You will find here information about our social justice teams, our community collaborators and how to join with others in this vital work.
Justice Council
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Our Justice Council is comprised of our Issue Team leads and several at-large members and is chartered by our Board of Trustees. All our justice team meetings are open to drop-ins! Consider yourself invited!
The Justice Council Charter:
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Justice teamsFor our current justice activities, click here and/or read the UU Santa Fe Weekly eNewsletter. Featuring UU Santa Fe member, Ken Mayers
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.―John F. Kennedy |
UU Santa Fe Justice Teams
All UU Santa Fe justice teams welcome all participants at any time. You don't have to be on a team to participate in UU Santa Fe justice initiatives. Our teams work together, supporting each other, led by our Justice Council. Engage! Our current issue teams:
All UU Santa Fe justice teams welcome participation from anybody at any time. Engage!
Justice Team Meeting Times | Open to All
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UU Santa Fe Justice Teams
Immigrant & RefugeeBorderLinks―Celebrating building bridges, not walls. 
Changing Systems, Changing Ourselves: Anti-Racism Practice for Sanctuary, Accompaniment, and Resistance | American Friends Society & UU Service Committee An excellent webinar series exploring issues that enable us in the non-immigrant community to engage deeply in the issues that effect our friends so intensely and sometimes tragically, click here. Resources for More Information
“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”―Warsan Shire |
Immigration and Refugee Justice Team Activities Be aware that the initiatives around immigration and refugee support and advocacy can change daily. Oftentimes more quickly than our website can keep up with. So, pay attention to our UU Santa Fe Events and News page, our Facebook page and your email for the latest information. SUPPORT TRANSGENDER WOMEN ASYLUM-SEEKERS RELEASED FROM CIBOLA DETENTION CENTER
Backpack/Gift Card Drive We are collecting backpacks and gift cards. You may put together an entire backpack, or bring in a portion which we will consolidate. Please see the list below! A box for these items will be in the UU Santa Fe foyer. This drive will run from October 14 through November 21. The donations will be distributed in collaboration with the Santa Fe Dreamers Project. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE AN ENTIRE BACKPACK, PLEASE FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE DO NOT GET ANYTHING THAT IS NOT ON THIS LIST. Travel size items mean the women can more easily take them with them on their travels to their new home. Gift cards are optional, but are very much appreciated as many of the women do not have money to make purchases during their travels.
OPTIONAL AND NOT REQUIRED: $25, $50, or $100 gift cards from Visa or Walmart are so helpful so that the women can purchase things not on this list, or take with them when they are finally on their way to long term sponsors in other parts of the country. If you do choose to do this, please put gift card into a letter sized envelope, seal it, place it on top of the items in the backpack just before you close it. Please write “Gift Card” and amount of gift card on the envelope.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR GENEROSITY! Donations to Support Transgender Women
We are asking for donations to support two separate, but related, things. The first is for money for the detained women for their commissary accounts. This commissary money is very important, as it allows them to purchase food, as well as pay for the phone calls to family and friends that are so critical to fighting off feelings of isolation. The second is to support some of the needs/costs of the apartment in Albuquerque that hosts up to six transgender women when they are finally released from Cibola. This will help with the huge expenses that occur in running such a project. For either of these fundraisers, checks should be made out to the Interfaith Leadership Alliance. On the “Memo” line please BE SURE to write “FNIJ/Cibola Commissary.” Please hand checks to Gale Wasserman or Laura Brockington who will be manning an information table over the next few weeks. Local Support for Ariel
Ariel is a 22-year-old man from Honduras. He is an asylum-seeker represented by SF Dreamers, and has a long-term sponsor here in Santa Fe. He speaks mostly Spanish, but is learning English. What is being requested by Ariel and his sponsor is the following:
Our Immigrant & Refugee Community Collaborators & Allies
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ENVIRONMENTAL
Resources
“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.” |
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Domestic Violence Prevention
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Domestic Violence Prevention Task Force - Now Forming - Led by Leona Stucky-Abbott
Our Task Force resources and flanks Healing Voices - Personal Stories. Contact Leona (or Steven Mead) if you are interested joining this team and supporting its efforts. "Domestic violence (also called intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic abuse or relationship abuse) is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship." Our collaborators “I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prison. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.”―Haruki Murakami |
UU's United Against Gun Violence
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“We lose eight children and teenagers to gun violence every day. If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials. We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence.”―Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance |
Results Poverty advocacy
To learn more about RESULTS, contact:
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RESULTS―Advocacy for those struggling with chronic poverty
RESULTS is not a UU Santa Fe group; however, we have a deep and cooperative relationship with the RESULTS group who meets on our campus. Have you ever wished you could do something―something effective―to help people struggling with poverty? There is a movement of passionate, committed, “everyday” people, who together use their voices to influence political decisions that will bring an end to poverty. This organization is RESULTS, a non-partisan, non-profit, nationwide group of volunteers whose goal is creating the political will to end poverty, both globally and in the US. RESULTS volunteers receive training, support, and inspiration to become skilled advocates. They learn to effectively advise policy makers, guiding them towards decisions that improve access to education, health, and economic opportunity. Volunteers multiply their impact through the enormous power of advocacy—whether it’s helping change policy to support millions of families putting food on the table or helping raise billions of dollars for the world’s most vulnerable children. RESULTS chapters now exist in every state in the US and in 20 other countries. UU Santa Fe hosts the Santa Fe RESULTS chapter. We meet at UU Santa Fe at 10:15 am on the second Saturday of every month, to plan our advocacy actions. Our primary focus this year is on:
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First Sunday Giving“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”―Charles Dickens 
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First Sunday Giving
The Justice Council and issue teams vet and schedules various, social service non-profits to receive the abundance of our UU Santa Fe Sunday service collection. We bias toward smaller, local organizations with whom our Issue Teams have a working relationship. Here are our recent and proposed recipients. You can look more closely at these organizations by clicking on the links below. If you have local organizations to recommend, do so! Once a month, we highlight an organization during our Sunday service―we collect cash and checks made out directly to the recipient organization (not UU Santa Fe!). In 2018-2019 we collected and dispersed over $10,000 to local not-for-profit organizations.
2020
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UU Santa Fe Justice
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Justice and Spirit: Unitarian Universalist Online Book Club“The opposite of poverty is not wealth. In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.” |
Justice and Spirit: Unitarian Universalist Online Book Club
Skinner House Books and Beacon Press offer an online book each month on the GoodReads website. They describe the book club this way: "Life never stops sending new spiritual challenges our way. How do we, as individuals and communities, search for truth and meaning, strive for justice and action, navigate our spiritual journeys, and live out our values? Justice and Spirit: The UU Book Club is a place where all who are interested in spirituality, religion, and justice, whether UU or not, can discuss books that relate to these crucial questions. We hope to foster deep, meaningful conversations and a welcoming and loving environment. All are welcome." [And our UU Santa Fe Harriet Kidder Memorial Library has many new titles of contemporary thought on justice making.] |
There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary, and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair, and disrespect.―Nikki Giovanni