[Sac-news] Gearing up for Justice - Summer & Fall Campaigns & Resources

[Susan Leslie]

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SOCIAL ACTION CHAIR (SAC) NEWS
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Dear SAC-News Readers:

One of the authors and social change leaders at this year's GA, David
Korten, has written a book titled THE GREAT TURNING: FROM EMPIRE TO
EARTH COMMUNITY. See
http://www.bkconnection.com/ProdDetails.asp?ID=9781887208079&PG=1&Type=B

Korten, who takes and acknowledges the phrase from spiritual
environmentalist Joanna Macy, explains that The Great Turning is the
shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining
civilization. The momentum that we generated for justice at this year's
General Assembly and the many national and interfaith advocacy campaigns
that we UUs are participating in this coming year, starting with the One
Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (more below), helps me believe
that we are witnessing a transformative shift.

I also saw the various strands of our justice community coming together
to create a holistic justice agenda. Ministry for Earth
http://uuministryforearth.org/index.shtml, UUs for a Just Economic
Community http://www.uujec.net/, Committee for Socially Responsible
Investing http://www.uua.org/finance/sri/ and others came together to
pass a powerful Statement of Conscience on Global Warming. A pre-GA
gathering for anti-racism and social justice committee members was
attended by 60 people to bring the work of these groups together. The
linkages of work for racial, economic, and environmental justice were
clearly seen in the workshops on Gulf Coast Advocacy
http://www.uua.org/news/gulfcoastrelief/advocacy.html. And a highlight
for me was the featured presentation with Linda Stout of Spirit in
Action who spoke about creating a new democracy movement. (You can read
my report at http://www.uua.org/ga/ga06/4059.html).

This issue of SAC-News includes resources and information about upcoming
advocacy campaigns for peace, economic justice and socially responsible
investing, gulf coast recovery and the one year anniversary of Hurricane
Katrina on August 29th.  This information is also listed on our new
2006-2007 UUA Social Justice Calendar see
http://www.uua.org/programs/justice/. You will also find information
about anti-oppression social justice training from Spirit in Action that
I highly recommend.

Lastly, on behalf of the UUA I want to send thanks to all who
participated in our Standing on the Side of Love 2006 Campaign: No
Discrimination in the Constitution. After defeat in the Senate, the
House decisively rejected the Federal Marriage Amendment. You can read
about President Bill Sinkford's testimony as part of a Clergy for
Fairness delegation with members of the House at
http://www.uua.org/president/060711_ftm.html
<http://www.uua.org/president/060711_ftm.html> . Our work now will turn
to supporting UU state advocacy efforts against proposed amendments.

In faith, Susan

NOTE!  Just as I was about to send this Summer Issue of SAC-News I
received word that the federal Voting Rights Act has been renewed.
Please see Bill Sinkford's statement on this cornerstone civil rights
legislation, advocacy information, and congregational news on our home
page at http://www.uua.org/news/2006/060721_vra.html.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1) Statement of Conscience & Actions of Immediate Witness GA 2006
2) One Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - August 29th
3) Circle Leadership Network Training Opportunities in Sept. & Oct.
4) Plan a Labor in the Pulpit Labor Day Sunday - Sept. 3
5 International Day of Peace - Sept. 21
6) UUA Committee on Socially Responsible Investing Teleconference
Presentations this Fall - Dates Below
7) Let Justice Roll Living Wage Days Oct. 14-15

See UUA Social Justice Calendar
http://www.uua.org/programs/justice/calendar.pdf

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1) STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE & ACTIONS OF IMMEDIATE WITNESS GA 2006

New! Final Social Witness Documents from GA 2006!

