Welcome to the Action Center Weekly Update. Each week, we’ll share:3
A brief analysis of critical issues in this political moment
Immediate actions you can take
Resources to deepen knowledge and strengthen our collective work to side with love
Nothing is inevitable. Justice movements are built by ordinary people who come together to defeat oppression and nurture a loving world. You are not alone. We have power. Together, we can create a just and thriving future.
Movements are strongest when we act together. Organize with your teams and networks, and take these actions in community. For practical tools, see our Organizing School and Skill Up resources.
Democracy
Core Principle: Democracy is not a destination but a practice rooted in interdependence and the worth and dignity of all. While authoritarianism consolidates power, we are the majority—and we must organize to build a truly multiracial democracy.
n multiple states, new laws are being enacted that increase the risk of eligible voters being removed from the rolls. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least six states have passed seven laws recently that lower the standards for voter-roll purges and rely more heavily on unreliable data sources for removal.
At the national level, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil-rights organizations warn that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) is facing what may be its greatest threat yet. A case currently before the Supreme Court of the United States asks it to limit or dismantle Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits voting practices that dilute the voting power of racial minorities—even when there is no explicit discriminatory intent.
History shows us the victory is won through multiple strategies. The right to vote and voting rights protects were not just won at the ballot box, but in creating skilled, aligned and powerful movements that were to transform people, systems, and conditions. This is our call, to embody the promise and the practice of democracy until victory is won.
Join: The Gathering on November 10, 8:00 PM - 9:15 PM ET, 7pm CT, 6pm MT, 5pm PT for a special update from UU the Vote. Meet the leaders who will be supporting UU the Vote 2026 which is being reimagined and expanded to meet this moment.
Read: State Voting Laws Roundup: October 2025
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/state-voting-laws-roundup-october-2025
Act: Help protect people from losing access to food:
Check in on your neighbors who rely on SNAP or WIC
Amplify and donate to mutual aid requests
Support your local food pantry, food bank, or mutual aid network
Donate to New Disabled South’s Food Assistance Fund
Contact your elected officials and urge them to take immediate steps to protect SNAP and WIC during the government shutdown
Donate to Hurricane Melissa relief efforts through the US Caribbean Strong Relief Fund, Global Empowerment Mission, Food for the Poor, American Friends of Jamaica, and World Central Kitchen
Gender & LGBTQ Justice
Core Principle: Every body is sacred. We affirm that trans people are divine, abortion is a blessing, and no one is disposable. Attacks on identity are designed to divide us—solidarity is our moral and strategic mandate.
The Update:
This week, federal courts once again targeted the rights of transgender people—this time by overturning a Biden-era rule that protected trans, gay, and lesbian patients from discrimination in healthcare. The Tennessee Attorney General celebrated the ruling, calling it a victory against what he labeled “radical gender ideology.” In reality, this decision threatens the basic safety and dignity of transgender patients nationwide and makes it harder for future administrations to restore these protections. Meanwhile, reproductive rights advocates are mobilizing across states to defend hard-won victories. In Missouri, voters are marking one year since abortion was re-legalized—even as state legislators attempt to undermine that decision with deceptive ballot measures and voter suppression tactics.
But we aren’t going to take it. Across the country, people are organizing, voting, knocking on doors, and refusing to back down. The same forces that seek to control our bodies and erase our identities underestimate the power of community, care, and collective action. We know what we’re fighting for—and we’re not giving up.
Take Action:
Find actions in your state - “This webpage showcases organizations in every state that are actively fighting against anti-trans legislation. It highlights their efforts to protect transgender rights, promote inclusivity, and advocate for policy changes to ensure equal treatment and opportunities for transgender individuals.” Find out more by Them
Resources:
Read:
“Federal judge vacates Biden-era rule protecting transgender patient from discrimination
A federal judge has vacated a Biden administration rule that extended anti-discrimination protections to gay, lesbian and transgender patients in federal healthcare programs.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti this week claimed victory in the case, saying the rule “force(d) radical gender ideology into every corner of American health care.” Skrmetti noted in a news release that the decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Missouri not only eliminates the current protections but “makes it more difficult for future administrations to revive them.” Read more from The Tennessee Lookout
Learn:
Learn about actions you can take with the ACLU - The ACLU works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
Join:
Saturday, November 1, 2025 – 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM
“It’s been one year since Missourians made history. One year since a majority of voters said YES to protecting abortion in our state constitution.
