Last fall, we launched Fortification, a podcast about the spiritual lives of organizers and activists. It was an amazing opportunity to get to sit down with people within and across faith tradition to talk about some of the big questions facing organizers, communities and institutions.
Much has changed and much remains the same since our first episode. We're excited to be coming to you with a second season of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership - the same recording team and now in collaboration with Auburn Seminary. We're having similar conversations and bringing questions about the roles, opportunities and barriers to faith communities supporting movement, creating individual and collective rituals for the long-haul and more.
Mary White Ovington (April 11, 1865- July 15, 1951) was a suffragette, socialist, Unitarian, journalist and co-founder of the NAACP. Ovington was a white civil rights advocate and organizer who worked to address racial discrimination within housing and employment in New York City, work that led her into relationship with prominent Black civil rights organizers including leaders of the Niagara Movement and WEB Du Bois. Her work in support of and alongside many others would eventually lead to the founding of the permanent body known as the NAACP. Its early members included Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, George Henry White, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard and Ida Wells-Barnett. Ovington would go on to serve in various leadership capacities at the NAACP throughout her time while also authoring numerous books. Read more about her work here.
May we be relentless in our work for growth - for ourselves and each other. Like Ovington, may we continue to strengthen our study coupled with praxis, building relationships with those with whom we share a vision of the world we are building. May we honor the contributions and legacy of those who came before.
Read MoreWe are so excited to share some big news for Standing on the Side of Love (SSL) with you. Since last spring, SSL had been blessed by the wisdom and vision of Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen as our part-time Spiritual Sustenance Advisor.
We're thrilled to share that beginning November 15th, Elizabeth will be joining us full time as the Senior Strategist to lead the next moves the campaign will make into the future. In this new role, Elizabeth will support and lead the campaign’s work by growing our external movement relationships and supporting our internal transformation work - in collaboration with our supporters, you.
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
“We create our future, by well improving present opportunities: however few and small they be.” Lewis Howard Latimer
Lewis Howard Latimer (September 4, 1848-December 11, 1928) was an African-American inventor, patent expert, draftsperson and poet and a founding member of the Unitarian Church of Flushing, New York. His parents fled to Massachusetts from Virginia in 1842 and the case to secure their freedom was a notable case within larger abolitionist organizing. Latimer was also a poet, painter and writer and player of music. His legacy includes one of life-improving inventions including lamp fixtures, toilets for railway cars, a cooling and disinfecting system, and a locking rack for hats, coats and umbrellas. Read more about his life here.
We have heard again and again about the need for spiritual sustenance in this work. Two weeks ago, we launched bi-weekly messages for the foreseeable future that include 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
“It was not at all unusual for us to receive phone calls at 3 in the morning warning us that if we did not leave the house within 15 minutes, a bomb would destroy our home,” Rev. Albert D’Orlando
Rev. Albert D’Orlando was a white Unitarian minister who served First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans from 1950-1981. In 1960, as New Orleans prepared to deal with court-ordered school desegregation, the Rev. D'Orlando had his congregation set up a Freedom Fund to provide legal and other assistance to those fighting for desegregation.
Read MoreWe have heard again and again about the need for spiritual sustenance in this work. We are grateful to be offering some more resources in the coming weeks and months as part of Love Resists and new episodes of Fortification, in partnership with Auburn Seminary will be out soon!
We are also trying out a new thing! Every other week you’ll be hearing from us with a prayer, an ancestor and a song speaking to our spirits and what we need in order to be, courageously, steadily, humbly, on the side of love. So here it goes!
One ancestor to lean on, one prayer for our messy lives, and one song to strengthen and soothe.
Read More