Letting Go: A Call to Action against Gun Violence
As I lay awake at 3:30am last Friday morning grasping that I am now the closest Unitarian Universalist minister to the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, I realized I would need to revise my sermon on my congregation’s theme “letting go” and write something completely different. I decided this because of my absolute and total frustration with our country’s obsession with guns and our unbelievable inability to do anything about it. You can listen to the full sermon here.
Dear friends,
After the latest mass shooting in Oregon, I was unable to sleep, wondering like so many others, how many people have to die, how many school shootings have to happen in order for us to let go of this endless stalemate on gun safety.
New guidelines and policies
You may have experienced this fun feeling: Watching the news, or looking at a news article online about an important justice event, and, wham!-- there it is, another yellow shirt sighting! Doesn’t it feel great to see our community represented so vibrantly all across the country, and even internationally?
We know that how we show up in the world, as Evangelists for Love, as people committed to a radical love ethic, as Standing on the Side of Love (SSL) Activists, is one of the most important things we do. Whether it’s in person or online, our iconic imagery helps identify us to each other, and to our larger faith and justice communities.
Big News from Standing on the Side of Love
It is with a whole mix of bittersweet emotions that I am writing to let you know that as of the end of October, I will be leaving my position as Campaign Manager of Standing on the Side of Love. In my nearly three years here, there is so much that we can be proud of in our work together. From our support of the #100Women100Miles Pilgrimage with our partners at the We Belong Together coalition to celebrating the SCOTUS Marriage Equality win at General Assembly, both in the past few months, to the emergence of the UU support across the country for the Black Lives Matter movement, it has been a busy three years harnessing the power of love to stop oppression!
Family obligations called me to California to start a new life with my new husband, and the hardest part has been realizing that I would have to leave the campaign. While I might be moving on from a leadership position with Standing on the Side of Love, there will always be a huge part of this campaign in my heart. I have been inspired, challenged, encouraged, and educated by all of you over the past several years, and I will be eternally grateful for the chance to have worked alongside so many people of faith working together to build a new way.
It Starts and Ends with Love
Not long after I returned from the events in Selma, marking the 50th anniversary of the historic march it became clear to me, even though I was an interim pastor at the UU Congregation of the South Jersey Shore, that there was a compelling need at this time for a renewed civil rights movement, and for liberal congregations like ours to speak out and stand up, and we could no longer stand by in silence. Most important among the narratives and images that I brought back from Selma were the words of Mark Morrison-Reed, when he told us that it all begins with relationships; the powerful teachings of Opal Tometi, one of the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement; and the warmth, affection, and tenderness expressed by the families of James Reeb, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Clark Olsen, and Orloff Miller.
This great love, a love for humanity, for justice, for goodness, a genuine faith and a passion for what is best in humanity permeated the time we spent together. Walking toward that bridge amidst a throng of thousands, holding the hand of my adopted boy Seth, a child who lives with autism, I felt that day part of a great sacrament. I felt that a promise was made, to carry that spirit of love back to every town and city from which we had come.
Deaths in ICE Custody: Say Their Names, Again and Again
“Ramiro Gutierrez,…Maria Solis-Perez.” The names of persons who had died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody rang out at the “Tent City” candlelight vigil, a witness event at the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Justice General Assembly 2012 in Phoenix.
“Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun, …. Juan Salazar Gomez.” On August 20th, 2015 members of the Puente Human Rights Movement said the names of 152 persons who have died in ICE custody since 2003—at least 30 of the names new, not on the list in 2012. The Eloy Detention Center in Arizona has been the deadliest ICE facility, claiming 14 lives.
We Must Weather the Storm to See the Rainbow
Our commitment to living the values of our faith is being tested. We are standing in the storm of reaction against the Black Lives Matter movement. Now is the time when we must ask ourselves, “do we become even more out and proud for racial justice or do we shrink down in retreat?”
With FOX news leading a media frenzy denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group, as terrorists, as anti-white, some of us are retreating from wearing Black Lives Matter buttons and some of us are questioning whether or not to take down the Black Lives Matter banners from our churches.
It would be easy for me to say all of the white UUs who are faltering are just falling back into their white privilege, are sinking back into their liberal white racism. It would be easy for me to distance myself and feel superior. It is much harder for me to say, that I too, as a white Unitarian Universalist, have been scared. After months of wearing my Black Lives Matter button, I found myself second-guessing whether to wear it. What if I am challenged at the grocery store or walking in the park with my son. It was much easier to wear my button after the latest police murder of an unarmed Black person. Filled with anger and a desire to “do something”, I wore my button with defiance to racism and a commitment to racial justice.
Mark your Calendars for Thirty Days of Love 2016!
As we kick off a new congregational year, we are so excited to announce that Thirty Days of Love, this time dedicated to intersectional racial justice, will be back in 2016! Thirty Days is an exciting opportunity to support the emerging and ongoing racial justice organizing happening in Unitarian Universalist congregations across the country, in the tradition of organizing for civil and human rights and in support of the growing Movement for Black Lives.
After a brief hiatus this year to allow room for the newly launched Climate Justice Month, Thirty Days returns Saturday, January 16 and continuing through Sunday, February 14, 2016.
Responding with Love
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.
Weaving the Threads of Justice
Ten years ago I went to Baton Rouge and other Katrina-affected areas in a response to calls to assist people who had made it out of New Orleans alive. I went to help; I could not help but see and listen and be changed by the experience.
A few years ago I went to Arizona to help, to bear witness to the conditions faced by people who cross into the U.S. through the desert hills. I went and saw for myself what people go through trying to get here without “papers”, how they are treated in the courts, how they are discarded/repatriated to their native countries, how they escape.
A few weeks ago I joined in the one-year anniversary Commemoration of the Ferguson Uprising in St Louis County, Missouri. I hoped, as I believe so many others did, to move the change process forward, to effect change in the culture that tolerates, even promotes police violence, especially against young Black and Brown men.