This past year has also been witness to intense attacks on the will of voters. Anti-abortion, anti-worker, anti-democracy politicians spent Legislative Session killing debate and repealing voter approved sick leave, forcing a deceptively worded-abortion ban on the 2026 ballot, and even entering a special session to try to choose your representatives for you with illegally gerrymandered congressional maps. But Missourians have won before and are ready to win again.
Join Abortion Action Missouri for a mega canvass to celebrate a year of legal abortion and to pick up your new NO on 3 yard sign! We’re going door-to-door to talk with our neighbors and to deliver yard signs throughout the region so everyone can SEE the majority of Mid-Missouri that supports reproductive freedom. We’ll have a brief training, knock on doors, deliver yard signs, and celebrate the anniversary of 2024’s historic victory of legalizing abortion together.”
Watch/Listen: Listen to the AT LIBERTY PODCAST to learn more about Skrmetti, Obergefell, and the Path Forward for LGBTQIA+ Rights with Trans ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio
Decriminalization & Immigration
Core Principle: Criminalization and dehumanization deny the dignity of our communities. Safety cannot come at the expense of others. As people of faith, we proclaim a future of care, abundance, and mutuality—not domination.
The Update:
The San Francisco Bay Area blocked ICE from militarizing their communities last week. Their rapid organized response builds on decades of organizing across faiths, sectors, and cities. This temporary success was not without harm: Rev. Jorge Bautista “was struck in the head with a pepper round fired by a US immigration agent as faith leaders protested the arrival of more than 100 US Customs and Border Patrol agents” (from Religious News Service). Now is the time for people of faith across the country to keep chipping away at the pillars of support for this administration’s idea of “order through dominance.” In order to create more true community safety, we must continue to address root causes of poverty and inequality while we resist the regime’s violent attacks on immigrant, Black, and brown communities.
Take Action:
National Immigrants Day is October 28th, a day to commemorate and acknowledge the contributions of immigrants to the U.S. Instead, our government is demonizing, kidnapping, and violating people who came to this country just to live. These attacks don’t just threaten immigrants; they threaten the rights and freedoms of all of us.
Attend or host an action with Disappeared in America: Weekend of Action to Protect Immigrants.
Use Into Action’s GIFs to stand with immigrants today and everyday.
Plan for Veterans Day events with the Vets Say No Coalition. Join veterans speaking out about the attacks on our cities, and saying NO to cuts to services, NO to military occupation of our cities, and NO to tyranny. Join the National Call October 28th, attend or host a solidarity visibility event in your city or town on November 11th.
Resources:
Read:
As ICE raids tear through communities, young children have been forcibly separated from their parents. That is the case for a 13-year-old boy in Everett, Massachusetts who was taken hundreds of miles away from his mother without her knowledge.
Learn:
What’s this about 3.5%? More from Erica Chenoweth and team about Translating Protest Movements into Policy Change," like this quote from Liz McKenna: “Successful movements must build durable bases of leaders and teams at the state level who do year-round organizing, not just build voter mobilization sandcastles every two or four years that get wiped out after an election...Instead of asking, “How many people showed up?” After a protest, organizers need to be asking: How many committed leaders did you develop who can now recruit and develop others? How many local teams meet monthly to figure out how to advance goals? How many volunteers moved from marching in a protest to organizing? What new constituencies did you reach?"
Abolition is Faith Formation: Starting Places for Congregational Study (connected with the Congregational Study Action Issue passed by our UU General Assembly in 2025)
Join:
United We Dream’s 2025 Digital Congress: Uniting in the Face of Adversity, Sunday November 9th
Climate Justice
Core Principle: A just and loving world is also a flourishing one. A fossil-free future is possible, where clean energy is a human right and all beings thrive. To get there, we must create new systems, norms, and practices.
