Over six weeks this winter, Unity’s Executive Team and Beloved Community Staff Team, with assistance from the Racial Justice Team, hosted a series of evenings during which the congregation was invited to learn more about the meanings of Foundations of Racial Capitalism; Land, Ownership, and Housing Justice; Borders, Policing, and the Politics of Belonging; Finance, Debt, and the Cost of Inequality; Universal Care and the Struggle for Collective Well Being; and Fossil Capitalism and Imagining New Futures. All of this was set in the context of racial capitalism, illustrated with real-life stories presented by members of our extended community. Attendees were asked to reflect on their own experiences or their observations of these relationships in the community, to more clearly understand how oppression is interconnected and deeply rooted in our society. The series was very well and consistently attended. People saw the necessity for action beyond discussion. The context of the winter ICE surge more dramatically highlighted the urgency.

Meanwhile, the Indigenous Justice Community Outreach Team, along with the Act for the Earth and Racial Justice Community Outreach Teams, were moving along a different, but interconnected path, exploring the possibility of bringing Indigenous scholar and speaker Mark Charles to present for a day at Unity Church. Writing in his blog on Memorial Day 2019, Charles named Memorial Day as the most difficult National Holiday for him as a Native person. According to the U.S. Army Center of Military History website, he pointed out, “[o]ver 12% of the total 3,515 Medals of Honor awarded were given to soldiers who fought against the indigenous peoples of this land!”

Charles continues, “George Erasmus, a wise leader from the Dene Nation, in a press release titled ‘From Truth to Reconciliation Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools’ wrote ‘Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.’”

Mark Charles concludes that, because white people and people of color, including but not limited to Indigenous people and African Americans, do not share a common memory, this country has a very limited sense of community. That is why it is so urgent that we learn, we understand, where our Indigenous neighbors come from, so we can begin to have a glimpse of their common memories. The memories of our African American neighbors, the descendants of people who were enslaved, are different from those who are Indigenous and whose forbears were here before white people arrived. 
​
The Indigenous Justice Team has walked a different path to bring teachings to us because they have different, but equally important lessons for us. The image I see is the trails leading to the convergence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, the B’dote, the sacred place from which all life springs, according to many of the Indigenous people who made this place their home long before colonization. The strands of stories come together at that point, and the interconnection of histories, of oppressions, of memories, helps to build a larger, Beloved Community. We hope to see you at the Mark Charles event on June 27.

Mark R. Charles at Unity Church
Saturday, June 27 | 9:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. | Parish Hall and Zoom 
Please register by June 20.

Brian Newhouse, Beloved Community Communications Team

​Mary Oliver crafted a beautiful poem years ago that, especially for UU’s, has become a kind of secular scripture. Her “Wild Geese” begins: 

“You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.”

Such a startling message, isn’t it? A bit later in the poem she introduces the wild geese, “high in the clean, blue air.” But the final lines of that same poem have been speaking more powerfully to me recently. As we emerge from the wreckage of Metro Surge, I find these helpful:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.”

Two words in particular stand out here: calls and family.

Calls. The harshest sounds of this besieged winter were those of Minnesota’s little orange whistles sounding an alarm to our neighbors as they sprinted for their homes and prayed that ICE agents wouldn’t batter the door in. Those whistles were a terrifying call. But far more than terror, I hope that same shrill sound made real what The Atlantic writer Adam Serwer found here as he coined the term “neighborism.” These whistles were the harsh call of Minnesotans “who don’t care whether their neighbors were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu.”

And Family. Thanks to the organizing of Unity’s Martha Tilton and many volunteers, I joined Obama Observers this winter, walking back and forth on Laurel Street, whistle in my pocket, eyes on the school’s playground. Some days we jumped over the sidewalk ice (oh, the metaphor!) and the next day it was pond-sized puddles. Regardless of the weather, we were incensed that any of us needed to be out there in the first place. Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: we volunteered to keep our government from abducting a child. But this was and is neighborism. This was a wider definition of family. This is the point of Oliver’s poem. As our late ministers said, “There are no other people's children.” 

