RevCyn

A friend and colleague asks, "When did our Principles ever lead us to a place we didn't already want to go?" It's a bit like asking "When is something truly altruistic?"  The fact that I did something might argue that to some extent I wanted to do it -- that I felt doing it served some purpose.  But sweeping aside the philosophical question, I think I can point to places our Principles have led me that I was at least conflicted about.  The first time I remember being pushed by my principles to do something that I was uncomfortable doing was in graduate school.  I became aware that I had what I knew was an unreasonable fear of people with HIV/AIDS.  And I felt that my principles called me to address my fear and get over it.  And so I volunteered to spend my spring break with the Alternative Spring Break program working for the Mobile (AL) AIDS Support Services.  I've written about that experience in this blog before. The next time I felt like my ...

I'm outside "tent city" in Phoenix with about 2000 Unitarian Universalists and allies.   It is 99 degrees now that it is night time, down from 109 today.  In tent city, people who are rounded up for deportation are imprisoned out in this heat without  relief.  We are told that they can hear us in the tent city, as we chant and sing and cheer. It is wonderful to have the UCC president (his title is different but I don't have it handy) with us tonight and telling us the UCC is with us in this fight.

Yesterday I went to hear Michelle Alexander speak about her book, The New Jim Crow .  I also went to a follow-up session with the author of a UU study guide . Sadly, Alexander.had time for only two or three questions, and I was about eighth in line. I think to read this book, no matter how progressive already, is to have a great awakening--at least it was for me. And hearing her speak here in Arizona, it became clear to me that our immigration system is also part of the new Jim Crow.  It is so similar in effect on a people to our prison system.

This is a shout-out to the GA Planning Committee, I suppose.  I know they're doing a lot of hard work, and I know that criticizing what they've done, when they have so many voices they've been asked to listen to and they've put a ton of thought & effort into things, is not helpful, constructive, or appreciated.  So without criticizing, what I want to say is that I want them to know how much work we, ought here in the non-UUA-committee world have been doing, as well.  We've been asked to prepare ourselves for this General Assembly, and I think we have been.  By the time I get to General Assembly, here's some of what I will have done: Read the UUA's "Common Read" book for 2010-2011, The Death of Josseline . Read other books on immigration. Read just about everything on the UUA's webpage on immigration. Read countless e-mails and websites from social justice agencies on the subject.   Attended workshops designed to prepare us for ...

After reading the blog posts highlighted on " The Interdependent Web " and some of their comments, I've been thinking about whether or not I think getting arrested while doing public protest is always, sometimes, or never helpful/effective, and whether or not this particular instance of UUs getting arrested in Arizona was meaningful and helpful or not.  Obviously, an extreme being very seldom the right answer, I'm going to go with "sometimes" here, but then the second question needs further addressing. Lest you think that as a radical lefty UU, I am always lock-step with the "party line," let me give an instance of what I think was not the most helpful or effective use of being locked up for the cause.  While I support Jay Carmona personally, and I support the cause of ENDA strongly enough that I've gone to Washington D.C. to lobby on that issue, something I've only done on this one occasion, the sit-in in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's...

When a bunch of UUs recently got arrested while protesting in Arizona (see Standing on the Side of Love or the UUA for more details), I immediately posted on the Facebook pages of those I know, "I'm proud of you."  Meanwhile, over at The Chaliceblog , "Chalicechick" was asking, "I get that people get arrested protesting with differing levels of justification for it. What I don't get is why we're all so proud of ourselves about it. It seems meaningless at best." It's a good question.  Pride is a mixed bag.  We have pride in things that we feel good about in ourselves or others, things that were hard to achieve, obstacles that were overcome.  And yet we also hear that pride is deadly sin, and pride goeth before a fall.    I've wondered about other people's misplaced "pride" in different things, and I've seen others wondering at pride I or friends of mine have had over different issues.  For example:  I'm no...

Well, it was an interesting discussion, dear readers. Apparently what happened in the mini-assemblies was a lot of amazing, thoughtful, and hard work.  And they crafted from those mini-assemblies a resolution that bore little in common with the original resolution to boycott Phoenix by moving our General Assembly in 2012.  The full text of it is below.  What it was, in sum, was a proposal that we go to Phoenix and have a different sort of GA with minimal business and focused on working with our allies to effect change. With the mini-assembly process completed, only two amendments were allowable in the plenary today.  One was to adopt an included by not incorporated amendment to strike the language about doing minimal business.  The other was to strike the whole resolution that came from the mini-assemblies and revert back to the original boycott resolution.  First, there were a lot of procedural questions.  Then there was a lot of pro and con de...

I don't know about you, gentle readers, but I'm having trouble keeping track of what's happening with the debate about whether or not to move the UUA General Assembly out of Arizona in 2012.  So for my clarification, I'm going to try to search it all out and sum it up here. Calling for Boycott: The UUA Board of Trustees met on May 6 and issued a letter on May 10 stating that they were recommending that we pull GA2012 out of Arizona.  A Business Resolution is scheduled for a vote on this recommendation at this year's General Assembly in Minneapolis. The White Bear UU Church in Mahtomedi, MN, issued a letter stating that they applaud this. The National Council of La Raza (according to the UU World , the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group) has called for a boycott of Arizona. At the time of a  UU World article, 18 U.S. cities were calling for boycott. Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM) issued a...

Some late-night musings and meandering thoughts... A blog post from Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie at Standing on the Side of Love yesterday says, " Immigration reform is our Selma. "  I read this and think it means that I should go to this event that SSL and others are promoting now, a march in Phoenix on May 29.  In 1965, you see, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put out a call asking UU clergy to come to Selma , saying , "The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden. I call therefore on clergy of all faiths to join me in Selma."  Many did, including the Rev. James Reeb . We are now, the next SSL post says, " Called to Arizona " to march along with our UUA president, Rev. Peter Morales. Last year, the Human Rights Campaign put out a "clergy call" asking clergy to come to Washington D.C., and I went.  I felt a bit like this was our Selma.  Certainly civil righ...

I'm going to try to write this without flinging world like Nazi around here.  I believe we need to step back from that level of rhetoric.  Save the Nazism allegations for genocide. That being said... The new Arizona immigration law which allows for anyone who is suspected of being an illegal alien to be asked for their papers at any time is clearly egregious.  We all know that as citizens in this free country we shouldn't have to carry proof of citizenship at all times.  And we all know that I won't be asked for my papers--I'm not a Latina, after all, and that's what this is really about.  It wouldn't matter if I was an illegal immigrant, I still wouldn't be asked for my papers.  But it won't matter if your family has been in this country for ten generations if you are Latino,  you can be asked to show proof of citizenship. We need to stand on the side of love on this one. And that's going to mean more than writing a letter of protest, or wea...