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DECEMBER 2024

Reflection

Nine notes in the key of despair

First note:
I had the perfect election night. I went to bed at my normal time, soaking in the bad but not definitive news. And then I woke at 5:00 a.m. because Pat (spouse), who had knee replacement surgery two weeks earlier, needed cold packs to relieve her pain. I checked the news . . . the election was just called for Trump. So, the good news is that I didn’t stay up all night stewing in despair. Everything else was bad.

Two:
The January/February 2024 issue of Atlantic Magazine was themed “If Trump Wins.” Among the short essays my favorite magazine explored were what he would do to hurt immigrants, limit women’s rights, politicize the Justice Department, and strangle democracy. The overall message was that Trump’s election would be terrible, so do everything you can not to let it happen. Most Americans don’t read the Atlantic or fact-based mainstream media. They have their own news bubble crowned by Fox News and Joe Rogan. They were suffering from inflation and didn’t care that the inflation rate was way down from its worst and that the U.S. economy was the envy of the world. 

Three:
Trump voters got what they chose: billionaires in control and a likely boost in tariffs to protect American jobs, even if, surprise, tariffs raise prices for everyone, leading to the inflation they hate and fear. And, in a nation of immigrants, a purge of immigrants seeking a better life.

Four:
A poem written in 1946 by Martin Niemöller, a German pastor, warns a holocaust can begin with incremental purges… [continue reading]

Micheal works through his despair by writing, other ideas here: 

 

Michael Thoryn

Michael Thoryn is a member of the UUSJ Democracy Action Team and, for 38 years, a member of Cedar Lane UU Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland. He was a writer/editor/ speechwriter at public and private organizations, ending his working career at the Federal Highway Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation. He is pessimistic about the next four years and worried about our democracy. (But we are helping each other work through the despair.)
 

Events

 

The Climate Fight Ahead
Sponsored by Make Polluters Pay

Tuesday, December 3
6:00 p.m. ET • 5:00 p.m. CT • 4:00 p.m. MT • 3:00 p.m. PT
RSVP (in-person and online)

The fight for climate justice continues! Join allies in the People Versus Fossil Fuels for a rally indoors and online. Gather with movement leaders and leading members of Congress to learn how we can continue to push for climate, clean energy, and environmental justice during a Trump Administration.

One voice. One team. One movement. Now is the moment!
Democracy Leaders' Gathering
Hosted by the UUSJ Democracy Action Team
 
Wednesday, December 3
7:30 p.m. ET • 6:30 p.m. CT • 5:30 p.m. MT • 4:30 p.m. PT
RSVP (online)
 
The threats to our democracy are manifesting in the lame-duck session of Congress and transition to a new administration. We will continue discussion of what this means. Our tactics may change, but the need for a strong, inclusive, pro-democracy movement is real.
 

Know Your Rights, Know Your Power, 2025 and Beyond
Hosted by United We Dream

Tuesday, December 10
6:30 p.m. ET • 5:30 p.m. CT • 4:30 p.m. MT • 3:30 p.m. PT
RSVP (online)

With a second Trump administration about two months away, immigrant rights organizations are preparing and empowering immigrant communities to fight back against the deportation force. Knowing Your Rights is one of the most powerful tools to keep yourself, your loved ones, and your community safe––especially in any interaction with law enforcement.

 

Virtual National Town Hall Meeting
Hosted by Fair Share America

Thursday, December 12
3:00 p.m. ET • 2:00 p.m. CT • 1:00 p.m. MT • 12:00 p.m. PT
RSVP (online)

Join Fair Share America, friends in the Fair Tax Coalition, as they discuss what we know regarding the landscape and preparations for the tax battles ahead. One thing that is clear––President-Elect Trump and his billionaire friends have their sights on another round of tax cuts for the rich and corporations. But how and when? What will be their rationale and talking points? How might we respond to that agenda item?

 

Undivided: Thoughts about Faith, Race, and Politics After the Election
Hosted by UUs for Social Justice

Tuesday, December 17
8:00 p.m. ET • 7:00 p.m. CT • 6:00 p.m. MT • 5:00 p.m. PT
RSVP (online)

Hear from Hahrie Han, Ph.D., about her new book Undivided​: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, its about faith and race in America. You can buy it here.

Professor Han has written for outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others. She is an award-winning author of four books and numerous articles published in leading scholarly outlets, including the American Political Science Review, the American Sociological Review, Nature Human Behavior, PNAS, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and elsewhere. She also acted as co-convenor of a Policy Advisory Committee for the 2008 Obama campaign.

Han speaks extensively on how some grassroots organizations translate their people's engagement into political power and how people become motivated to participate in politics, looking particularly at the means of engaging underprivileged populations in political action.

