LifeNet

FREEDOM RALLY LIGHTS UP WHITE PLAINS: Calls for religious freedom and conscience protections!

What a great day! Sorry if you missed being there in person, but we hope LifeNet's pictures and stories and other posted blogs and videos will give you a real sense of the event's spirit and purpose. The Freedom Rally in White Plains on Saturday, June 23, 2012, took place at the U.S. Federal Courthouse.

Federal Courthouse in White Plains...our day begins with setting up...

Our special thanks to Richard and Marie Brand for audio/visual assists all day!

Good friend Vinny arrives early to join other veterans for religious liberty; he displayed signs for passersby on the street - lots of affirmative car horn honks in our direction...

Jeanette Ibrahim (center) and friends; she spoke from the heart later in the day ...

The upbeat crowd of patriots continues to grow throughout the day to 250 or more...

County Executive Astorino had a scheduling conflict, but was happy to be represented by Westchester County Legislator Michael Smith of District #3 who said, "How could I not be here!"...

Father George Kuhn, Pastor of St. Joseph's Church, Yonkers gave a rousing defense of religious liberty. Go here to see and hear Father's talk ...

Raymond W. Belair, Esq., Belair and Evans in NYC gives rousing legal challenge to the HHS mandate...

Nanci Coppola speaks on conscience as one concerned citizen...

New York State Assemblyman Steve Katz arrives to address the crowd...

Uber-organizer Al Mehldau of The Westchester and Putnam Coalition for Religious Freedom reads personal statements from many interfaith leaders who could not attend the Rally in person.

Fr. Arthur Rojas, Parochial Vicar of St. Joseph's displays his favorite spiritual weapon...

Fr. Paul Waddell, Parochial Vicar of Saint Mary's in Katonah tells all a moving story...

Participants keep involved and informed throughout the day...

Perfect clear-blue-sky-of-a-day to rally for Eternal and Constitutional truths...

Fr. Rojas and friends from his Yonkers contingent...

Two hours in the blazing sun could not deter citizens fighting for "liberty and justice for all"...

Post-rally, a portion of the remaining crowd poses for a picture, ready to go out and spread the word now to their own groups and parishes and beyond...

More postings in the next two days, including several of the talks and a link to Fr. Chrisopher Monturo's blog about the Rally. Fr. Monturo is the Pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Church and he and Parochial  Vicar Fr. Peter Scaramuzzo both attended, along with many of their parishioners.

Our thanks to all involved! God bless America!

American Life League (ALL) on NY City prolife efforts

Very nice article in ALL's online daily magazine/email. Extensive excerpt below the link - but the whole article is worth a read.

American Life League takes a bite out of the Big Apple in pro-life tour

During our recent visit, we spoke with Sister John Mary and Sister Magdalene at the Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life. There we learned about the needed outreach to the college-age women who are being constantly bombarded with the contraceptive message from Planned Parenthood and like-minded organizations on college campuses. Sister John Mary said, “The young women have come to know what we can do for them in case they get in a situation of an unplanned pregnancy. While we certainly do what we can to educate people about preventing these unplanned pregnancies through abstinence and chastity education, we also let them know that if they are indeed pregnant, that that is a blessing, and then we counsel women to choose life-affirming options.”

During our visit we also met with Chris Slattery, president of Expectant Mother Care, an American Life League Associate group. EMC provides free counseling, pregnancy medical services—including pregnancy testing and ultrasounds—and prenatal care at 15 locations across the city, and also has a mobile clinic that is present at a few of the area’s abortion facilities during the week. It’s great to see people like Chris Slattery and the folks we visited at Houston Coalition for Life in April taking that awesome extra step toward providing these mobile crisis pregnancy centers steps away from the abortion mills.

(As a side note, EMC is currently offering internships which provide a great opportunity for young people to become the frontline pro-life warriors of today and tomorrow. The internships pay a stipend and provide housing at the Life House in NYC. Another Life House is being developed in the Los Angeles area and Chris would like to see more Life Houses popping up all over America. Learn more about the Bronx Life House at: www.bronxlifehouse.blogspot.com.)

