Welcome to Thirty Days of Love 2017. Over the next four weeks, we will be sharing a weekly message alongside a companion worksheet and short video. We hope you find these resources and reflections of use to the work you do from your congregation to your community and beyond.

Click here for the downloadable companion worksheet on relationships and movements. Once you’ve done that, consider checking out a video from our Organizing on the Side of Love online course. Click here to watch Caitlin’s module on community organizing and movement building you may find of use in your work. Lastly, check out the Thirty Days of Love 2017: All Ages Activity Calendar by Rev. Marisol Caballero. Next week we’ll be back with our second message on covenants and movements. Stay tuned!

Week one is dedicated to exploring relationships - those we have with ourselves, between people and between groups and organizations. I understand these bonds as the primary building blocks that create and sustain movements. Groups, campaigns and movements often fall apart because we do not know how to be in relationship with each other. The work of social transformation requires not only a rigor of politic but also a rigor of discernment – recognizing the real human needs we each have to be our best selves. Our relationships require many things from each of us - rooted in self reflection as a necessary first step to building authentic, long-term relationships. One of the attributes this moment is calling so many of us into is a deeper and wider understanding of courage.

This winter, UUs across the country will gather and take action around 30 Days of Love. 

Over the past two months, we have been hearing more and more from folks across the country about the real interest and commitment to scaling up our skills - how we can clarify our own political mandates, how we can be more impactful in our organizing, how people of faith can support and flank social movements in these times, and how we will sustain ourselves and each other for the long haul. Next week, we’ll begin 30 Days of Love with weekly messages to inform and support your work.

A week from now, we know many UUs will gather in their communities, at state capitals and in Washington DC in resistance and solidarity. We are excited to bring you two conversations to ground and inform your engagement and organizing in these times.

Happy New Year. We hope you and yours are taking care in these times. As we connect, build and grow with old comrades and as we create new formations to move our work forward, may we be emboldened by our collective political mandates - informed by relationships, strategy and transformation. We're excited to bring you our tenth episode of Fortification - our final episode in this series of podcasts - a conversation about love, leadership and the spiritual challenges of our times.

If we are to be strong in these difficult days, we need to do three things:  Deepen our spiritual practices, take concrete strategic actions, and stay united with beloved communities of resistance.  I’m inviting you to join me next week for a campaign which accomplishes all three of these tasks.

I’m joining the #Fast4Power from January 14th-January 20th and inviting the Standing on the Side of Love community to join me. This fast, initiated by the We Say Enough Campaign, is intended to fortify our spirits, strengthen our resolve, and prepare our minds, bodies and souls for the work ahead.  People of faith from many traditions and people of conscience will fast and gather together in a spirit of collective resistance and determination. Will you join us?

The year 2016 shed light on the depth of political polarization in this country. Above the surface or under it, our families, neighbors and residents have been profoundly polarized on issues of immigration, race, LGBTQ rights and liberation for some time; and on questions of what the future of the country should be and how we get there. The election cycle gave voice to these divisions.

We are now in a new political terrain, but one that exists within centuries of old struggles and organized resistance around the questions of who has the right to exist, the right to lead, and the right to remain.

In 2016, Standing on the Side of Love (SSL) had a fortifying presence (directly or indirectly) in every major grassroots turning point ‘movement moment’ of the year. The primary movement moment where we have been present: support to Black Lives Matter chapters at ‘flash moments’ (Charlotte, Baton Rouge), Standing Rock, and Latinx organizing in Arizona. Organizing is happening constantly. Annually, only a few campaigns or moments capture national attention and imagination. The campaigns and moments that do are usually characterized by a layered configuration of multiple leaders and organizations present, with groups represented coming from inside and outside ‘organized’ non-profits.

As we move through December holidays, many of us will slow down to reflect upon the kinds of self and community care we need for the fights ahead. The kind of deep care for ourselves and each other that resists commodification, centers spirit and sustains us for the work ahead. We hope our next episode of Fortification brings you into a conversation about love, spirit and leadership.