Join UUSJ to hear her reflections on her new book, Undivided​, and scholarly thoughts about faith, race, and politics after the election.

Featured Actions

 

The Senate Must Confirm Every Pending Judicial Nominee Now

Take Action: Tell your Senators to confirm every Judge. Federal judges serve for lifetime appointments, so these positions must be filled by candidates dedicated to upholding the Constitution and our democracy. In the remaining weeks of the 118th Congress, the Senate should confirm all pending judicial nominees. With 16 lifetime nominees pending on the floor right now and more to be reported out of Committee in the coming weeks, the Senate must be intentional in ensuring all pending judicial nominees are confirmed by the end of the year.

 
 

Pass the Fulfilling Promises to Afghan Allies Act in the NDAA

Take Action: Tell Congress to put the FPAAA in the NDAA. We are at a critical moment in the years-long fight to secure a safe future for those who were evacuated to the U.S. after helping our forces in Afghanistan and standing up for human rights in their war-torn country. Tens of thousands of our allies, whom we evacuated in August of 2021, are still languishing in this country with no promise of permanent residency.

 

Congress Must Act for Dreamers and other DACA Recipients!

Take Action: Tell Congress to Defend the Dreamers and DACA. DACA was never meant to be a permanent solution; it was intended to provide temporary protection and give Congress time to enact a permanent solution. Furthermore, since prior court cases have resulted in injunctions barring new applications for DACA protection, their only hope is for Congress to pass legislation to provide permanent protection for childhood arrivals.

 

Sign the Petition to Congress: D.C. Statehood
The End of Home Rule for DC?

Join our Petition: Tell Congress you support statehood for Washington, D.C.! President-Elect Trump has threatened to “take over” D.C. if elected, calling the city a “nightmare of murder and crime,” reports Ike Allen for the Washingtonian, adding, “Amid Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Trump and his aides developed a plan for the federal government to take over DC’s police force, though it never came to fruition.”

UUs have supported Self-Government for the District of Columbia, since 1962. Since 2020, the people of Washington, D.C., have called for the exact representation enjoyed by Americans living in the 50 states. They want full voting representation in the U.S. Congress and an end to Congressional interference in local government. UUs support this! To resolve this, D.C. should become the 51st state, formed from the residential and commercial areas of the District of Columbia and preserving a smaller federal district as the nation's capital.

NEWS

 

Meeting the Moment, GA 2025 in Baltimore

Do you think General Assembly 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland, will be more important than anticipated as we UUs gather together to Meet the Moment? Would you consider volunteering with us to help plan our presence at GA 2025, whether you plan to attend or not?

GA 2025 will be within figurative "earshot" of the National Capitol, so we have unique opportunity to both showcase UUSJ and focus UU attention on the federal forum.  We are therefore looking for volunteers to help us plan a strong showing. We can fit you and your skills into our approach for GA 2025 in many ways. Volunteering with us in preparation for GA is a great opportunity to provide behind the scenes support for social justice.

The first step is to know who is willing, and available, so please fill out our interest form.

 

Defending Our Democracy
Fred Van Deusen, Democracy Action Team Convener (Democracy@uusj.org)

 

Regarding that Result, that Mandate

 

Surprising Votes in 2024

Gabriel R. Sanchez, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative, offers a commentary, A deep dive into the 2024 Latino male electorate, looking at one of the most surprising results—Latino male voter behavior—highlighting three points: 

  • Trump’s support among Latino men was highest among Latinos under 40.
  • Public policy (particularly the economy) was the driving force for Latino men, not gender bias or discrimination.
  • The door remains open for Democrats to bring Latino men back into the tent.

Elaine Kamarck, Founding Director, Center for Effective Public Management, Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, Bookings, offers a commentary, Women favored abortion rights but not Harris looking at gender gap dynamics and highlighting three points:

  • Many expected that a gender gap in favor of Harris would counterbalance weaknesses in other parts of the electorate and help Harris win, but it didn’t happen.
  • A method for protecting abortion (state referenda) had reduced the need for voters to vote for pro-choice candidates since they could still vote to keep abortion legal.
  • On October 1, Trump, after a serious meeting with his staff where he was shown just how costly his support for abortion bans could be, issued a statement saying he would not support a federal abortion ban.

A team commentary, also from Bookings, In victory or defeat, reckoning with the racial politics of the 2024 election will help the country move forward looks at some of the black vote dimensions, as does Nesrine Malik for The Guardian, in The Long Wave: Unearthing the real story of Black voters at the US election.

 

Time to grow our collective UU power

This has been a very difficult time for everyone who cares deeply about our UU values, the future of this country, and our democracy. Many, perhaps most of us, have been experiencing some of the various stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, or despair, as in Michael Thoryn’s article, “Nine Notes in the Key of Despair.”

