(Editor’s note — these are the edited remarks of UUSJ Board Chair Bob Denniston at the occasion of the Dec. 2 UUSJ fundraising event featuring Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin.)

Just 20 years go, Apple unveiled I-Mac, the US had its first Federal budget surplus in 30 years, and Google was founded by 2 Stanford students.

And — just as important to many of us, a group of UU ministers and lay leaders gathered at the suggestion of UUA president Rev. John Buehrens to create an organization that would “Provide an opportunity for UUs to participate in a loud, unified voice on public policy issues.” What a great idea!

That was the beginning of UUSJ. Everyone knows about Google but not about UUSJ — at least not yet.

Organizing UUSJ

It was the vision of Rev. Buehrens to create an urban ministries project to “lift up the UU image and create synergies and new programs.” He engaged a community organizer, Bob Johnsen, who is here with us this afternoon, to move the vision to reality. Which he did! (Salute to Bob).

Without Bob Johnsen there likely wouldn’t be a UUSJ, and you might be casually watching Sunday afternoon football games on TV instead of being here with fellow UUs and friends learning more about social justice opportunities.

UUSJ was incorporated in April 2000 and received 501(c)3 status in 2003. Among the purposes was to speak with one voice on public policy issues, move beyond current isolationist approaches, and shoulder the responsibility of moral leadership.

UUSJ’s early focus was on public education, advocating for support, and then later the needs of children and families. The theme for several years was “Feeding the Flame of Justice”, and the focus expanded to civil liberties, freedom to marry, women’s issues and voter mobilization.

Shifting to Advocacy

In 2013 the focus shifted from educating about advocacy to actually doing advocacy — becoming advocates. The new purpose was to bring critical issues to the attention of public policy-makers, delivering UU values and voices to people and places where action can take place. That was thought to be especially important because the UUA Washington office had closed in 2010, leaving a vacuum.

Today UUSJ has 17 member congregations in the region and individual members largely here with some across the nation. We work closely with other UU organizations — the UU Association, UU Service Committee, UUs for a Just Economic Community, UU Ministry for Earth, and now the Coalition of UU State Action Networks.

We have three priority issues — immigration, escalating economic inequity, and environmental and climate justice. Our strategies are advocacy, witness and capacity-building. Most visible is our Capitol Hill Advocacy Corps — volunteers who advocate and sometime lobby — on our issues once a month. You saw many of them in the slide show.

Delivering UU values and voices

Some quick facts about our Advocacy Corps. Since February 2017 they have:

• Made more than a thousand visits to Congressional offices
• Conducted 106 scheduled meetings with Congressional staff and in some cases with Members of Congress, on topics ranging from food stamps, Medicaid work requirements, separation of church and state, immigration reform, Earth month, family separation, and protecting the social safety net.
• Delivered more than 4,300 personal letters letters of witness written by you and other UUs across the country through our Write Here! Write Now! letter-writing campaign, including from our partner UU congregations outside our area — in states such as IA, MO, NY, MA, ID, CO, OH.

The letters we get in response to our Write Here! Write Now! Campaign are not petitions or sign-on letters for the most part. They are hand-written, heart-felt stories from UUs expressing their concerns. They put a human face to the statistics and talking points and help UUSJ convey UU values by sharing compelling voices with federal policy-makers, all while espousing the view that the federal budget is a moral document.

Our Advocacy Corps volunteers are supported by volunteers who have special expertise and passion for a particular issue. Others have mobilized to take to the streets for public witness events such as March4Our Lives and Families Together.

Taking a public stand

As UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray reminds us, “This is no time for a casual faith.” That perspective calls us to take a public stand, through advocacy, witness, story-telling, to express our values and raise our individual and collective stories to policy-makers.

UUs are relatively small in number, but through partnerships with other faith groups and like-minded organizations we can have outsize influence, especially as we might be seeing large-scale political change in the wind. As Rev. Bill Schultz, a former president of UUA and later UUSC claimed, “We UUs punch above our weight class.” Apart from the pugilistic metaphor I agree.  As we move forward I’m hoping that our influence will grow in support of UU values as we take a public stand.

Put down the news feed and show up

A recent issue of UU World asked the question, “Do you have to be an activist to be a UU?”  One UU minister wrote in response: “I worry that we think we need to be experts to be activitists. We do more and more reading, as if the collection of knowledge itself will somehow change the world. Sometimes the world needs me to put down my news feed and simply show up….I believe that we can use our forceful, strong, outside voices to fight for liberation and we can also practice the compassion and relationship-building that is also at the heart of our faith.”

So let’s be mindful of what Congressman Raskin told us we should do — “Don’t stop” he said. So, let’s move forward, amplifying our UU values and voices. And, Don’t stop!