Weekly Political Education Opportunities
During each week of 30 Days of Love, the Side With Love team will offer an engaging live event for participants to go deeper into one aspect of the intersectional justice priority that is the week’s theme. These events will be held live on Zoom; pre-registration is required. Videos will be posted here after the events.
WEEK 1: Cut From the Same Cloth: Anti-Trans and Anti-Abortion Movements and How to Fight Back
The past few years have had sweeping attacks on trans and abortion rights. But transphobia in feminist spaces is hurting our ability to unite and fight back. How can we create a united movement to protect our communities? Join this conversation to learn more about trans-centered reproductive justice movement strategy.
View the presentation
WEEK 2: Building Power and Democracy
Two years ago, UUs committed to #VoteLove and #DefeatHate by expressing our values through electoral engagement in the 2020 election. Together with partners and our faith community, we supported the largest voter turnout in U.S. history, through advancing our values in local primaries, helping communities register to vote, and reaching out to voters to support them in navigating the increasingly complex terrain of voter suppression. But what does it mean to build power for a multiracial democracy? Join UU the Vote and local partners and activists for discussion about how movements have articulated a vision and strategy for political agency and democracy. Let’s learn how this current phase of the battle for voting rights and electoral justice fits into the larger goal of democracy and collective liberation.
View the presentation
WEEK 3: Safety Beyond Policing: Organizing Lessons from Minneapolis
In the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, organizers in Minneapolis built on years of cultural change work and strategic organizing to propose an amendment to the city charter that would have made it possible to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and create a new Department of Public Safety. While this groundbreaking initiative did not pass in 2021, it put abolition and true community safety squarely in the national conversation and paved the way for future organizing in Minneapolis and across the country. Join Side With Love for this conversation with Sheila Nezhad and Jonathan Stegall of Reclaim the Block and Yes4Minneapolis as they reflect on long-term cultural organizing, building strategic values-based campaigns, abolitionist dreams of a world without police, and the possibilities that lie ahead.
View the presentation
WEEK 4: E Ala E! Red Road to DC Totem Pole Journey
Indigenous sovereignty is critical to Climate Justice, one of the UUA's four intersectional justice priorities. The Red Road to DC and corresponding mural emphasize the need to protect gravely imperiled Native American sacred sites, lands, and waters across the United States. In 2021, a 24-foot-long totem pole carved around seven visions by Master Carver Jewell James of the Lummi Nation in Washington State, was taken on a 20,000-mile epic journey across the United States. This historic journey brought attention to the need to protect gravely imperiled Native American sacred sites, lands and waters across the United States. It also called for genuinely engaging in the principle of full and prior informed consent. At every event, people were also invited to participate in the creation of a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot commemorative mural guided by the highly-acclaimed social artist Melanie Schambach. This creative process engaged hundreds of participants who expressed in their images our ancient love affair with—and sacred obligation to—Mother Earth.
View the presentation