For many of us on the Democracy Action Team, and we hope for many of you, we are now channeling our grief and anger into action. For the last ten months, we have been sponsoring meetings with UU democracy leaders from congregations around the country. Our focus has been on helping build a powerful pro-democracy movement, and we have succeeded in doing that. In recent months, we have been focused on the election, helping congregations connect with organizations for postcarding, letter writing, texting, phone banking, and canvassing. We have mobilized many of our members to engage in these activities. 

Now, it is time to pivot into the legislative and policy accountability phase between elections. We must continue building power toward a pro-democracy movement and extend the contours of that work, and those skills, into civic society work for a healthy democracy.

 

Create Your Congregation-Based Democracy Action Team 

This is a critical time in our country, and we must build a powerful pro-democracy movement that can oppose the very strong and growing authoritarian movement in this country. The tilt in the U.S. toward oligarchy, plutocracy, and perhaps even fascism is an existential concern.

We UUs must participate in this effort and, in some cases, play a leading faith role with the many pro-democracy groups coming together in coalitions. For the good of this country, we must build our collective power as UUs; we must figure out how to “carry water” wherever possible in our communities, counties and municipalities, states, and the federal forum. 

Many of your congregations have worked with us on the UU the Vote efforts. This is a perfect time to reorient these working teams into congregational Democracy Action Teams. Such teams have two main interrelated roles: countering the authoritarian movement and helping to build the pro-democracy movement. We have created some materials for building the movement on our website, Democracy in 2024 (see that here). 

We will continue developing counteractions and materials as the need for them unfolds. We will need your congregation’s help to take these actions. Email us at Democracy@uusj.org.

Our next Democracy Leaders meeting is Tuesday, December 3, RSVP for the meeting.

 

Useful Strategic References

Our Democracy Team has been meeting every month since February and has developed into a robust group. Below is some helpful information from the November meeting:

Environmental and Climate Justice
To connect with UUSJ about our activities (info@uusj.org)

Stop the GulfLink Oil Export Terminal in Texas

Our friends at Earthworks, part of the People Versus Fossil Fuels coalition, are asking us to take two actions this week since Secretary Pete Buttigieg's Maritime Administration (MARAD) has until December 12, 2024, to approve or deny the license to construct Texas GulfLink.

Take action in solidarity with Gulf South communities resisting oil and gas to oppose permits for the Texas GulfLink crude oil export terminal. This massive project could export up to 1 million barrels of crude oil daily. The U.S. is already exporting record amounts at 4 million barrels per day of dirty crude. The EPA recently cleared a final hurdle for approval of the project. This is despite its own environmental justice and air quality concerns and five years of opposition from the local community.

(1) Write to Secretary Buttigieg: CLICK HERE to tell the Dept. of Transportation and Maritime Administration to stop GulfLink.  

(2) Use and share the Action Network: Use the Partner Toolkit to share the above action with your communities, networks, or listservs!

 

Environment and Climate Coverage:

 

Immigration Justice
Steve Eckstrand & Terry Grogan, Immigration Action Team Conveners (Immigration@uusj.org)

Responding to Consequential Election Results

UUs and our allies are, of course, deeply concerned about the implications of the November 5 election results. Regarding the values we advocate for in the immigration space, the results appear to strengthen less supportive forces and are often hostile to the policies we pursue. 

We stand firm in not abandoning those values. On November 7, we joined a joint faith community statement re-committing to solidarity with immigrants, refugees, and newcomers. 

See the press release, including a quote by our Executive Director, Pablo DeJesús.

 

What Mass Deportations Could Look Like

To get a sense of how possible mass deportations are and what that might look like in an operational posture, review “The Largest Deportation Operation in American History” from This American Life (17-minute radio segment), where Producer Nadia Reiman examines what that could look like on the ground. Nadia reports Jason Houser, former chief of staff for ICE under Biden, saying: “I think the first 90 days is going to be hell. You're going to see the buses. You're going to see the migrants in your home—not just blue cities, red cities—Miami, Houston, Charlotte—like, red states—Kansas City, St. Louis."

You can also review Opinion: What ‘Mass Deportation’ Actually Means, WaPo, where Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council (AIC), argues, “So the question is not whether mass deportation will happen. It’s how big Mr. Trump and his administration will go and how quickly.”  Also by AIC, Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy. And by CNN, Trump team maps out Latin America strategy as part of mass deportation plan.

