Dear ones,

Tomorrow (Friday, June 19), we remember Juneteenth,  the day that news of the emancipation of enslaved people finally reached Texas in 1865, almost three years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

It feels ironic to remember this date when justice for the enslaved people was delayed. Even after all the progress that has been made in civil rights and anti-racism, we are still struggling with racial injustice in our country. In effect, liberty and justice for People of Color is still delayed!

Our faith calls on us to work for justice and respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Democracy sometimes slows progress, but the importance of our democratic process is that we can change things. We can create change, but our voices need to be heard and seen. 

To that end, the UUSB leadership team decided that we will make a public statement on our condemnation of racism. We are committed to working for equality and justice for all people, but especially black lives, though we don’t want to leave out indigenous lives and Latinx lives. In order to be heard and seen, we are working on putting together a statement of solidarity with Back Lives Matter (BLM) and Black Lives UU (BLUU) that we can put on our website and Facebook Page. In addition, we are investigating the purchase and display of a BLM banner that we hope to display in a prominent place on our church edifice showing our solidarity and support.

As UU’s, I know that we have many different opinions and perspectives on what a message or statement of such a banner should be. It is my hope that we can trust our Council and Social Justice Committee to select the right message, so that we can make a statement show a display on building in a timely way.  If we need to have a further discussion on this topic, please let me or a member of council know and we will create a forum in which we can consider changes. The key is to act swiftly and keep the momentum of justice and anti-oppression growing.

Making a statement, in my mind, is only a beginning. If we are going to live our faith, we each also need to do the soul work. We need to look at our own institutionalized and ingrained biases. We need to decolonize our own “baked in” discriminatory tendencies. We need to learn to identify and work with them to transform ourselves, along with our institutions, including our congregation. It is with this intention that I am looking for partners to work with me on creating several Soul Work learning groups next Fall. Creating these groups is essential  to doing the internal work of examining our own implicit biases and transforming into a true living faith of even greater inclusion. These groups will also help us look for and discover ways we can continue building an anti-racist and anti-oppressive world. I invite you to join me on this journey. Justice for people of color has been too long delayed!  

For those of you who are interested in doing something immediately, here are a few actions you might consider:

1. Saturday (June 20 @ 10:00 am – 12:30 pm EDT):  Register and attend the National Poor Peoples Campaign – Mass Assembly and Online Moral March on Washington.  The event will also be broadcast @ 6 PM as well. https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org
2. Join the local branch of the NAACP – you can find them on FB or the web.

Love and Namasté, 

Rev. Drew

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