| | | | | | Racial Justice Cannot Wait “One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness is for, but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light.” James Baldwin As Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ), we are called by our Principles to promote social justice and to vehemently oppose unjust, inhumane public policies everywhere. The recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks appall and shock us, as do the killings and violence against so many more Black and Brown people by the hands of law enforcement throughout our history. Bob Denniston, Board Chair
Pablo DeJesus, Executive Director | | | | UUSJ Welcomes The Supreme Court Decision on DACA UUSJ welcomes the June 18 Supreme Court decision to uphold Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). We admire the immigrant youth who organized and fought for this, many of whom work on the frontlines in health care, food, and education jobs. Our country is stronger and enriched by their lives. We strongly urge the Senate to pass legislation providing them with a pathway to permanent legal residence and citizenship. Meanwhile, we join grassroots supporters and activists in remaining vigilant and ready to challenge any further attempts to end DACA and deport Dreamers. Charlotte Jones-Carroll, Board Secretary
Immigration Justice Task Group
Pablo DeJesus, Executive Director | | | | Pablo DeJesus on Systemic Racism & Poverty And now we add Carlos Ingram-Lopez of Tucson, Arizona and Rayshard Brooks of Atlanta, Georgia to the list As a person of color--a Latino, cisgender male--who has had troubling interactions with police, I am angry at the never-ending nagging fear and worry when dealing with police. And the seeming indifference of my fellow Americans. I am livid. ESTOY HARTO YA! (I'm fed up!) Now is the time for living our UU faith out loud, rather than retreating to intellectual principles. Now is the time to stand for compassion and justice. Now is the time to act in love and solidarity with all those affirming that Black Lives Matter!!! | | | | | | | | | | | July Write Here! Write Now! Tell our U.S. Senators to Take Moral Action to End Police Violence and Support the Justice in Policing Act In support of recent nationwide demonstrations calling for major changes in police practices and addressing racial injustice, UUSJ’s July Write Here! Write Now! the letter-writing campaign will urge senators to take action on the Justice in Policing Act (H.R.7120 / S.3912), developed by the Congressional Black Caucus. The bill passed in the House and now awaits Senate consideration. (See related news from General Assembly on the Action of Immediate Witness in the UU News and Events section.) The July WHWN issue briefing will be held on July 6, 3-4pm ET via Zoom. Sign up HERE. You will receive a WHWN handout with talking points and a sample letter. | | Urge Your Senators to 'Secure Our Vote' with UUSJ's Action Alert  UUSJ’s Write Here! Write Now! June campaign asked senators for $4 billion in the next stimulus package for states to prepare for the November elections. (The House has already passed the HEROES Act.) Changing the way we vote is expensive, and state budgets are stretched to the breaking point. The coronavirus remains a threat, so if we want to have the most important election of our lives be free, fair, secure, and safe, we must be able to register online, vote by mail, and have safe polling places. And we need a strong U.S. Postal Service. If you haven't already, tell your senators that we deserve a free, fair, safe, and secure election — and time is running out. Act now to help ‘Secure Our Vote and support the U.S. Postal Service. | | | | | | Aquene Freechild of Public Citizen was one of our guest speakers at the June briefing on the key features and status of legislation that informed UUSJ’s “Secure Our Vote” focus. | | | | “To Vote Is Our Sacred Duty” -- UUs Tell How They Learned Voting Is Important UUSJ encourages story-telling as a key part of advocacy. The power of personal narrative cannot be refuted and can overcome “talking points only” arguments. In the June Write Here! Write Now! letter-writing campaign, several UUs recounted memories of learning why voting is important and the sacrifices family members made to vote. Here’s just one: To vote is our sacred duty, as I learned from my grandfather back in the 1940s. He was a dairy farmer in Tennessee who supported a family but had very little savings. Those were the days of the poll tax to prevent poor and mainly Black residents from voting. The alternatives to paying the tax were to stay home or to earn the right to vote by giving a day’s manual labor. My grandfather chose the latter - a day of hard labor to cast his vote. You can believe I’ve voted in every election my entire life. | | | | | | | |  | UUSJ Mobilizing Mid-Atlantic Voters Kelsey Cowger -- our Reeb/UUSJ Voting Campaigns Organizer-- is busy this month working on voter registration and ballot access projects. Our already-active member congregations are growing their electoral projects while others are kicking theirs off. We will continue working with Reclaim Our Vote by writing postcards to North Carolina voters to help them avoid being purged from NC voter rolls. The partnership merges All Souls (DC) Unitarian’s Reeb Project's excellent anti-voter suppression and electoral work with UUSJ's commitment to legislative advocacy and UU denominational presence. Together, we can create a robust network of year-round justice activism, Kelsey says. We are also working with partner groups in Virginia and Pennsylvania registering new voters and helping registered voters switch to mail-in ballots (particularly in Virginia, where voting by mail went into effect July 1!). Watch UUSJ e-blasts for updates. Kudos to Kelsey and our joint project! Kelsey played a major role at UUA’s General Assembly 2020 in sessions convened by UU the Vote, briefing over 800 UUs on how to organize their congregations for effective voter mobilization. Last month, Kelsey met with UUSJ members via Zoom. Watch a video of her UUSJ session, review a link to her slides, and look at the project overview. Kelsey asks UUSJ members doing congregation-based voter mobilization or GOTV work to complete a survey essential for assessing the project’s capacity and power mapping. We appreciate your taking the time. | | | | “Storytelling As Advocacy” Workshop July 11, 1-4 pm ET  Want to “be the change?” We know that UUs love to advocate for social justice and many go beyond the talk and “walk the walk.” Yet in advocacy work, “stories often move hearts and then hearts move minds.”