Our visit to New York also presented the opportunity to meet with the very charming but tough Lorraine Gariboldi, who has been in the life-saving business for 26 years. She shared with us her awesome experience in running the Life Center of Long Island and its three pregnancy centers, which serve an average of 300 women per month. At one time, the organization was able to present, in both public and private schools, the most successful abstinence education programs in the area. That is, until the current administration cut off all funding. We also met with some of Lorraine’s staff who gave us a tour of the crisis pregnancy centers and shared stories about the women, babies, and some men that they have, thankfully, helped to choose life.

As we wound down our visit to this part of the country, we also met briefly with the good folks at Good Counsel Homes in Hoboken, New Jersey, and American Life League Associate group Movement for a Better America (MBA). Dennis Howard, director of MBA, hosted a terrific luncheon meeting where we had the chance to connect with Pastor Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org, and discuss the challenges of effectively engaging minority communities in the pro-life movement, given that the abortion industry disproportionately targets these same communities.

250 attend White Plains Religious Freedom Rally!

A fine turnout of enthusiastic people of all ages and description, speaking out against the immoral HHS Mandate's attack on conscience. Here's a partial view of the crowd at the beginning of the Rally; we'd have needed a wider angle lens to get in everybody!

The speakers were excellent - the 95 minute event moved along rapidly. Here is one of the presentations; Fr. George Kuhn, pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Yonkers.

Fr. makes the vital point that the Church can neither acquiesce to the Mandate, nor give up it's vital public role in education, health care and the many charitable endeavors that are intrinsic to the Church mission.

Only downer of the day - NO coverage - 250 person Rally!! - by the mainstream media (yes they were contacted ahead of time) although Catholic NY was at the Rally.

HVCL press release re: this Saturday's Religious Freedom Rally

This was sent to media outlets by email and fax today.

Hudson Valley Coalition for Life, Inc.

Box 494

Ossining, NY 10562

[email protected]

Press Release

June 20, 2012

TO:      Westchester and Putnam County media – radio, television, and newsprint 

            The media are invited to cover the event!

RE:      FREEDOM RALLY IN WHITE PLAINS 

            Saturday, June 23, 12 Noon - 2 p.m.

Momentum is building for the interfaith “Freedom Rally” on Saturday!

Join everyday American citizens and patriots, people of conscience and faith, at 12 Noon on Saturday, June 23, 2012 in front of the Federal Court House, 300 Quarropas Street, White Plains, NY (corner of South Lexington Avenue)!

We will not be pushed off our Constitutional bedrock of freedoms while attempting to mandate that churches act against their own teaching, preaching, and sacredly held beliefs .

The Westchester and Putnam Coalition for Religious Freedom has organized the Rally to speak out in response to the HHS Mandate and its blatant attack on religious freedom for all, and for the Catholic Church in particular because of her wide reach and her many hospitals, universities and outreach programs that have previously worked in partnership with government. Timothy Cardinal Dolan called the faithful to “stand up for the fundamental rights of all people of faith”.

This gathering coincides with a series of rallies across the nation that call on America’s citizens to “stand up for religious freedom” and understand that an attack on one founding freedom is an attack on all.

    Contact: Alan P. Mehldau 914.232.1168; or Judith Anderson 914.329.5163                                                       

 ####  

This Saturday: Religious Freedom Rally in White Plains!

 UPDATE: Parking and Directions - go here

The Westchester and Putnam Coalition for Religious Freedom

 

Is sponsoring a

Freedom Rally

In White Plains

Great speakers! songs! prayer! signs!

Saturday June 23^rd, 2012

12 Noon -2PM

In front of the Federal Court House

300 Quarropas Street (corner of S. Lexington Ave.)

In White Plains, New York

The rally will consist of interfaith witness and prayer for our right of religious freedom and the challenges to it by the HHS Mandate.  The Freedom Rally is a legal, peaceful and prayerful witness in defense of the fundamental rights of all people of faith.