The Update:
Is the Environmental Protection Agency protecting us or corporate polluters? The EPA’s stated mission is to protect human health and the environment, ensuring that “Americans have clean air, land and water; that environmental risks are based on the best available scientific information; and that federal laws protecting human health and the environment are administered and enforced fairly, effectively and as Congress intended;” among other important responsibilities to the American public.
Sadly, this taxpayer-funded agency seems to be more concerned with removing the regulations designed to ensure clean air, land, and water to allow corporations to pollute as they please with no public accountability. From removing critical data to attempting to repeal the legal basis for regulating pollution, the EPA seems committed to accelerating climate disruption.
According to the American Lung Association, nearly half of people in the U.S. are breathing polluted air; that’s 156 million people who are breathing unhealthy air that puts their lives at risk. Poor air quality leads to reduced lung function, increased risk of asthma complications, heart attacks, heart failure, and death. The American Heart Association affirms that exposure to air pollution can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, arrhythmias, heart failure, and can play a role in high blood pressure and diabetes.
Like all climate-related injustices some of us are harmed worse than others. A person of color is up to three times as likely as white individuals to live in a community with a failing grade on all three pollution measures. This is just one of the many ways that Climate Justice is Social Justice.
Requiring companies to report their Greenhouse Gas emissions (the pollution that causes much of our poor air quality and drives climate change) means that we can fight back against pollution in our communities.
Often, people think that the climate crisis is too big or too complicated to make a difference or that the impacts of climate change are theoretical and won’t happen for a long time, but the reality is that climate change is happening now, it’s impacting everyone, and there is always something we can do to protect our communities. Submit a public comment to oppose the effort to repeal the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Requirements today. Public comments are accepted until November 3, 2025.
Take Action: (2–3 partner actions)
Submit a Public Comment against the proposed repeal of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Requirements by November 3, 2025. The Environmental Protection Association wants to make it easier for large, industrial polluters to pollute. Since 2009, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program requires industrial polluters to report their annual emissions. This effort aligns with the EPA’s recent move to eliminate the Endangerment Finding which affirms that greenhouse gas emissions harm public health. The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is critical to measuring the pollution that drives climate change and disruption; repealing it would hamper climate progress and endanger public health. Read more on Side With Love’s Holding the EPA Accountable page.
You can send comments, identified by Docket Id. No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0186, by any of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.
Mail: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Office of Air and Radiation Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460.
While it’s best to submit a personal public comment via the instructions above, you can also submit a pre-written comment at the Climate Reality Project.
Resources:
Read:
American Lung Association’s 2025 State of the Air Report
American Public Health Association’s Climate Changes Health: Respiratory Health
American Heart Association Air Pollution, Heart Disease and Stroke
Join:
Green Sanctuary 2030 Monthly Office Hours
November 5, 2025 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET
Did you know that the completely revitalized Green Sanctuary 2030: Mobilizing for Climate Justice has just one requirement for annual Recognition? Monthly Office Hours are here to anyone with questions on how Green Sanctuary 2030 can support UUs to transform our congregations through climate justice. Review the short Orientation Video then come to the office hours to get all your questions answered. Current Green Sanctuary 2030 Teams, this time is for you, too!
Carbon Neutral by 2050 - Green Sanctuary 2030 Community Meeting
November 19, 2025 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM ET
The Boise UU Fellowship has committed to become Carbon Neutral by 2050 as part of their Green Sanctuary 2030 commitments. Engaging the entire congregation in a 2023 special appeal “Imagining A Carbon Neutral World,” BUUF launched their carbon neutral campaign which will focus on reducing the BUUF carbon footprint and supporting members to reduce their individual emissions while also building strong relations with community groups doing mitigation work. Come together for shared learning and mutual supports with other UUs transforming our congregations through climate justice. Green Sanctuary 2030 community meetings take place on the third Wednesday of the month at 4PT - 5MT - 6CT - 7ET for 90 minutes.
Watch/Listen: [Podcast/Video]
Climate Justice is Social Justice Side With Love’s Climate at the Intersections Video Series
How does environment affect our health? American Public Health Association
Together, we practice the world we long for. Together, we win.