2006 UUA Statement of Conscience: "Threat of Global Warming/Climate
Change"
http://www.uua.org/actions/ecology/06global-warming.html

2006-2010 Congregational Study/Action Issue (CSAI): "Peacemaking"
http://www.uua.org/csw/CSAI_06-10_P.pdf

2006 Actions of Immediate Witness:

*       End Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
http://www.uua.org/actions/immediate/06coalmining.html
*       Endorse "The Declaration of Peace" Campaign
http://www.uua.org/actions/immediate/06peace.html
*       Pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act
http://www.uua.org/actions/immediate/06stemcell.html
*       Stand Up for the United Nations Human Rights Council
http://www.uua.org/actions/immediate/06humanrights.html
*       Support Immigrant Justice
http://www.uua.org/actions/immediate/06immigrant.html

Or go to http://www.uua.org/csw/

Next steps of course will be implementation!  We will keep you posted
about advocacy campaigns and organizing efforts. In fact, scroll down to
5) International Day of Peace which is part of the Declaration of Peace
Campaign coming up in September. Please let us know what your
congregation is doing.

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2) ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF HURRICANE KATRINA - AUGUST 29TH

The UUA has joined several efforts to witness and advocate for a just
recovery in the Gulf and to witness at this one year anniversary. Please
see http://www.uua.org/news/gulfcoastrelief/ to learn about how you and
your congregation can volunteer and/or participate in advocacy efforts
you can do from home.

August 29, 2006 will mark the first anniversary of the landfall of
Katrina and the beginning of the exposure of engineering and policy
failures that contributed to the devastation of the Gulf Coast and the
scattering of hundreds of thousands of persons across New Orleans.

One year after Katrina, the National Alliance to Restore Opportunity to
the Gulf Coast and Displaced Persons (of which the UUA is a co-sponsor)
calls for a Season of Prayer and Action to embrace our mutual
interdependence and responsibility for one another's well-being and to
urge upon the federal government the role we know it must play if we are
to respond adequately to this continuing disaster.

Please open and read the attached letter of invitation to join the
Alliance and pass it on to others. To support this effort, or simply to
learn more, click on the Join Us button at www.linkedfate.org.

>From now until the end of 2006, the National Alliance to Restore
Opportunity to the Gulf Coast will:

* Disseminate research updates on conditions in the Gulf Coast and the
policies affecting the region and its residents

* Organize events and collaborate with others on events to promote
justice and opportunity in rebuilding the region

* Promote the reality of the linked fate of all persons in this nation,
whether directly affected by the storms and floods or not

* Compile a calendar of events marking the anniversary and promote its
own events and those of allies.

Please add any relevant events with which you are involved to our
database by clicking on the Register Events button at
www.linkedfate.org.

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3) CIRCLE LEADERSHIP NETWORK TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES IN SEPT. & OCT.

Community Members, Activists, and Organizers

Spirit in Action is offering two training-of-trainers with follow-up
leadership support for people who share our mission: to support,
sustain, and connect those who are passionate about justice, love,
equality, creativity, and sustainability to work collectively for deep
and lasting social change and for the protection of the planet.

Spirit in Action fills a much-needed gap that has been identified by
activists and organizers, providing movement-building tools and the
training to explore, practice and integrate those tools.  Spirit in
Action's Circle Leadership Network offers community members, concerned
citizens, activists and organizers the chance turn their gaze inward in
the company of others, and then to begin to work together across
difference to create holistic visions and act collaboratively towards
transformative social justice.

All of our work within the Circle Leadership Network integrates the four
core strategies for building a broad-based movement.

The four core strategies:

1.      Connecting with Spirit: Acknowledging spirit is a conscious
recognition of our wholeness, interdependence, and interconnection to
all life on earth. Integrating this understanding of spirit into social
justice work brings forward what inspires and sustains us.

2.      Healing from Divisions: Building a Diverse Movement: Being in
diverse community is essential to making broad-based change in the
United States. To enjoy the privilege and responsibility of being in
diverse community, people are called to recognize that we share both a
common humanity and particular social identities, which accord power in
unbalanced ways. Bridging this power divide is at the heart of healing
divisions.

3.      Collective Visioning for a Positive Future: Vision is a
foundation for action. The work of visioning has an intrinsic connection
to action for change - a continuum that includes personal change work,
relationship and community building, and direct political action to
enact systemic change. Collective visioning supports the work on all
these levels. As we work to change ourselves, create our concrete images
of a positive future, and vision collectively, we are taking steps
toward change enacted on a societal scale.

