FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 20, 2026

Contact: Pablo DeJesús | info@uusj.org

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What’s at stake in Minneapolis and Minnesota? Why is this important?

In response to calls for solidarity, support, and attention for Minnesota and Minneapolis, and the reply by many UU clergy and lay leaders, Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ) made the following comment.

Pablo DeJesús, Executive Director, UUSJ, stated:

“This is the fight of our generation, of our several generations.

We did not ask for this fight. The fight was brought to us. It was placed in our way when the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Shelby and set us on a path some call a slow-motion legal coup. A looming clash of social movements contesting what America will be.

Then the leadership regime doubled down and ratcheted up by unleashing ICE on our communities this past year.

For those of us who live in this legislative republic, the next five, twenty-five, or more years — imperfect as it may be — this is our democracy to lose. Which vision for America will dominate our body politic for the foreseeable future?

In that context, we are called to champion a vision of a flourishing U.S. where all are welcome with dignity and respect, and where compassion and care prevail. For us, that vision includes migrants, refugees, aslyees and detainees, as well as their allies. They are us. We are them.

We Unitarian Universalists must become the ‘new abolitionists,’ expanding that sacred imagining beyond its historic focus on slavery and the carceral system toward the next horizon of moral renewal.

Now more than ever, we must use every means at our disposal to withdraw consent and oppose the hate. This is for our faith, our families, and our futures.

Right alongside that work, we must envision a better future. We must recommit to bringing that flourishing into being. We must actively work to bend the moral arc of the universe.

Here and now, that means paying attention to the harm being visited upon Minnesota.”