Join us this month for a Zoom workshop on personal storytelling and effective advocacy – Your Story Can Create Change! Let us help you figure out what to say, how to say it, and how to share it. This free workshop -- led by Natalie Miller-Moore -- is supported by a grant from the UU Funding Program.
Story-telling can boost your efforts to get our legislators to create change in line with UU values. This can be through in-person meetings, public speaking or letter-to-the-editor, and op-ed writing.
For more information about this workshop email Advocacy@uusj.org or register HERE. Pass this flyer along to fellow advocates you think might be interested. | | | | We Thank Outgoing UUSJ Board Members Four UUSJ board members completed their terms at the end of June 2020. We thank Al Carlson of Reston UUC, Carmelita Carter-Sykes of Paint Branch UUC, John Gubbings of Cedar Lane UUC, and Lavona Grow of UUC Arlington for their dedicated service over the years. | | | | | | | Unitarian Universalist News | | | |  | Highlights from General Assembly -- “Rooted, Inspired and Ready” This year’s General Assembly, conducted all-virtual June 24-28, included a number of actions directly relevant to social justice issues. Among them: The final report of the Commission on Institutional Change -- Widening the Circle of Concern -- was presented along with several workshops dedicated to promoting the comprehensive findings based on three years of work by Commission members. UUSJ teamed up with UUs for a Just Economic Community for a virtual exhibit. UUSJ’s landing page can be viewed here. After GA, the UUA issued a release: “The Unitarian Universalist Association Says It’s Time to Defund the Police.” “During the first all-virtual General Assembly annual gathering, delegates of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) voted for its member congregations to find alternatives to policing and to pursue police abolition within Unitarian Universalist justice work. The vote passed with 82% voting "yes." “This moment calls us to be prophetic and to imagine a world without policing,” said UUA president, the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray. “Black and Indigenous people and other folks of color have already created alternatives to policing because these structures don’t keep them safe. We must follow the lead of these communities and imagine a world that centers collective care, community investment, and restorative justice, rather than surveillance, punishment, incarceration, and policing.” Read the full statement. The next eNews will include more from GA, including actions and information that affect UUSJ’s priorities. | | | | | | | | |  | Oppose Changes Narrowing Asylum Eligibility by July 15 The Administration is attempting to rush through drastic changes to regulations that govern asylum decisions. These changes narrow both the chance for due process and the legal standards used to define fear of persecution. Only 30 days for public comment are allowed, with a July 15 deadline. UUSJ urges all justice seekers to enter a public comment opposing these inhumane changes at regulations.gov, search for EOIR-2020-0003-0001. More information and a direct link are at www.immigrationjustice.us. Objectionable sections include proposed exclusion of gender as a factor (e.g. fleeing domestic abuse) for asylum eligibility and the unrealistic exclusion of anyone who has gone through more than one country to reach the US without seeking asylum in other countries first. The latter is an attack on Central Americans and anyone else unable to to fly directly to the US. Equally inhumane is the proposed exclusion of fear of gang recruitment — a reason many young Central Americans flee to the US at great risk. In addition, a new requirement that all members of a family unit must separately pass the “credible fear” test means that a mother considered for asylum could see her accompanying children deported. The proposed rule change is the Administration’s blatant attempt to rush through 11th hour changes that make it almost impossible for anyone to be granted asylum, much less those who are poor, fleeing violence and lacking legal representation. | | Law Enforcement Through An Immigration Lens Black immigrants are disproportionately more likely to be arrested, persecuted and incarcerated, compounding the impact of the hostile immigration enforcement system.