Unity’s Ends: We the people of Unity Church-Unitarian, grounded in a joyous vision of beloved community…cultivate a multigenerational community of joy, care, and belonging…

As we sift through the damage that our government created, how can we, Unity Church, turn and cultivate more belonging? 
Twice this church year Reverend Oscar has cited from the pulpit the eye-opening research of sociologist Erica Chenoweth. Across a century’s worth of data, Chenoweth found that when 3.5% of a population protest nonviolently against their authoritarian government, that government is likely to fall. If UUs want to affect new outcomes in our politics, healthcare systems, housing, climate policies and a host of other needs — create beloved community at scale — we’ve got a math problem. There are about 5,000 UUs in Minnesota, and that’s roughly 0.1% of our state’s population. We can’t do this alone. We have to partner. 

We partner with those whose work, if not their theology, aligns with our own. One example: ISAIAH is a multiracial organization representing half a million Minnesotans, including 100 churches and 40 mosques. Its roots are unapologetically Christian, yet its leaders emphatically differentiate ISAIAH with white Christian nationalism. They organized the massive December rally at the Minneapolis Convention Center in which 5,000 gathered to train in nonviolent resistance; ISAIAH estimates one third of those attendees did not identify as Christian. On April 15, Tax Day, their political arm, Faith in Minnesota, organized a lobbying effort at the state Capitol in support of healthcare — one of the pillars of what they call their “People’s Agenda” which includes housing, public education, and food security. Vivian Ihekoronye is Faith in Minnesota’s Lead Community Organizer and told me she’s seeing more and more Unitarians joining Isaiah’s actions, many from Unity Church. Quakers and Buddhists are also showing up in large, new numbers.

As Unity seeks to walk the talk of our End's Statements, church member Clover Earl, convener of the Racial Justice Ministry Team, saw potential. Unity’s ISAIAH Partnership Team was born. Its charge is to keep “the congregation connected to and actively engaged in increasing awareness of Faith in Minnesota’s People’s Agenda.” One tangible outcome is that the congregation now has dozens of members serving as Faith in Minnesota delegates at Senate District Conventions, committed to ensuring that candidates support the People’s Agenda. With the midterms coming, Clover sees ISAIAH “committed to bringing together people of all faiths, ages, classes, and orientations to help ensure that our democracy and Beloved Community prevail in November.”

Is there any conflict between ISAIAH’s explicitly Christian mission and Unity’s faith tradition? “The short answer is no,” says Clover. “As an organization, ISAIAH has been masterful at creating simultaneous opportunities for actions across different faith traditions.” 

This is just one of the many partners that Unity needs and seeks so we can meet this moment. When our values align and our voices join, we do the work of Oliver’s beautiful wild geese, calling more and more people into the family where they have always belonged. 

Both Vivian and Clover welcome your direct inquiries to learn more.

LauraSue Schlatter, Beloved Community Communications Team

It may feel as though Unity's Board of Trustees presented us with too daunting a task when it asked us, the members of Unity Church, to “understand the interconnected roots of oppression . . .” in the opening challenge of our Ends Statements. But we have willing and patient teachers among our Beloved Community Staff Team, congregants, and partners in the community who can help us. 

The six-week “Interconnected Roots of Oppression” Wellspring Wednesday series was designed to teach and engage participants during weekly dialogue circles about: 

• Foundations of Racial Capitalism;
• Land, Ownership, and Housing Justice;
• Borders, Policing, and the Politics of Belonging;
• Finance, Debt, and the Cost of Inequality;
• Universal Care and the Struggle for Collective Wellbeing; and 
• Fossil Capitalism and Imagining New Futures. 

​Who, we wondered, was showing up at this well-attended series? Why? And are these conversations leading to new possibilities, cultivating collective action, and genuine transformation? To find out, we spoke to some participants, recorded their responses, and share them now with you.