Check out my full post on BlueOregon.com

I’m also hoping to check out the Love & Struggle NW Tour that comes to the Reflections Cafe (446 NE Killingsworth) on Sun Apr 29 3pm to hear local organizers Walidah Imarisha and Mic Crenshew discuss the 60′s, Weatherman, SDS along with author Terry Bisson.  These events really surface our shared history of resistance and how we continue to bless the world with vision and social change.

Check it out, one of the most wonderful weeks of truly engaging and honestly authentic community advocates are being brought together by the Bus Project for a damn fun, critically real and pretty inspirational Festival of Democracy.  Something for everyone, from newbies looking to educate themselves about the upcoming elections to seasoned vets seeking something new in their toolbox.  Rebooting Democracy runs through Sunday April 22nd.

I’ll be a part of Sunday’s workshop The Equity Equation: Working to Solve Oregon’s Racial Disparities, along with Kalpana Krishnamurthy of Western States Center and the Oregon Racial Equity Report Card.  Shout out to all the great APANO volunteers helping out, and the continued effort of the organizers to prioritize the issues of communities of color and communities experiencing inequities.

I’m thrilled to share this recently published poetry from one of my oldest friends.  We’ve been through a lot of our social, political and economic intellectual growth together over the last 20+ years.  Here is an excerpt, read the rest in the Grey Sparrow Journal and see her bio after the jump.

when you wake up this morning they have already abolished unions

then

the earth

lifts

and lays her head back down slightly to the left

soon

the sea

sings across that island

pressing our hopes between backup plans

their promises melting down below deck

Finish reading the poem at Grey Sparrow Journal.

Laurel Albina is a Canadian born Palestinian-American writer and organizer. She is a 2011 Hedgebrook Alumnae and a five-year student of Bent Writing Institute in Seattle, WA. Laurel is scheduled to have her poetry published in Prairie Fire Magazine in 2012. She is employed as a union negotiator and lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband and four-year old daughter.

It made me reflect on several other meetings of great activists.  I spoke on a panel last week at Portland State about community partnerships for the Social Determinants of Health symposium alongside Bob Bullard (a grandfather of Environmental Justice), another CAER keynoter.  And just a few weeks earlier was at the South Los Angeles Library for a Labor/Strategy Center discussion with Fred Ho whose book on Afro-Asian relations is a must read for community organizers.  (nudge to www.bigwowo.com for a place to talk more about this?)

A decade later when I was at Harvard Divinity School and helping organize an international network of UU Seminarians of Color, we noted that over 40% of our members identified as LGBTQ.  Rev. Meg Riley is still preaching the good word as Senior Minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, an amazing international congregation based in Boston with a worldwide ministry.  Here she is speaking out about against the marriage ban in Minnesota, At the Dentist: Fighting the Marriage Ban.

(hat tip to the UU movement building network Standing on the Side of Love)

We feel so much frustration at the elections.  We feel it with every TV, cel phone, text message, website, and radio reminder that pours through our lives 24/7.  We feel the impact on the most vulnerable in our communities, whose voices may be silenced or worse with decision-makers who value exclusion, demonization, and inequity.

Despite what we may feel as New Americans or Old Americans, this is no longer a land of individualism.  We have evolved beyond the theologies, philosophies, land-use planning, public policy, liberal attitudes and beliefs that held great influence in the past.  We are one.   We commit ourselves to working as one, to build the circles of resilience, of resistance, of restoration of the human family.

We may not be able to touch the lives of those suffering across the world, but we can touch the lives of those on our block who face increasing hostility from racial stereotypes, class warfare, and the socio-economic manipulation of the most vulnerable.  We will not let the media-political-entertainment machine continue to only be fueled by the pain of others, masked in the broken ideology that the best way for humanity to survive is by living alone and caring only about ourselves.

Mainstream liberalism cannot sit back any longer and observe and analyze.  We must be on the front lines.  A path is before us all, to begin again with vision, attitude and goals for progress.  We start with ourselves, preparing ourselves to be in authentic relationships with our families, communities and the human family by both unlearning our petty prejudices, and learning new skills and knowledge to be engaged in community building.  We are careful rethink practices that have divided us along race, class, generation and more within the progressive community.  We nurture the fire within to step out of our comfort zone to give a little more to give in ways that strengthen our voice, ways that bring us into direct contact with the uncertain, struggling, marginalized and surviving participants of our great nation.  Crafting together a new way forward.

