Columbia County Citizens for Human Dignity

Dear neighbors,
It’s no secret that many of us are hurting – feeling the pain of rising fuel costs, soarining interest rates, falling home values, and threatening unemployment.The hardest part of economic insecurity is that we often face it in isolation. We feel alone with our problems, facing big, impersonal forces but it doesn’t need to be this way. Our history is filled with examples of people coming together to solve the toughest problems. Just ask the folks who survived the Great Depression and World War II how people learned to unite in the face of hard times.

Columbia County Citizens for Human Dignity (CCCHD) is a community group dedicated to working together to solve economic challenges in our county. At this difficult moment, we believe that we should seek common ground and not be divided by hot-button issues.In November, county voters will be asked to decide on a ballot measure that would impose a $10,000.00 fine on any business found to be employing undocumented workers. Another proposed measure would mandate 4 x 8 plywood signs saying ‘Legal Workers Only’ at construction sites.
There are some good, practical reasons to oppose these ballot measures:

• It is already current law that all workers be documented, be paid at least minimum wage and employers fined that violate these laws.
• Critical county law enforcement funds will be diverted from public safety to chase after possible illegal workers.
• The measure will open the county to lawsuits.
• The measure will apply to every business in the county, creating more uncertainty in these uncertain times.

These are important reasons to oppose the ballot measures, but they are not the MAIN reason. That reason was given 2000 years ago by a man named Jesus, who said that we would be judged by how we treated ‘the least’ amongst us. This was practical advice then and now. It means that when people are in a lifeboat on a stormy sea, no one gets tossed overboard, not even the stowaways, because we will need all hands working together to survive.
We are facing increasingly stormy times. Some people feel that it is important to ‘send a message’. Other people feel, just as strongly, that this is the wrong message to send. No one needs to be tossed over the side – not the people facing foreclosure, mounting bills and unemployment, nor the folks fleeing even worse times in other lands. We can do better.
For more information on how you can work with your neighbors to create real solutions to our problems, contact Columbia County Citizens for Human Dignity at ccchd@colcenter.org, www.ccchd.info/ or 503 543-8417.