In our eighth episode of Fortification, Caitlin is joined by Lisa Anderson is vice president of Intersectional Engagement at Auburn Theological Seminary, an initiative dedicated to equipping bold and resilient women faith leaders with the tools they need for a lifetime of prophetic social justice activism. Anderson is the founding director of the newest signature program of that initiative, The Sojourner Truth Leadership Circle, which aligns the creation of vibrant and sustainable models of activist leadership with an emphasis on self and community care as a defining and galvanizing mandate for social justice in the 21st century. In addition, Anderson works with Auburn’s education team on issues of intersectional organizing, bridging the divide between theology and activism, and on deepening the spiritually grounding of leaders in a multifaith movement for justice via the creation and curation of worship and liturgical resources.

This winter, we are returning with 30 Days of Love. We know that many of us have met the last several weeks with rage, fear, cynicism, desperation, anxiety, and confusion. Many of us are looking this moment and seeing that the stakes are so high now, from climate justice, to LGBTQ justice, to gender justice, to economic justice, to racial justice this moment is about everything we value, everything that matters to us, the very questions of who we are and our existence. 

Many of us also feel that the moment requires more from us. That there will not be room for our pettiness, our egos, our impatience, our self-pity. There will not be room for doing things the way they have always been done, in the ways in which we are most comfortable. There will be no room for any of us to think we have the answers alone. As UUA President Peter Morales wrote about last week, this is not only about social justice (or our social justice ministries) this is about all we do and our deepest values.

We know there are a lot of messages circulating right now. A flurry of strategies rushing to solutions. I know that many of us are hunkering down. Many of you, like me, are afraid for our families and those we love because they (and we) are Muslims, undocumented, of color, LGBTQ, women. Many of us who are white also fear what an atmosphere of encouraged and amplified hate will mean for the souls of our white children and grandchildren. Who will they become (and who will we continue to be) if these are the examples of what it means to be white? To be a white man? 

The past week has been filled with sorrow and reflection coupled with incremental victories. In these times, we know there is a role for each of us to double down and share our gifts and talents in the service of movement and resistance. We hope our next episode of Fortification illuminates the ways we can support and flank movement in these times.

In our eighth episode of Fortification, Caitlin is joined by Gabriel Foster, co-founder and Executive Director of Trans Justice Funding Project. Gabriel Foster is a black, queer, trans, ‘momma’s boy’ living and loving in New York.  Prior to making his way to the Eastern Time Zone, he worked in Seattle, WA with the Northwest Network of bisexual, trans, lesbian & gay survivors of abuse helping to create their youth programming.

When word began to spread at Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock on the afternoon of Sunday, December 4th, there was skepticism. The Army Corps of Engineers, some were saying, was about to announce that it was denying the permit which would have allowed the final sections of the Dakota Access Pipeline to be completed. 

Just twenty minutes later, when Dave Archambault II, Chairman of Standing Rock, announced that this hope was indeed true, elation spread among the thousands of people gathered in support of environmental justice and the sovereign rights of the Native people. Success! At least for the time being.

Since April 2016, the encampments at Standing Rock, supported by at least 200 indigenous tribes in North America whose flags were lining the roads within the camp, had been a place of prayer, reflection and direct action. In early November, 500 clergy, over 50 of them Unitarian Universalists, had answered the call to come to Standing Rock. Now, a month later, many of us – numbers yet unknown -- were gathered responding to the invitation from Chief Arvol Looking Horse. 

This weekend, people of faith and conscience will join the thousands of people holding prayerful witness in solidarity with the Water Protectors resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline. For folks traveling to Standing Rock this weekend, please join the UU Solidarity with Standing Rock – Dec 4 Interfaith Day of Prayer Facebook group for up to date information.

Conditions continue to evolve on the ground as resistance and solidarity grows. Whether you’re able to travel to Standing Rock or not, below see some timely resources important to inform and ground your solidarity with this movement. Wherever you are, doing the work to be accountable that is grounded in discernment, reflection and prayer is required as we support the Native-led prayerful organizing taking place in Standing Rock. Click here to find #NoDAPL Solidarity events taking place across the country.