Please come and bring a friend!

Email us if you need specific directions or more information.

Advocates of Life rally at Yonkers Planned Parenthood

After Mass at St. Mary's, approximately 60 people processed down the street for an hour of prayer outside the building housing PP. This was the first larger public event since the anti-free speech, anti-prolife bill was aggressively promoted by the pro-abortion members of the Westchester County legislature. The bill was vetoed by County Executive Rob Astorino, and the veto was upheld in the legislature.

Brother Youssef, CFR, did some sidewlk counseling.

Troublemakers!

More troublemakers!!

 

CNN covers the forced abortion - at 7 months - in China

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) helped design the Chinese one child per family policy decades ago. 

Of course, since the Obama Administration came to power, we have been helping to fund these types of activities through payments to certain UN agencies.

As the CNN commentator delicately puts it "These types of abortion are actually not uncommon."

 

Lohud/Journal News coverage of Religious Freedom Rally in Manhattan

We'll have our own pictures posted in a couple of days.

Hundreds, including Rockland group, rally in NYC against health requirements for religious organizations

Confronting Reality

It is only a matter of time before we see the t-shirt: “The Obama Vision: Dream Small!”

What else can one say about this administration and its faltering quest for new meaning for our nation and its people? The over-the-top campaign of ’08 brought us Barack Obama, finally our first African-American President. Who could forget those screaming crowds enthralled by the telegenic man standing on that massive stage set beneath those impressive Greek columns? A majority of our citizens did not seem to mind or even care that there was little muscle or bone beneath the sleek, God-like surface of Mr. Obama. Barack was “the One” and anyone who was anyone was caught up in the moment. Sadly, it truly was just a moment.

Three-and-one-half years of Obama and his administration could be likened not to a splash of cold water in the face, but to a veritable plunge over Niagra Falls: if the water doesn’t kill you, the fall will. He has brought us so much of so little and it is all killing us, with “Obamacare” his catastrophic centerpiece of self-delusion. The legislation that Nancy Pelosi said we’d have to pass in order to know what’s in it, now sits awaiting the Supreme Court’s sense of whether this fiscal and ideological behemoth should be declared nothing less than unconstitutional.

Whatever good President Obama has done, and there is always some good, it is so eclipsed by administrative incompetence and personal hubris that only true believers still cling to the empty promises and rhetorical hope. His tenure has ushered in astronomical debt and declining jobs; military withdrawal in the midst of active combat; a socialist-like panacea that seeks to redistribute wealth in a free nation; an anti religious freedom mandate that advances secularism beyond pluralism; same-sex “marriage” and gender-selection abortion; unilateral drone attacks and a multilateral non-response to democratic yearnings overseas; a stranglehold on viable energy resources, along with taxpayer funding to cronies in failing solar alternatives; the give-away of arms in “fast and furious” and the take-away of free enterprise through big-government nanny-ism. Good intentions, even the President’s, do not square with these verifiable facts and failures.

The overall divisiveness of this administration’s goals and its tone-deaf response to critique will surely make this episode in American politics the stuff of revisionist history for die-hard Obama fans. The rest of us will simply re-read our founding documents and pray in and out of the public square for a welcomed change in leadership.

 

A Letter to Editor submitted by HVCL co-director, Judith Anderson, 06/07/12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Catholic group springs up to influence government policy and fight the Mandate

The Catholic Association. Seems to have been founded by two women whose bios suggest they have some clout. If you go to their Mission Statement you'll see that it's more then just opposing the Mandate, although that is their current priority. Here's their first video - soon to be a commercial?

More from Live Action: Sex selection abortions in New York City

Another sting. This time at the big PP abortion mill on Bleeker Street.

 

Here is the full, unedited video. 71 minutes long.

PP NYC full footage.