Justice GA

Taking Justice General Assembly Home

On Sunday afternoon at Justice General Assembly, UUA vice-presidents Kay Montgomery and Rev. Harlan Limpert reported on resources you might use to help you bring your experiences and learnings from Justice GA back to your congregations. Included was information about witness and action initiatives, curricula for all ages, Beacon press books, discussion guides, and other resources to support your congregation or group as you faithfully consider your response to the related calls for immigration justice, racial justice, justice for indigenous people, and economic justice.

Watch video of the report, view the slide presentation, and read the transcript. Let us know about the conversations you are having in your congregation or group, actions you are taking, and resources that have been helpful. We are looking forward to sharing wisdom and experiences one with another as we move forward from Justice GA as Unitarian Universalist people of faith. -Ed.

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Education, Reflection, Witness and Action

Call to Arms

Our experiences at Justice General Assembly and in our own communities have taught us that the work of justice making is long haul work, work for our arms, our feet, our voices, and our hearts.  Rev. Marta I. Valentín offered us this prayer as we awaited the Supreme Court decision, and it is just as pertinent now as it was before General Assembly -Ed.

 

Spirit of Truth and Justice

Hear us as we ask that you

hold the collective anxiety

that permeates this fear-filled situation.

 

This is a call to arms.

 

Arms that will hold broken hearts,

and elated hearts

arms that wrap themselves around

a body, beaten and disfigured

in truth and metaphorically…

 

Arms that provide a strength

neither giver nor receiver

knew they possessed…

 

Arms that hold up

the sky of misplaced authority

and righteousness

from crashing down upon heads

struggling to be held high

as each shred of dignity is yanked

from their tired, over-used,

under-appreciated bodies.

 

This is a call for committed arms

to continue leading heads

and hearts

to know the facts

but feel the truth,

a call to remember

that the freedom we’ve been given

to swing our arms as wide and open

to the sun as we like

has come on the backs of humans

others wish were invisible.

 

This is a call to arm

ourselves with the facts

but feel the truth

borne out of the power of our

Unitarian Universalist love

and the balance of justice.

 

Marta I. Valentín

March 29, 2012

 

Rev. Marta I. Valentín is the minister at First Church Unitarian in Littleton, Massachusetts

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Education, Reflection, Witness and Action, Worship, Your Recipes

Standing with Families on the Side of Love

This week’s post, written by Susan Lawrence of the UUA Resource Development Office, lifts up the four-page immigration justice resource for families found in the summer issue of UU World.­-Ed.

“What’s an appropriate, effective way to engage children in immigration justice?”

For a religious professional, an RE volunteer, or any adult involved with raising a child, that question comes up right alongside our own call to immigration justice—because any call to justice we hear is a call we want our children to hear, too, as they grow in faith. We want to spark a child’s empathy. We want to create a sense of urgency, but without creating a heightened sense of fear. Most important, we want to invite children to see themselves as agents of change—people who can help.

The Family pages insert in the new UU World magazine (Summer 2012) offers a carefully crafted approach, with a set of real-life stories, exploration activities, and justice actions for all ages you can use to lift up immigration issues with children and multi-age groups. Because this pull-out section comes with UU World magazine directly to your home—the true cradle of faith development!—parents, caregivers, and religious educators are probably accustomed to using it to create family conversations, games, and reflection. But you can also share components of the Family pages in other contexts, and this issue’s insert, titled “Standing with Families on the Side of Love,”  makes an especially timely pairing with Justice GA. (more…)

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Education, Reflection

How Shall We Approach Justice General Assembly?

A the request of a number of my colleagues, this week’s blog post is adapted from reflections I offered at the UUA staff chapel several weeks ago. -Ed.

Two summers ago, on July 29 2010, I was restless, pacing, watching Facebook for word from Phoenix as one by one Unitarian Universalist leaders were arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The discussion prior to this had been riveting; some people were saying that the call that had come from our partners to protest SB 1070 was another call to Selma. At the recent General Assembly the vote was to go to Phoenix in 2012 at the request of our partners and hold a justice GA. Immigration justice had jumped from something I was generally aware of to something on the front burner of my professional life. I was paying attention. (more…)

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Reflection, Worship

The Doctrine of Discovery: The True Story of the Colonization of the United States of America

“The Doctrine of Discovery: The True Story of the Colonization of the United States of America”,  new fourteen-minute video, suitable for adults, young adults, older children, and youth, invites us to follow clues to how the Doctrine of Discovery is embedded in the cultural and historical narrative of the United States. Discover why our immigration justice partners in Arizona have asked us to learn about this story and join them as allies in calling for the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