* UUSJ’s Immigration Task Group has initiated an internal conversation about the intersectionality between racial justice and immigrant justice. Members note that policies to “reform police” did not work in the past, nor did “retrain police.” This moment of popular uprising calls for the transformation of law enforcement attitudes and practices towards all persons of color. While the outcomes are different, law enforcement treats immigrants badly with impunity, just as they treat Black people badly with impunity. UUSJ's immigration advocacy partners are in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the Task Group is looking for more partners who work with Black immigrants. The Task Group is committed to actions aimed at ending disproportionate persecution of all persons of color.(*Source: “The State of Black Immigrants,” Black Alliance for Just Immigration Report, 2014) Questions: cjonescarroll@aol.com | | | | | | | Environmental and Climate Justice | | Mt. Vernon UU’s Climate Action Team Launches Arts for Mother Earth MVUC! Arts for Mother Earth is an active branch of its Climate Action Team, an award-winning environmental initiative that is now long term. Its mission is to deepen MVUC’s love for and protection of all life on our planet. They use creativity and the arts to spark changes. With this mission in mind, they’ve launched a fabulous new Climate Action Google Classroom. UUSJ provided grant support for the project. See the project flyer HERE. | | | | | | | | | | Highly Successful And Likely Significant - Poor People's Campaign Digital Justice Gathering In 2019, when the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival announced plans for June 2020, nobody could have imagined the paradigm-shifting events of the past few months. Yet many UUs believed the nation was in a moral crisis. That we’d already descended into social, political, economic, and moral calamity. And that significant change would only come through a fusion movement led by those impacted and disenfranchised. The last few weeks have sparked a leap forward for this kind of movement-building. The June 20th milestone saw UUs join the nation in marking the debut of such a movement. The trio of broadcasts was viewed by over 2.5 million on Facebook alone, with many more tuned in by TV, radio, and other media outlets. People from 142 countries participated, so it was a global event. PPC trended nationally on Twitter, sent over 300,000 letters to state Governors and Congress, and saw a major uptick in people taking other online actions. PPC and the event were covered in the NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, All Things Considered, CNN, ABC News, CSPAN, and dozens of other national and local media. Press release HERE. You can find the full program at June2020.org which served as the launchpad for PPC’s new Jubilee Policy Platform. A portfolio of recommendations and demands designed to sunder the chains of interlocking injustices and policy violence. See what UUs coming together in fellowship for the PPC looks like in The Church of the Larger Fellowship's service on Sunday, June 14th, entitled "Everybody's Got a Right to Live - UUA and the Poor People's Campaign Worship." “Forward together, not one step back!” | | | | | | |  The Defending Our Democracy Task Group urges you to participate in two current nonpartisan actions in support of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s UU the Vote.
The UUA has teamed up with the Reclaim Our Vote program, which offers a number of actions using post-carding, phone-banking, and text-banking.
Ongoing voter suppression and voter-list purging have been disenfranchising millions of eligible voters -- especially voters of color. Reclaim Our Vote works in these voter suppression states. Our volunteers inform and mobilize voters of color to make sure they are registered, know how to get a ballot, and vote. It is a nonpartisan campaign of the nonprofit 501(c)3 Center for Common Ground. See Kelsey Cowger's section above in this eNews for more information, or sign-up online at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/reclaim-our-vote-signup. | | | |  Ask Your College
Only half of America’s 20 million college students voted in 2016, and each of us can help increase that percentage. Ask Your College is a growing, nonpartisan volunteer campaign to urge colleges and universities to empower every eligible student to vote.
Volunteers ask a college they care about to commit to actively working toward the goal of full student civic participation – and to make a plan now to register every eligible student to vote in 2020.
Now is the time to Ask Your College. Colleges need to implement best-practice student voter programs by the summer and fall. Your participation could help bring thousands more students to the polls in 2020. For additional information contact Fred Van Deusen (fredvandeu@gmail.com), or sign up online at http://uusj.net/wp1/ask-your-college/ | | | | | | Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ)
7750 16th St NW, | Washington, District of Columbia 20012
202-600-9132 | info@uusj.org | | | | | | | |
