Father John

Father John is a retired Catholic priest who has ministered in Oklahoma City for nearly 50 years. He is very active in the Interfaith Alliance chapter in Oklahoma, an organization that seeks to provide an alternative faith-based voice to the radical religious right. He is involved with pursuing the organization’s mission to advocate for a compassionate federal government that accepts its responsibility for promoting general welfare by enacting laws that stimulate full employment.

My Story
I was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1956, and I just retired in 2000. But I am still very active in promoting social justice and working to ensure we have a government and, in particular, a president who look after the best interests of America.

I am deeply involved with Oklahoma’s Interfaith Alliance, and one of the issues that I strongly identify with is the organization’s belief that we must have a compassionate federal government that accepts its responsibility for promoting general welfare by enacting laws that stimulate full employment.

Throughout Oklahoma, I have seen so many situations where business is just not doing the right thing. In Tulsa, there is a pickle factory that brought over Indian men to work in its factory and proceeded to treat them terribly. There are so many factories moving to Mexico because these companies believe that cheap labor is their silver bullet in the marketplace. Instead, outsourcing only serves to exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor. If it continues this way, we’re going to have mass unemployment.

For 16 years, I worked at a school, and I am now very concerned about the move here to privatize support staff in schools.

We need a change in politics. We need leadership that is going to protect workers and promote policies that will make this country safe and strong for our next generation.