Untouched and Still Possible

The cusp of the New Year is always a moment for pause and reflection, looking back over the winding paths that have brought us to the present while gazing ahead toward the road stretching before us. Here at Side With Love, we too join in this practice of breathing in all that has been, and exhaling our hopes for all that is to come. 

2021 brought us both the unprecedented, and the all-too-familiar. And while we could catalogue all the heartbreaks of what it means to be alive in this moment, at this turning of the year, your Side With Love team is choosing to look back on this year through the lens of gratitude. Today, we reflect and offer our deep thankfulness for our life-giving faith, for the movements that are leading us and imagining a new world into being, and for YOU–Unitarian Universalists across the land who are doing the brave, difficult, gratifying, maddening, mundane, critical work of embodying our faith in our shared work for justice. 

There are so many inspiring stories of your witness and your action, and we are blessed to hear them day in and day out as we collaborate with UU individuals, congregations, and organizations. Today, we lift up just a few of these beacons of hope: 

Image includes photos of UUs at various public witness events, holding signs and showing banners. Text reads: "We offer our deep thankfulness for YOU - Unitarian Universalists across the land who are doing the brave, difficult, gratifying, maddening,

  • During the critical runoff election in Georgia, our UU the Vote volunteer Squads ran 14 phone banks in partnership with Reclaim Our Vote, training and supporting over 800 volunteers to make calls to voters in Georgia. UU the Vote contributed more volunteer time and organizing than any other 501(c)3 non-partisan organization in Georgia.

  • Unitarian Universalists answered the call of Water Protectors to show up to fight the construction of the Line 3 Pipeline. On several occasions, and in collaboration with an interconnected network of UU organizations, UU activists showed up, putting their bodies on the line and supporting the leadership of the Anishinaabe and Lakota peoples leading the #StopLine3 movement. 

  • More than 170 people made up 21 cohorts of our It Starts With Faith: Organizing School. These teams worked together to deepen their skills, strategize about their shared work, and sharpen their political analysis. These teams are now putting their learnings into inspiring practice. To name just a few examples, the DRUUMM cohort is focusing on the 8th Principle, the new Kentucky state action network (SAN)  is working for reproductive justice, our North Carolina SAN is organizing for fair mapping and hosting a defund police camp, and UUs in Schenectady, NY have been mobilizing for the Freedom to Vote Act. 

  • UU congregations continue to show up prophetically in their communities, meeting the political moment with skill and courage. During the national #Faiths4ClimateJustice week of action this fall, several UU congregations engaged in or hosted local events, such as First Unitarian Society of Madison, who organized an interfaith demonstration at the Capitol building to collect and send messages to the United Nations prior to their 26th Climate Change Conference. 

  • More than 40 Unitarian Universalists traveled to Washington, D.C. in October to participate in the People vs. Fossil Fuels week of action. The week centered Indigenous leadership and youth organizing, and brought our UU kin into movement and solidarity with thousands of people and partner organizations who are fighting for a fossil-free future. Dozens of UUs were arrested at the White House and the Capitol as they engaged in civil disobedience with the GreenFaith delegation to tell President Biden and Congress to build back fossil free. Read UU young adult leader Zoë Johnston’s firsthand account of the experience here. 

  • In the first three months following the launch of Side With Love’s Action Center, UUs have participated in more that 50 justice-centered events, both local and national, with nearly 3,000 people engaging. Most recently, on the national day of action for the Freedom to Vote Act, 10 congregations hosted or participated in their own distributed actions in local communities.

  • Close to 100 UUs from across the country converged at the Poor People’s Campaign national action earlier this month, urging the passage of both Build Back Better and the Freedom to Vote Act. Six UU clergy and 2 lay leaders engaged in non-violent moral direct action, including UUA President Susan Frederick-Gray. 

There is so much we are grateful for, today and every day. It is such a gift to be in an ever-deepening relationship with this network of faithful, courageous people working to build a world in which all people are truly free. 

We know that time is not linear–we spiral forward and back, again and again, generation after generation. And yet, at certain precious moments, we can find the stillness of a long pause, perched on the threshold between past and future. As the poet W.S. Merwin writes:

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

–W.S. Merwin, “To the New Year”

 

We are so thankful to be in the work with you, sharing our faith that another world is possible. 

 

In faith and solidarity,

The Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team (Adrian Ballou, Michael Crumpler, Audra Friend, Rev. Ranwa Hammamy, Rev. Ashley Horan, Susan Leslie, Jeff Milchen, Nicole Pressley, Rev. Cathy Rion Starr, & Aly Tharp)

P.S. Want to go deeper with Side With Love in the new year? Subscribe to our newsletters, join one of our volunteer Squads, and host or join an upcoming event.



Side With Love