Where we talk across generation
Where we popularize our class consciousness
Where white folks bring an attitude of nonviolent listening with folks of color
Where we reject demonizing and minimizing the identities we bring
Where we put our minds, bodies and souls to work in direct contact with other human beings, where there are no strangers, only friends we’ve never met*

And we say yes to being in relationship, to doing God’s work of connecting one by one, and believing that the tasks of community organizing, of reaching out in person, on the phone, in group, are a political and spiritual practice of building wholeness.

*with thanks to Sisters of the Road

My community ministry has me deep in relationship with low-income, communities of color, specifically through transit and economic justice work with OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, and with the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon.  In both circles, I meet the occasional UU, usually folks of color who have had some experience in a UU congregations or with Liberal Religous Youth.  I think I’ve met over 15 folks of color right here in Portland, OR who identify to some extent with our faith, a great number for a potluck!

Still, there is a deep dissonance from my previous ministry with the UUA’s Young Adult and Campus Ministry, People of Color (DRUUMM and otherwise), and various congregational efforts I was engaged in.  Those experiences were powerful, and I am glad for the opportunity to serve the UU communities.  I imagined myself staying deeply involved professionally with the UU, however my aspirations diverged, and today I feel as far from the mainstream of UUism as I did when I was an undergraduate at the University of Oregon.  What is strange, is both of these times in my life where my distance was greatest, are also some of the most meaningful.

My time after YRUU (youth ministry) leadership, which was intense from high school through early college, was a place where I explored and lived at the intersection of my identity, the suffering of the world, and grew in my ability to serve.  Now in my time after C*UUYAN and the UUA, I’ve come full circle and am immersed in communities on the margin of our mainstream society, and by some logical extension the margin of Unitarian Universalism.

Through all this, I have a deep appreciation for the training and mentorship I received through lay and ordained leadership.  For the most part I worked with amazing high functioning colleagues, was compensated generously, and was able to work with an amazing diversity of grassroots UU’s for a decade.  Now, I’m happily connected with the “big church” in Portland, which I’ve been around since I was a child growing up at the wonderful hippie fellowship in the rural suburbs.

Being back in Portland now 3 years, life is great and grounded.  Emerging also from that period of time with lots of really little kids, hard to believe that our 3 total 18 years in age already!

We still need boycott GA and PASS THE RESOLUTION to move GA out of Arizona in 2012.  We are not ready spiritually, religiously, and from a values perspective – organizationally, to achieve this transformation in 2012 years.  Consider:

• The general apathy and suspicion of racial justice concerns, and powerful pushback against immigrant and refugee rights education and social justice
• Lack of any coordinated UUA immigrant rights and racial justice programming that is accountable to communities of color within our congregations and the larger racial justice movement.  We have many individuals with relationships and personal influence, but this does not provide long-term sustainable leadership.  Disappointingly even local congregations in Arizona are disconnected and disengaged.
• Little UUA-wide accountability with immigrant communities, UU laity and clergy engaged with communities of color, immigrants and refugees.  There is no communication or relationship building with any of the ministers and lay folks I know who are deeply involved with these issues, and I’ve made and received several calls.  We appear to lack vision and structure to hold this dialogue effectively.
• There is no clearinghouse, no contact person, no issue tracking, and no leadership development plan as far as I can tell from a brief look at district and UUA materials.  Already in Oregon we are facing two copycat measures in local counties, and there is no communication or information sharing structure developing.  We need to develop a strategy and coordination to manage UU engagement on this issue if we are going to really “transform” ourselves at GA.

As a faith tradition, we share a lot of values in common with the movement to boycott Arizona.  Yet the evidence is clear that we are not ready to meet the call to have a “transformed” GA.  We do the immigrant rights movement a disservice by pretending to be so, and bringing what will ultimately be a GA with status quo activities and crossing the boycott.  We also disrespect the voices of people of color, immigrants and refugees within our congregations, who have made their position clear, it is our moral and political call to respect the boyott, and our own safety and wholeness are at stake.

I urge GA delegates to support the GA Boycott Resolution in Minneapolis AND

1) Support the move to biennial or triennial GA
2) Call on the UUA to dedicate staff resources to coordinate research, local networks, and anti-racism education
3) Commit to social witness and civic engagement now, in conjunction with local congregations and national affiliate organizations such as DRUUMM, LUUNA, ARE, Asian Pacific Islander Caucus of DRUUMM, and youth and young adult UU movements.