 

Urging Biden to Protect Immigrants as he Leaves

UUSJ has been supporting the Work Permit Coalition in its efforts to encourage the Biden administration to take two actions as soon as possible and recently signed on to a letter that requests that the Biden administration:

  • Finalize the interim Final Rule entitled Asylum Eligibility and Public Health. This rule would rescind a Trump administration rule that classified emergency public health concerns related to a communicable disease as a danger to the security of the United States and, among other things, made individuals who were physically present in a country in which such a communicable disease was prevalent ineligible for asylum; and
  • Issue a rule that would make the temporary final rule, which increased the automatic extension period for certain renewal employment authorization documents (EAD) from up to 180 days to up to 540 days, permanent. 

TPS for Nicaragua Now

In related news on what Biden can do, see UUSC's recent blog post, “Biden Has 60 Days to Protect Immigrant Communities,” where they ask UUs to call on Biden to issue TPS for Nicaragua now and argue “thousands of Nicaraguan families face deportation to danger—unless the President acts.” 

 

Collaboration in Coalition

UUSJ is also working with our partners in the Interfaith Immigration Coalition (IIC) on a series of broader communications containing urgent recommendations to the outgoing Biden Administration on what they can do in their remaining time in office to protect immigrants, as well as to the incoming Trump team highlighting actions the immigration community supports and those it will likely oppose.

As part of that work with the IIC, we are soliciting stories for #ThisIsWelcome, a campaign to amplify stories of welcome and work for justice and opportunity for all. Ways you can join:

  1. Sign our #ThisIsWelcome Petition urging elected officials and candidates to denounce hate and prioritize national immigration policies that uphold justice and opportunity.
    -  Individuals of any faith background can sign here
    -  Organizations can endorse here
  2. Share a Story. Submit a story of welcoming newcomers or your own story of being welcomed to the U.S. Consider these guidelines for respectful story-telling.
  3. Explore resources by the IIC, its members, and partners on asylum, refugee protection, family-based immigration, common myths, and more!
  4. Raise your voice online using this social media toolkit! Post online to show you support the call to welcome the stranger.
 

Policies Affecting Immigrants and How to Respond

There have been many news stories and analyses on the effects of the results for immigration policy and immigrant populations. Here are some of the key ones that our immigration team is tracking as we chart our course for the future:

If you want to Take Action: Call on Congress and the Biden administration to protect refugees and newcomers before Trump takes office, with our friends at Church World Service.

 

Economic Justice
To connect with UUSJ about our activities (info@uusj.org)

H.R. 9495, the Non-profit Killer Bill May Return 

In November, after two rounds of voting, the House passed H.R. 9495, "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act," by 219-184. See the letter in which UUSJ joined on this issue.

The bill gives the administration the authority to strip the tax-exempt nonprofit status of any organization by simply asserting that the group supports terrorists. No evidence or due process is required, and once the finding is issued, the group effectively ceases to exist as a legal entity. This amounts to unfair and secret proceedings. (It would be helpful if the hostage provisions in the bill could move on their own; some support for H.R. 9495 is based on that provision rather than support for the non-profit measures).

Nevertheless, hidden in the results was a victory. That final vote means we helped pressure 39 more House members to vote no, specifically that 34 votes switched and five nonvoters from the first round voted no in the second. That was due to the support you showed, along with many others, applying pressure to various offices. While we lost the vote, advocate leaders believe we’ve won the larger battle—this is now seen as partisan and controversial enough that it will not be very easy to move in the Senate during the lame-duck session before the end of the year. Under Senate Majority Leader Schumer, the bill is now expected to be put aside to confirm judicial nominees.

Stay tuned for additional information and future actions. The bill will likely come back in the next session of Congress, and it is expected to have traction under Trifecta conditions with the GOP in leadership. 

 

A Cabinet for the Gilded Age

A new Americans for Tax Fairness report reveals Trump Appointees' extreme wealth and potential conflicts, finding that Trump's Cabinet average net worth is 616 times higher than that of an average American household. The report profiles several appointees and transition team members with a history of supporting economic policies that benefit themselves or large corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens. It also highlights their past and current potential conflicts of interest. It reveals that Trump's wealthiest nominees and transition team officials hold wealth that amounts to over $313 billion. In contrast, President Biden's cabinet was estimated to have a combined net worth of $118 million.

Even excluding Elon Musk—the world's richest man and Trump's Co-Director of the Department of Government Efficiency—the average net worth of his Cabinet is $616 million, or almost 616 times higher than most American households.

 
 

Imposing a Price for Workers

In a new piece, “GM, corporate greed, and the reason the Democrats lost the election,” Robert Reich argues, “Dems must condemn GM and other big corporations that are laying off workers despite record profits—and make loud and dramatic moves to stop them.”

At UUSJ, we look to systemic explanations and root causes, and we think Former Labor Secretary Reich has a point in looking at “corporate greed” as a principal root cause, and an important observation when he asks, “Why aren’t Democrats up in arms about this?”

 
 

Tax Policy Content and Clippings:

 
UUSJ is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law.
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