By Tom Maguire
Associate editor
Moviegoers have their roles too — in this case, social justice.
Jail Ministry is having its annual Movie Night fundraiser May 3 with its first Envelope Challenge.
“What I love about this challenge is, you can give $1. You can give $7, you can give up to $150. And if we fill every envelope we raise over $11,000. So for us, that’s very significant,” said Keith Cieplicki, coordinator of the diocesan Office of Jail Ministry.
Shown at 6 p.m. that Wednesday at Park Central Presbyterian Church, 504 East Fayette St., Syracuse, will be the 2018 movie “The Hate U Give.”
In its review of the movie, Catholic News Service said, “This compelling drama explores painful real-life issues of racial justice by fictionalizing them.” CNS added: “Ultimately, the picture points toward gestures of peace as the means of breaking the tragic cycle in which a resort to crime on the part of the poor as the only means of survival is met by a sometimes-trigger-happy response on the part of law enforcement. That’s a recipe viewers committed to Gospel morality will easily endorse.”
Due to language and content, the CNS classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
‘Encouraged to be brave’
Cieplicki said: “I think it’s a really solid movie. … I think people will walk away and think. … This movie is really about being brave enough to speak out for justice.” He hopes that moviegoers will walk away and “feel more encouraged to be brave about doing what’s right for people.”
On a typical day, he said, 450 individuals are incarcerated at the Onondaga County Justice Center, and the money from the moviegoers “is going to help us” supply resources, Cieplicki said.
Jail Ministry provides reading materials, socks, clothing and a Christmas party; serves as the eyes and ears of the community in the jail by acting on referrals from deputies and sergeants about inmate requests such as sending a certified letter or getting a power-of-attorney form signed and brought to their family; and speaking to probably 40 to 50 inmates over the phone four days a week. Also, Cieplicki meets monthly with the jail administration.
“There are so many things that need to still get done when a person’s in jail,” he said. “They’re trying to keep their job. They’re trying to keep their apartment or house. We are kind of the bridge between all that. … I’ve been to people’s homes and fed their cats.”
“We let the individuals in the jail tell us what they need,” he said. “We don’t tell them what we’re going to provide. … People ask me what the program for us is and I say we re-create it every day.”
Cieplicki is the only full-timer at Jail Ministry. The only other employee is part-timer Beth Schafer, “our spiritual presence in the jail,” where she works 20 hours a week. An estimated 150 volunteers help out too. Thirty-one people do one-on-one visits in the jail. And 97 people write letters to one to five inmates every other week, and a flyer goes out with it.
‘A letter is like gold’
“The men and women that get the letters, they are just so grateful,” Cieplicki said. “They’re so grateful that someone feels they’re valued enough” to send them something. He said anybody who has ever been in jail or prison will tell you: “A letter is like gold.”
Tickets for Movie Night are available at JailMinistrySyr.org. Donations are encouraged; all are welcome. Cieplicki said you can go online and donate through a credit card or PayPal, or you can take an envelope and then send a check. Or you can donate at the door.
There will be “great snack bags for the movie” and a “nice reception after the movie,” Cieplicki said. “So you can’t beat the price because whether you donate or not, we want everyone to make sure they know they are welcome. The fundraiser’s great, but community is what we’re about so everybody’s welcome.”
Coming in our May 11 issue: A volunteer in her 60s hates the idea of “someone feeling forgotten,” so she overcomes her unease and becomes a regular visitor to people in jail.
