On Wednesday, August 26, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Nevada installed a Black Lives Matter banner on our campus in Reno.  The next morning our office administrator arrived to find our recently installed banner had been vandalized. Someone spray painted the word "WHITE" over the word Black. As we live by faith, and not by fear, a new sign has already been dedicated and installed after our Sunday morning worship. This vandalism is a poignant reminder of why this congregation is in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. For too long, as this vandal demonstrates, in this nation white lives have been more valued than black. We will continue to work to end racism as our religion calls us to do.

After filing a police report I began calling local media and sending pictures to them of the vandalized sign.  This led to news reports about the vandalism in the local paper the Reno Gazette-Journal and the local NBC news affiliate.  We also informed the congregation by Facebook about the incident.  I could not have imagined that 71,000 people would have viewed our original Facebook post and it would be shared over 400 times.

The Millennials who planned, organized, and attended the MBL convening are folks who could be highly successful in the halls of academe or commerce. They have the smarts, the drive, and the education. But they have chosen to make sacrifices of personal comfort and forego material gain to found and sustain the civil rights movement of the 21st Century.

As a middle-aged senior who had been more observer than full out activist, participating in the Convening was a privilege. The Reverend James Reeb Fund of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) subsidized attendance of about 20 UUs—lay, staff and clergy—at the Convening.  Thank you, UUA, for seizing this moment to be relevant in the wider world.

What do #BlackLivesMatter and environmental justice have to do with each other? Everything.

When Katrina—a Category 5 hurricane that's part of the pattern of more frequent and severe weather events predicted by leading climatologists due to global warming—made landfall on August 29, 2005, the impact was beyond devastating. But it was not felt equally by everyone in the storm’s path.

The neighborhoods hit hardest, the people who were unable to evacuate, the horrifyingly inadequate federal response, the media coverage of the survivors, and the rebuilding efforts all point to the fact that all lives did not and do not matter to our government or to the media. Poor people, disproportionately African American people, bore the greatest impacts of the storm.

On August 7th through 10th, UUs from throughout the United States joined local UUs, multi-faith, organizing and advocacy groups to commemorate the life of Mike Brown and to organize and take action for Black liberation. The weekend included spaces for mourning, healing and ritual, relationship building and organizing and direct action. Following a powerful weekend of remembrance, activists were again met with heavy policing and military tactics by police. Let this be an opportunity for us to re-commit to taking action today.

Whether or not you were in Ferguson earlier this month, join us to hear learnings and next steps on Monday, August 24th at 8pm ET/5pm PT. RSVP to join here.

In the early months of The Movement, I came to believe that being accountable to marginalized communities essentially required supporting and showing up to those communities’ acts of struggle and protest.

It was only recently that this belief was shattered by Leslie Mac, a Unitarian Universalist, Woman of Color, and prominent #BlackLivesMatter activist. She published a powerful series of tweets critiquing this view of accountability, explaining that “it’s time to dig deeper into the meaning of accountability [to Black leaders]. Accountability means that your ACTIONS are in alignment with Black leaders. Accountability means that you align YOUR group or personal goals and actions with those of black led organizations and leadership.”

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love and support one another.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
          Assata Shakur

Dear friends,

I’ve read and heard these words from Assata Shakur several times.  Once I learned the words, thanks to the Ohio Student Association, I shouted these words on many occasions.   However, it was only recently that I learned what these words meant.