Below is an anniversary letter I sent to the Pope (I sent him the first one at the end of 2013). This year, I also included a cc to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Written in both English and Spanish, I asked him to look at not only the crisis in higher education and how it deals with adjunct faculty, but also to help us with the ongoing crises of immigration and refugee families coming through the border.

As marginalized people, we are all in this together.

What can we do as citizens, and how can the Pope help us?

If anyone gives me hope for redemption — to do or say something not only about humankind but also about ALL education and how it is failing not only faculty but students — it may be Pope Francis. Indeed, including refugee families seemed a natural extension of this crisis, acutely multiplied.

I am thus asking the Pope to please help all adjunct faculty —and now, with us— all marginalized workers, all undocumented, all DREAMers in the United States.

If you would like any more information about my letter or pleas, do not hesitate to ask.

His Holiness, Pope Francis

PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino

Citta del Vaticano

Dear Pope Francis:

It has now been a year since I wrote to you about Professor Margaret Mary Vojtko, and Duquesne University’s treatment of her, although this university is not solely responsible for the suffering caused to her or to other adjunct faculty like her. A year later, Vojtko has become a symbol for all adjunct and contingent faculty teaching in the United States, appropriately, as universities —along with a socioeconomic system that does not provide necessary social guarantees— have become guilty of forcing undue hardships onto most of their faculty. Thus many lead a life that would never be considered “normal”: we do not have permanent jobs or contracts, or even a living wage.

This has not changed. On the contrary, it has only gotten worse.

The obliteration of the professoriate continues with relentless force. Every day the official count of tenured faculty at universities is less (only 16.7% are now tenured professors), and teachers who educate the society of the future, today’s students, are paid at or below minimum wage —that wage stipulated by law for any worker— even when they are in charge of forming these developing minds.

A year ago, I was waiting for the mail, and —innocently perhaps, naively, most probable— I thought that you might answer, that there might be a change in this unjust system. I did not expect a response directly from you, surely, but I wanted my colleagues to have some support; if not from you, then from someone in your office to tell adjunct faculty that our efforts were not in vain; that you would be on top of things, that you would take up our cause. I thought that you might do something, that at least you might send a letter to private and public university systems denouncing the dismantling of higher education; that the abuse of contingent faculty —and therefore of our students— had to stop. I wanted you, Holy Father, to understand that every faculty member, every one of us who had lost our positions, could not survive earning a living like this, fighting day and night, working in two, three, four colleges at a time accruing no decent pay worthy of our humanity, our education, our professional experience.

What disillusionment followed the silence of those months!

After thinking about it at length, however, point by point, detail by excruciating detail, I can understand your silence. I see the problems of the world, and I realize that we are only a grain in this vast ocean of sand.

I will always fight for adjunct faculty.

But we are part of a wider, more devastating, destructive system, where all marginalized people are forgotten, devalued, stepped on— by employers, by universities, by government.

I am now working on my own with the undocumented, the DREAMers (DREAM Act — Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors — this ongoing project is part of a US bill and has been the DREAMers’ struggle), with young people who want to study in universities but cannot. Although they have grown up and lived here all their lives, many universities will not let them study in their schools because they were not born on this side of the border. I wonder, then, why we have to have “sides of the border” when it comes to education? Why must we always maintain certain populations in darkness? Like adjunct faculty, who feel cloistered and afraid, DREAMers often feel terrified. Yet they plow ahead. And we must do the same.

And that is why I do what I do.

I try to build links between isolated populations, people who have no voice but who want one, people who cannot speak but desire to, whether by geography or by position or by nationality.

Everyone should have the opportunity to work, to study, and to live with dignity.

Two months ago I went to the border of the United States, in South Texas, to help refugee families fleeing violence in Central America, to come to the United States seeking protection. I return again this week to continue helping. But here many are rejected and mistreated. Many deny these families the dignity of a life free of violence and brutality. After months of wandering, some of them —almost all women with small children— they come to this country and are held for days, often times just like animals.

What has happened to us? Why do we lack mercy? Like the DREAMers, workers, adjunct faculty, refugees are a waste to society: we do not care!

Is this what piety has taught us?

What values are there today when adjunct faculty can earn less than $15,000 a year without health insurance, working 60 hours a week, while a few earn what amounts to an obscenity? What reward is there when store workers die sleeping in their cars because they have no money, or time, or chance to sleep a few hours at home before their next shift at another store that pays minimum wage? What blinds us to see the humanity of a Guatemalan mother, who speaks neither Spanish nor English, but K’iché, a Mayan language of the region, who flees with her children the violence of her country because she cannot take it anymore?

Why do we not cry when we see these children without shoelaces, destroyed with fatigue, yet not understanding why?

Help me understand this, my most Holy Father… And help us bring light to those in need: all DREAMers, all workers, all refugees, all adjunct and contingent faculty.

We all need God’s mercy; we all want to believe in the hope of your magnanimity as the highest representative of God the Father on earth. Last year I wrote you (I am attaching the letter so you can easily remember it). I repeat another letter this year, with the hope that you will answer me, not me necessarily, but all adjunct faculty —and now, with us— all marginalized workers, all undocumented in the United States, all DREAMers.

Besos, not borders,

Ana M. Fores Tamayo, Adjunct Justice

• Petition: https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/better-pay-for-adjuncts
• Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/AdjunctJustice
• Tumblr: https://adjunctjustice.tumblr.com

cc. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

P.S. The following people — from different professions, multiple regions, and varying faiths — have added their signatures below, expressing support of this letter.

• Peter D.G. Brown, Ph.D. Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, State University of New York; New Paltz Chapter President, United University Professions; Steering. Committee Coordinator, National Mobilization for Equity – https://nationalmobilizationforequity.org
• Joseph J. Fahey, Ph.D. Chair, Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice, www.cswj.us – Professor of Religious Studies. Founder, B.A. in Labor Studies. Manhattan College, New York
• William J. Lipkin Adjunct professor of History and Political Science. Secretary/Treasurer United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey. https://uafnj.nj.aft.org – President, AFT Adjunct/Contingent Faculty Caucus. Outstanding Older Worker of New Jersey, 2004
• Jack Longmate Adjunct English Instructor, Olympic College, Bremerton, WA; co-author, Program for Change – https://vccfa.ca/newsite/?page_id=587
• Vanessa Vaile of Mountainair NM, Precarious Faculty Network, https://www.precariousfacultyblog.com/
• Sr. Norma Pimentel Executive Director, Catholic Charities, Rio Grande Valley https://www.catholiccharitiesrgv.org
• Elaine Cohen
• John-Michael Torres Immigrant Rights Advocate, Communications Specialist, Mission, Texas
• Marnie Weigle California Part time Faculty Association, Director of Social Media, cpfa.org
• John Martin California Part time Faculty Association, Chair, cpfa.org
• Bonnie Massey California Part time Faculty Association, Director of Administration, cpfa.org
• Colette Marie McLaughlin California Part time Faculty Association, Director of Public Relations &
• Communication, cpfa.org
• María Yolisma García University of Texas at Arlington, student. NorthTexas Dream Team DREAMer Activist
• Adrian Tawfik, friend