabbis]

I urge you to express to your representative in the Congress your 
sympathy for the Vietnamese boat people. These people were so driven
by the abject misery of their lives in Vietnam that the grave risk
of drowning or starvation on the high seas was their chosen alternative.
They sought only that which most of us can not truly appreciate, for
it has never been denied us -- freedom; from torment, from pain, from
hunger, freedom from the dreary, suffocating existence that guaranteed
them they would never see a sparkle in the eyes of their children.
They trusted that those of us in the world who luxuriate in liberty
would accept them. But liberty does not inspire compassion -- and we
are teaching them that bitter truth by our silence and by our stillness.

Now they are learning all over again, in Hong Kong, what they learned
so painfully in Vietnam -- that some things are worse than death.
Now, the faith they naively held for the humaneness of free peoples 
is being requited as the British government orders, and the United
States government condones, their deliverance back into the hands of
the very despot from whom they fled -- the Vietnamese government.
How will they be received in their familiar Hell? With all the
vindictiveness that a brutal tyrant can muster against such traitorous
criminals.

I urge you to express to your representative in the Congress your
wish that the United States of America give sanctuary to this
shipwrecked body of humanity. And I hope you will act to disseminate
this letter to other clergy people, so that they too may learn of
this catastrophe.

As with our children and our parishioners, we have a responsibility
to instill the highest moral standards in our government as the
guiding force behind all of it's actions. More important still, we
have a responsibility, as moral human beings, to relieve the 
suffering and to rectify the injustices inflicted upon a battered
sea of humanity struggling to survive elsewhere on this Earth.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

     John DiNardo