4.      Action for Deep and Lasting Change: Action for deep and lasting
change exists along a continuum that includes mass demonstrations as
well as supporting the psychological, physical, and spiritual health of
activists. Circles serve as a space for doing the less dramatic forms of
activism, such as self-care, trust and relationship building, and the
examination of strategy and development of new change tools.

Please consider joining us.

We are offering two training-of-trainers this year, though the Circle
Leadership Network: on the West Coast, September 13-17, at the Tierra
Learning Center in Leavenworth, WA www.tierralearningcenter.org and on
the East Coast, October 18-22, at the Lifebridge Sanctuary in Rosendale,
NY www.sanctuary at liferbridge.org

For information about the training see
http://spiritinaction.net/ezpublish/index.php/spirit/leadership_network

People will be asked to give a free will contribution as part of the
training-of-trainers. To date, we have been able to cover the cost of
the program because we recruit a diverse group of leaders - and that
diversity includes socio-economic diversity. We also receive some grant
support.

However, no one is turned away because of lack of funds. And, if you are
coming from an organization, we ask that the organization contributes
what they can to the actual cost: $2,500 per person.

Visit our website: www.spiritinaction.net

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4) PLAN A LABOR IN THE PULPIT LABOR DAY SUNDAY - SEPT. 3

Celebrate the sacred link between faith, work, and justice. Invite a
union member or labor leader to be a guest speaker on Labor Day weekend,
or focus your Labor Day weekend service on worker justice issues. In the
richest country in the world, more than two million full-time, year
round workers live below the poverty line, struggling to pay for
necessities such as food, housing, healthcare, transportation, and
childcare. Join the thousands of congregations that have focused Labor
Day weekend services on the injustices facing low-wage workers and the
religious community's efforts to support those workers' struggles for
living wages and family-sustaining benefits.

Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) can help you connect with guest speakers
and provides a variety of worship resources, including prayers, sacred
texts, responsive readings, bulletin/newsletter inserts, and theological
reflections on worker justice and Labor Day from many faith traditions.
Visit IWJ's website for more information
(http://www.iwj.org/outreach/labor_day.html ). The UUA is a member
organization of IWJ.

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5) INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE - SEPT. 21

An Action of Immediate Witness to endorse the Declaration of Peace
Campaign was passed at General Assembly.

The Declaration of Peace is a new nonviolent campaign uniting over
twenty-five organizations and thousands of individuals across the nation
and around the world to take nonviolent action to end the US war in
Iraq.

Read and Sign the Declaration of Peace
http://www.declarationofpeace.org/

The Declaration of Peace is a pledge to take peaceful steps for the
immediate withdrawal of US troops and to engage in nonviolent action if
a plan to end the war is not established and begun by September 21, 2006
-- International Peace Day -- days before the US Congress adjourns.

Between now and September the Campaign will:

- Call on the Bush administration and Congress to end the war;

- Ask candidates in the US fall elections to support legislation that
brings troops home and cuts off funding for the war;

- Participate in activities leading up to September 21, including
marches, vigils, and national phone-ins and email campaigns;

- Prepare for September with public Declaration signings, events, and
nonviolence trainings to be scheduled across the United States.

If the September 21 deadline is not met, Declaration signers will engage
in peaceful action in Washington, DC, at Congressional offices and sites
throughout the nation and world from September 21-28. In the spirit of
Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, some signers will be led by
conscience to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and risk arrest as
a way to signify their principled opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq.

Nonviolent activities will continue until the United States withdraws
from Iraq.

Please sign the Declaration. Forward this invitation to sign the
Declaration and join this nonviolent campaign to all your friends and
send to any list serves you feel would be interested. Together we can
build a powerful nonviolent campaign to end the war.

To learn more and sign online, visit the website at:

http://www.declarationofpeace.org

To get involved in helping organize contact info at declarationofpeace.org.
For those of you outside the US, we hope
there will be international nonviolent demonstrations around the world
calling for an end the US war and occupation to the war in Iraq similar
to those which happened on Feb. 15, 2003 at US embassies and consulates,
US military bases and other appropriate sites.

