from: ROBERT DESMARAIS SULLIVAN
My proposal is to create a Social Justice Team by considering the leaders of existing First Church social-justice groups as ex officio members of the Team. That requires a definition of ''social-justice activity'', so I have decided to rely on the descriptions offered on the national UUA website.
On the national website, www.uua.org, I found a link to ''Social Justice'' under the headline, ''I am interested in''. There I found the following list of UUA social-justice fields of activity:
Bisexual Gay Lesbian Transgender Equality; Civil Rights and Religious Liberty; Criminal Justice; Economic Justice; Environmental Justice; Health and Family Justice; International Human Rights and Justice; International Peace and Conflict; Racial Justice.
For BGLT equality, First Church has the Welcoming Congregation group. For International Peace and Conflict, there is the Peace Alliance group. For Racial Justice, there is the anti-racism group whose project is to study how to ''build the world we dream of''.
Then I looked at existing First Church groups that have traditionally been considered ''social-justice'' groups, and I discovered that the Gillespie Breakfast and the D'Orlando Lecture carried social-justice labels. According to Brad Ott, the Gillespie Breakfast was as a project of the ''Social Concerns Committee'', as he says it was called 25 years ago. The D'Orlando Lecture, both in the material I've read and in the reputation of Rev. D'Orlando, carries a social-justice panache. And the Network for Spiritual Progressives is possibly growing out of this year's D'Orlando Lecture with Rabbi Lerner, so it may be attached to the Social Justice Team as well.
It's not that everybody has to be part of every Social Justice Team activity. It's just a convenient way to structure things. It's abundantly clear that each group has its own objectives and is conducting its own activities. The Gillespie Breakfast people plan the breakfasts, the Welcoming Congregation people plan specific films and discussions, the Peace Alliance prepares the Vigil for Peace and hosts the New Orleans Coalition Against War, and so forth.
I propose that we call this collection of existing groups the Social Justice Team and that the active leaders of these groups consider themselves ex officio members of the Social Justice Team. That makes SIX active groups so far, all having claim on the Social Justice Team budget, except for the D'Orlando Lecture, which is an endowed lecture.
On the other hand, the national UUA website DOES NOT mention Affordable Housing as a social-justice project, but we certainly have discovered in New Orleans how much of a social-justice issue that is. Also, the website DOES mention several issues which have no leaders or groups at First Church at the moment.
So we have possibilities for future projects. Interested members of the congregation may hear a quiet voice calling within to initiate a group on Affordable Housing and the Homeless, or on Environmental Justice, or on Civil Rights and the Rights of Man, etc. If you have passion or commitment about one of these or another issue, you could create a group dedicated to that issue.
Finally, I propose that members of the Team do most meetings by email. From time to time, we may be called upon to make a team decision, but we can even do that by email vote. Since current leaders of these groups are already meeting biweekly for the separate projects, it would be burdensome to add another regular meeting to the calendar.
However, it may very well be that we will actually want to have a full-Team meeting once in a while just for the fun of it. If so, we could consider what my friends in Norfolk, Virginia, are doing. They meet at the equinoxes and solstices and have a brief report and discussion, followed by wine and cheese and a drum circle in the candle-lit sanctuary. That may seem new-agish, but I always passed a good time.
Your comments and recommendations are welcome! If I've left anyone out, let me know.
Contact Robert Desmarais Sullivan via the Church Office, office@firstuuno.org
