"NO MORE POOR!"

She was urging everyone — all 900 of us — in the room to shout it. "NO MORE POOR!" After all, it was the main message of the day. Bishop Sally Dyck of the United Methodist Church Minnesota Conference keynoted the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition's annual Day on the Hill this morning.

As I write this, hundreds of Minnesotans are meeting with their legislators at the capitol urging them to support legislation that will benefit the state's most vulnerable citizens — those struggling to provide food and shelter for their families, those struggling to to afford health care, those struggling to make it at all.

This morning 900 concerned citizens met at St. Paul's RiverCentre to get fired up for their afternoon of lobbying. They were high school students and grandmothers, community organizers and former homeless. I talked to some students from St. Thomas Academy who were there for their social justice religion class. They said they wanted to speak with their legislators about health care and housing issues.

The Joint Religious Legislative Coalition (JRLC) works with Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities to advocate together for issues of justice. Bishop Richard Pates opened the gathering in prayer, in which he quoted Pope Benedict XVI: "Love needs to be organized if it is to be an ordered service to the community."

This organizing of love is what JRLC does, its executive director Brian Rusche told the crowd.

"As people of faith, we have a moral responsibility to make sure there are no more poor," Bishop Dyck said. Referring to Gov. Pawlenty's budget proposal, she added, "We cannot balance the budget on the back of the poor people in our state, especially when a high percentage of them are children."

In this time of economic uncertainty, those in the middle class will be tempted not to be generous because of their own self interests, she said. "Yield not to temptation!" she said. A Christian's moral obligation is to work to eradicate poverty, she said before shouting "No More Poor!" again.

"That's your message — take it to your legislators!" she said.

(The photo's of JRLC's director, Brian Rusche, at the capitol rotunda speaking to Day on the Hill advocates before they met with their legislators.)