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6) SRI TELECONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS THIS FALL

 The UUA Committee on Socially Responsible Investing is proud to
continue its free learning sessions introduced in the Winter of 2006. In
addition to the three key SRI strategies we covered at that time, we've
added two new sessions for the fall schedule.

HOW:  Gather around the speakerphone for one or all five sessions.
Download each PowerPoint presentation from the website at
www.uua.org/finance/sri, or request a copy to be emailed to you
beforehand. Each session includes a 45-minute presentation followed by
15 minutes of questions and answers. Register at least three days before
the session by emailing Audra Friend with your name, phone number,
congregation or other affiliation, and your role/title at
afriend at uua.org <mailto:afriend at uua.org>.  She will reply providing the
call in numbers needed to participate.

WHEN:  Each session is on a Saturday morning for one hour from 1:00pm
EST to 2:00 EST. Start times in other regions: 12pm Central Time, 11am
Mountain, and 10am Pacific.

Topics include Community Investing, Shareholder Activism, Investment
Screening, Spectrum of Involvement, and Screening Tools.

For Fall Schedule and more Information see
http://www.uua.org/finance/sri/SRI-TeleConference-FlyerFall06.pdf

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7) LET JUSTICE ROLL LIVING WAGE DAYS OCT. 14-15

The UUA is a member of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a
fast-growing partnership of more than 70 faith, labor and community
groups working to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal level.
Please JOIN US in LIVING WAGE
DAYS WORSHIP SERVICES AND COMMUNITY EVENTS in OCTOBER. A job should keep
you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

Last January, over the Martin Luther King Holiday Weekend, Let Justice
Roll sponsored hundreds of Living Wage Days services and events across
the country, including Arkansas, Massachusetts (United First Parish of
Quincy brought Senator Kennedy and other national leaders to our event),
Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where
campaigns have already led to legislation increasing state minimum
wages. Elsewhere, in Ohio, for example, the more than 65 Living Wage
Days events were crucial to building support for the state minimum wage
initiative on the ballot this fall.

Now, it's time to take nationwide action again with Let Justice Roll
LIVING WAGE DAYS SERVICES AND EVENTS to inspire, educate and mobilize
support for raising the minimum wage at the federal and state level as
well as local living wage campaigns. Legislative efforts to raise the
federal minimum wage are gaining strength and a growing number of states
have minimum wage campaigns, including six states with ballot
initiatives coming to a vote this November: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri,
Montana, Nevada and Ohio.

We invite you to reach out to everyone, including both workers and
business people, in your congregations, organizations and communities to
participate in Living Wage Days. Raising the minimum wage is good for
workers, families, business and our economy. States that have raised
their minimum wage above the federal level have had better employment
trends, including among retail and small businesses, than states that
have not.

We hope that you will host or co-host a Let Justice Roll LIVING WAGE DAY
worship service or event during the weekend of either October 7-8 or
October 14-15.

We have a variety of RESOURCES at WWW.LETJUSTICEROLL.ORG to assist you
in your preparation for Living Wage Days, including "Resources for
Living Wage Weekend Worship Services and Events," which we are updating
soon, and "A Just Minimum Wage: Good For Workers, Business and Our
Future," which shows that raising the minimum wage is an economic
imperative for the enduring strength of our workforce, businesses,
communities and economy, as well as a moral imperative for the very soul
of our nation.

We hope you will join us for LIVING WAGE DAYS OCTOBER 7-8, OCTOBER
14-15, 2006, as we move toward a living wage for all.

PLEASE LET US KNOW if you are planning to host or co-host an event. You
can SIGN UP for Living Wage Days at
http://www.letjusticeroll.org/livingwage-signup.html.


Susan Leslie
Director for Congregational Advocacy & Witness
UUA, 25 Beacon St., Boston MA 02108
617-948-4607; sleslie at uua.org
Visit www.uua.org/justice
Subscribe to SAC-News, SRI-News & Advocacy-News at
www.uua.org/mailman/listinfo