Opinion Articles on Social Justice topics
The path that led me to become the 2015 UUSJ Environmental Award recipient began many decades ago. While in high school, I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It had a profound effect on me. I was awakened to the negative impact man can have on nature. I felt it was so wrong and I wanted … Continue reading Becoming an Environmental Activist By Natalie Pien, UU Church of Loudoun, VA
Walter Ellis received a 2015 UUSJ Emerging Leader Award at the UUSJ Social Justice Awards Gala last fall. His full remarks are below: Since I only have a few minutes, I figured I’d share an image with you I’ve cribbed from the internet. It’s a sketch that I’ve grown quite fond of. It shows two houses, one … Continue reading All Houses Matter By Walter Ellis, Cedar Lane UU Church of Bethesda, MD
It was a blessedly sunny Saturday afternoon in early December, and there in Falls Church, Virginia, more than a hundred of us–Muslims and Catholics and Protestants and Jews and UUs–had converged on the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center to help pack the thousands of blankets and coats the mosque’s members had been collecting for months … Continue reading An Interfaith Effort With Our Muslim Neighbors By Marc DeFrancis, UU Church of Arlington, VA
It is an honor to receive this award. While I am proud of the work I have done in the last year for the Black Lives Matter movement, I am most proud that I keep trying – even after I say (and do) the wrong things. I will not allow my own mistakes, inadequacies, and … Continue reading Black Lives Matter By Kerridwen Henry, UU Congregation of Columbia, MD
My wife and I were in Budapest four years ago and one evening we were on Castle Hill, a culturally and historically significant place in Budapest. It was late evening and we had missed the bus to the train station so we decided to walk the under a mile distance. We passed a modern building … Continue reading Will You Join Me to Take Action to Reduce Gun Violence? By Bill Alsmeyer-Johnson, UUSJ Secretary & member of Mt. Vernon Unitarian Church
This year, the day August 18 took on greater meaning for me than it has in the past. August 18 is the day 95 years ago in 1920 when the 19th amendment to the US constitution was ratified. That amendment granted women the right to vote. Why is the date more notable to me this … Continue reading What the Right to Vote Means to Me by Rev. Dr. Linda Olson Peebles, Faith in Action Minister, UU Church of Arlington, VA & President, UU Ministers Association
I grew up as a rather prayerful Catholic girl in the middle of nowhere. And perhaps more than any innate sense of justice-seeking, more than any clearly delineated theology – the hallmark of my religious sensibility in those early years was the fact that I was absolutely enamored by the beauty of the sacred. In … Continue reading Environmental Justice: When Only Love Is Enough by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, River Road UU Church
Labor Day calls attention to the concern that many are worried that increasing automation within the workplace will further accelerate the already-unacceptable level of job loss. As is clearly evident, the growing gap between the dividend-clipping wealthy and those who make their living with real, salaried jobs is huge and still growing, exacerbating the wealth … Continue reading Reflections on Labor Day: Automation — Job Enhancer rather than Destroyer? by Terry Steichen, UU Church of Fairfax
I was born in 1982 in Bogotá, Colombia with a condition called Spina Bifida. Spina Bifida is when the spine doesn’t close correctly when the fetus is being formed in the mother. It causes neurological damage from the opening of the spine on down. When I was born, my parents were told that I would … Continue reading What the ADA Has Meant to Me by Alexandra Dixon, UU Church of Fairfax
As heat records were being set for the month of June in Portland, Oregon, Unitarian Universalists were stepping up to leadership for a Strong and Compassionate Global Climate Agreement in December 2015. The 10+-person “Act for a Livable Climate” Clipboard Team collected 500+ signatures that led to the overwhelming Action of Immediate Witness adoption by the 2015 General … Continue reading “Act for a Livable Climate” Action of Immediate Witness Passes at 2015 UUA General Assembly by Doris Marlin