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Education

United States Immigration: Theological Reflection and Discussion

Download United States Immigration: Theological Reflection and Discussion

We are pleased to announce the publication of  a collection of 22 brief excerpts from sermons and writings about the topic of immigration offered for Unitarian Universalist congregations. Each excerpt is followed by questions for discussion. The excerpts and discussion questions are suitable for in-person discussion groups and theological reflection groups, as well as for on-line discussion and individual reflection and journaling to help Unitarian Universalists prepare to engage in immigration justice work as an expression of their faith. Topics include Spiritual and Theological Grounding for Immigration Justice Work, Perspectives on Arrest for Acts of Civil Disobedience, Moral Perspectives on Economic and Legal Realities, and Visions. We’d love to know how you, your congregation, or your group make use of this material.- Ed

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Education, Reflection

Crossing Borders…

Rev. Ann Willever traveled with Borderlinks to the Arizona-Mexico border last month, part of a 23-person delegation that included nine youth and young adults, five ministers, and four seminarians. In this post, she shares some of her many stories from that trip. –Ed.

The Desert

After spending the night in the Borderlinks dorm in Tucson, we set out the next morning in two vans with our first stop Green Valley, just south of Tucson.  There we met Shura, a woman who volunteers with the Samaritans, whose mission is to prevent deaths in the southern AZ desert by providing water and first aid to migrants.  Shura welcomed us into her home where she had arranged an array of items collected from the nearby desert on her dining room table – things that had been carried or worn by migrants…things left behind when they were either apprehended by border patrol or overcome by dehydration or sun stroke:  clothing (including a small child’s Mickey Mouse sweater), shoes, children’s books, baby bottles, beautifully embroidered tortilla warmers.  A pair of high heeled shoes – perhaps for the job interview a migrant might anticipate when reaching the US.  She had many stories of encounters with migrants wandering in the desert over the years – one of the saddest had to be that of the 42 year old man suffering extreme edema who was searching for his son, who he hadn’t seen for two and half years. (more…)

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Education, Reflection, Witness and Action, Your Recipes

“Smuggle” a Banned Book to GA!

In this post, Roger Brewin of the Unitarian Universalist HUUmanists invites your participation in a project that unites UU humanists despite political differences of opinion, reflecting both humanist and UU values.- Ed.

An informal survey of humanists attending the 2011 GA, along with the previous debate among HUUmanist Board members over supporting a boycott of Phoenix, revealed deep divisions over a range of immigration related issues. When GA delegates voted to put together a Justice GA presence in Arizona, the HUUmanists Board chose to participate as fully as our differences would allow, which meant blending humanist values into the struggle for justice.  We chose to focus our efforts on economic justice issues, where we have more unanimity.

But we cannot be in Arizona without confronting the oppression felt by Latino/a people in that state, both those who are recent immigrants and those who are long time US residents and citizens.  This oppression was brought home to us when Arizona outlawed “ethnic studies” courses in public schools and removed  nearly 100 books that were used as texts or supplemental reading in these courses from classrooms in Tucson.  We cheered the efforts of Tony Diaz, the so-called “librotraficante” who smuggled nearly 1,000 copies of these books in a caravan from Houston to Tucson, setting up “underground libraries” to house the books and make them widely available to children and adults.

We determined to ask our members, indeed all Unitarian Universalists going to Phoenix, to join us as SmUUgglers of these books. We were initially hoping that 100 people would each buy one of the books and carry it in their suitcase to GA.  To date, more than150 people have agreed to do just that and we now will be able, with your help, to display and then donate at least two full sets of the banned books, during GA.

The right to read, to explore, to discuss new, different and even conflicting ideas – nothing could be more central to the humanist enterprise, nor more ingrained in Unitarian Universalist history.  The decision by Arizona political leaders to deny such opportunities, and the attempt to thoroughly control education and intellectual freedom of the school children of Arizona is an affront to all free people. No one need agree with the ideas in these books to know instinctively that to take them off classroom shelves is a bad idea. (more…)

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Education, Your Recipes

UUA Bookstore Sales Support Immigration Justice Partners

Thinking of bringing a banned book to Phoenix? Planning on purchasing books for yourself or your congregation? The UUA Bookstore is committed to the social justice mission of Justice General Assembly. Check out this announcement!- Ed.

Make any purchase from the UUA Bookstore entering the code PhoenixGA at checkout, and we’ll donate 5% of your purchase to The Comités de Defensa del Barrio (CDBs) and Puente AZ. These organizations performing vital human services and migrant justice work in Arizona are approved by the General Assembly Planning Committee. If ordering by phone at (800) 215-9076, be sure to mention the code PhoenixGA before you complete your purchase!

If sales using this code exceed $100,000 we donate 10% of each additional sale – up to a total contribution of $15,000!

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Education