{"id":24547,"date":"2022-01-31T17:49:54","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T22:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/?p=24547"},"modified":"2022-01-31T17:59:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T22:59:54","slug":"voter-rights-advocacy-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/voter-rights-advocacy-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"Voter Rights Advocacy Highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite this setback for the John L. Lewis Act, there are some important takeaways from\u00a0 UUSJ\u2019s Democracy Action Team\u2019s collaboration with many national groups pushing for passage of this important legislation<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The coordinated and collaborative work included <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dfadcoalition.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hundreds of groups<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, all with the same goal. It was an important milestone for the broader democracy movement to unite our work and become more powerful.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Through our collective efforts, millions of people in the U.S. became aware of the threats to our democracy and strongly supported our work. This creates the opportunity to expand our support base for the upcoming midterm elections.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Democracy Action Team (DAT) built relationships with congressional offices through the more than 40 Zoom visits with Senate and House staff members. DAT learned a lot from the staffers and also about how best to engage. This was the Team\u2019s first full year of advocacy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0UUSJ strengthened its organizing skills by collaborating with UU the Vote (now part of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sidewithlove.org\/actioncenter\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Side With Love<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) and the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faithfuldemocracy.us\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Faithful Democracy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> coalition of faith-based organizations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0DATraise broader awareness of democracy concerns through six<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">action alerts that resulted in 4,637 messages to members of Congress; authoring a UU Action of Immediate Witness (AIW) <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uua.org\/action\/statements\/stop-voter-suppression-and-partner-voting-rights-and-multiracial-democracy?eType=EmailBlastContent&amp;eId=77425a68-7387-4137-86b0-afc2af703659\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stop Voter Suppression and Partner for Voting Rights and a Multiracial Democracy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; and organizing two separate UU events to make congregations aware of the AIW, as well as two expert briefings for the Write Here! Write Now! actions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking ahead, there is talk of breaking up the two voting rights bills into smaller pieces and seeing where there\u2019s enough bipartisan support to overcome a Senate filibuster. There does appear to be bipartisan support for reforming the <\/span><b>Electoral College Act, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to prevent actions like those used in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. <\/span><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There may be other opportunities as well. DAT will be following the progress of these and other democracy-related bills and checking on where the large national democracy groups are putting their attention.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition,\u00a0 the Team plans to sponsor educational events to build support for democratic reforms. On February 17 at 7:30 pm EST, we invited State Rep. Donna Howard from Texas to speak to us on the topic <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;<\/span><b>State Of Our U.S. Democracy: A UU View From The Texas Legislature<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8221; (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/uusj.salsalabs.org\/repdonnahowardstateofourdemocracy\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">RSVP<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">).\u00a0 Rep. Howard is a Unitarian Universalist and one of the legislators who went to Washington, DC to protest the Texas voter suppression legislation and encourage passage of the national voting rights reform bills.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There will also likely be opportunities to promote and support local election work in various states, perhaps as part of the UU the Vote program. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite this setback for the John L. Lewis Act, there are some important takeaways from\u00a0 UUSJ\u2019s Democracy Action Team\u2019s collaboration with many national groups pushing for passage of this important legislation The coordinated and collaborative work included hundreds of groups, all with the same goal. It was an important milestone for the broader democracy movement &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/voter-rights-advocacy-highlights\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Voter Rights Advocacy Highlights<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1313,1934,1967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-democracy","category-enews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24548,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547\/revisions\/24548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}