Greetings dear ones:

We hope this finds you taking care and surrounded by warmth and community. Whether it is with others or in solitude, sending you some treats in this electronic holiday care package as we reflect on the year that has passed and prepare for our work ahead.

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Grateful to bring you our next installment in our bi-weekly messages with a prayer, an ancestor and a song speaking to our spirits. We hope these resources may offer what we need in order to be courageously, steadily, humbly, on the side of love. One ancestor to lean on, one prayer for our messy lives, and one song to strengthen and soothe.

ANCESTOR

Margaret Moseley (1901-1997) was an African-American Unitarian civil rights activist from Dorchester, MA. Ms. Moseley wanted to pursue nursing and business but entrenched racial discrimination and white supremacy in both fields stopped her from doing either. Moseley would instead go on to be involved in a number of racial and economic justice organizing efforts throughout her life. She helped found the consumers’ cooperative in Boston, served on the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and Freedom House in Roxbury. Ms. Moseley helped found chapters of the NAACP and WILPF in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Moseley was also deeply involved in church governance and leadership including acting as the president of the Community Church in Boston and in number of roles at the Unitarian Church of Barnstable. Read more about Moseley’s leadership and life’s work here and here.

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Grateful to bring you our next installment in our bi-weekly messages with a prayer, an ancestor and a song speaking to our spirits. We hope these resources may offer what we need in order to be courageously, steadily, humbly, on the side of love. One ancestor to lean on, one prayer for our messy lives, and one song to strengthen and soothe.

ANCESTOR

“Spirit of Truth and Love within our living hearts, we pledge our faithfulness to all who toil that we may eat our bread. We rejoice in human power to shape the stuff of earth into things of usefulness and beauty. May our hands and minds add their portion to the common treasure of a world more fair. We would find our place among the workers of humanity, proud of honest labor done, and rest deserved, and wages earned.” - To All Who Toil, Rev. Stephen Fritchman

Rev. Stephen Fritchman (1902-1981) was a Unitarian minister, author and youth worker. Initially trained as a Methodist minister, Fritchman became a Unitarian minister in 1930 and went on to work for the American Unitarian Association, including as youth director, as well as editor of the AUA journal, the Christian Register, what we now know to be UUWorld. Fritchman found both support and resistance within his role, was forced to testify before The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and would eventually be forced to resign due to his support of Soviet policies and public affiliation with communist organizations including the Popular Front. Fritchman went on to become a minister in Los Angeles - where the justice work of his congregation would be monitored by the FBI for periods - and remain involved in immigrant and racial justice work, resistance to state-sponsored surveillance and a number of political parties. Read more about Rev. Fritchman here.

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Two weeks ago, we launched the second season of Fortification, a podcast about the spiritual lives of organizers and activists, this time in collaboration with Auburn. We see Fortification as an opportunity to hear from people within and across faith and spiritual traditions to talk about some of the questions facing organizers, communities and institutions in these times.

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ANCESTOR

“To me, a religious quest is a quest for the truth. Truth is one, but man's understanding of truth grows with the progress of mankind. I cannot believe that truth can be shut up in the narrow confines of any system of thought. . .” - Rev. Andrew Kuroda

Andrew Kuroda (December 29, 1906 - February 19, 1997) was a Unitarian minister, cataloguer, bibliographer and reference librarian. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued his Executive Order 9066 in 1942, Kuroda and his family were forced into internment camps Newell, Calif., and in Colorado. Later, asked why Japanese American citizens did not resist this order, Kuroda explained that "We were concerned about our safety—the threat of reprisals against us was always on our minds." His final military assignment was as a member of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, working in Washington and Japan, which surveyed the morale of the Japanese whose lives had been affected by the dropping of the two atomic bombs. He would eventually go on to become a librarian working in the Library of Congress. At the same time, Kuroda served in a number of Christian churches until he became Unitarian and soon after established the Japanese Unitarian Fellowship of All Souls’ Church (Unitarian) conducting its first service in Japanese in 1962 - the only Japanese Unitarian fellowship outside of Japan. Read more about Rev. Kuroda here.

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The past few weeks have been...full. Filled with the sorrow and questions emergent from another mass shooting and the inability of leaders’ articulation to talk about masculinity, white supremacy and rage. We witnessed the extraordinary power of grassroots organizers - many of them young People of Color - to ensure that this November we could be proud to support progressive People of Color, Trans, queer and immigrant candidates across the country. We also saw patterns of voting across race that mirrored many of those in 2016 - including the ongoing power of Black women voters and failure of political parties to center their leadership or priorities.

As you reflect on the most recent waves, we share a few offerings that may be relevant to you. Check out this playlist by Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, a poem “moon tell me” by adrienne maree brown, our first episode of season 2 of Fortification featuring Rodney McKenzie & Caitlin Breedlove, an Ancestral Spiritual Resistance Zine from Francisca Porchas & Mijente and this Post-Election Soul Food compilation by Rev. Cathy Rion Starr - a year old but still rather relevant.

As we prepare for the times ahead, we invite you into the next call by the Love Resists Campaign. Focused on building spiritual community and sharing lessons from recent months, we are excited to offer conversations with grassroots organizers leading campaigns against criminalization within our own communities. We hope these webinars will provide both some background information and some practical tools applicable to the work you’re doing.

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