Rev. Ruth MacKenzie, Minister Emerita of First Universalist Church of Minneapolis and member of Unity Church–Unitarian

I’ve had two truly transformative experiences in my life. One was my learning and work with my family of origin and how the traumas of my upbringing had shaped my life in surprising ways. In my late twenties, my family and I began a process of listening and truth telling. It wasn’t easy but it transformed me and my family into something more whole. We all grew up. The other seismic experience has been my learning and work with racial justice beginning at First Universalist Church of Minneapolis in 2011 and continuing today. I guess I might describe it as “growing up as a white person.”

Early in my ministry at First Universalist, Revs. Justin Schroeder and Jen Crow worked with Heather Hackman and Black members of our congregation to train one tenth of the congregation in basic understandings of racism, white supremacy, and integrating racial justice into the very fabric of our congregation. We wanted to create a sea change in who we were and how we did things.

The trainings were intense, uncomfortable to say the least, absolutely necessary, and life changing. At the same time, a number of killings of Black men by police officers took place in Minneapolis and Saint Paul: Jamar Clark, Philando Castille, Daunte Wright, and George Floyd. The Black Lives Matter movement was building power, and many of us were compelled to leave the church pew and move into the streets.

I found myself doing things I’d never done before. I sat with young Black men outside the fourth precinct police station and listened to their stories as night descended at the BLM occupation. I lay down on the asphalt of 35W in protest. We gathered musicians, and faith leaders in several vigils to mourn the dead of the Black community. Our church doors were flung open to all kinds of groups working for racial justice, providing meeting space, sanctuary housing, and more. Unity Church was in the thick of it as well, and many collaborations and partnerships emerged and still do. I started to understand at a base level that faith and racial justice were essential to one another. Faith keeps my racial justice work tender, humble and courageous. Racial justice keeps my faith relevant, true and tethered to the real world.

There were plenty of times I was scared, plenty of times I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, plenty of times I made hurtful mistakes, plenty of times I felt overwhelmed and still do. There is no way to do this work and not feel off balance, jostled, unsettled. I cannot do the work of racial justice without prayer, without listening circles, without a faith community that lifts up the compelling truth of our interconnection with all people, that our liberation is bound up together. I cannot live a life tethered to God and Gai of many names, the worthiness and dignity of every human being without a powerful connection to racial justice. I can’t divorce my spiritual life from the real world reality of how race, racism and white supremacy deeply shapes all our lives with profound detriment to Black and brown folk. Just as in my family, I ache for a world that is more whole.

I’ve rejoined the Unity faith community having retired from full time ministry and I’ve been privileged to join the Racial Justice Team of Unity Church, continuing to grow and learn and transform. Last spring I attended the Interconnected Roots of Oppression series created by the Beloved Community Staff Team and was so moved and awakened once again. The Racial Justice Team will build on that series this coming October with a series called From Guilt to Activation: Owning Our Racism. I hope you’ll join us in this transformative work of spirit and antiracist multicultural practice.

Moving from Guilt to Activation: Owning Our Racism
Four Wednesdays: October 14, 21, 28 and November 11 
7:10-8:30 p.m. | Ames Chapel
Topics include: The Masks We Wear, The Necessity of Discomfort, Expanding Our Heart Center
Unity’s Racial Justice Team will follow last year’s Beloved Community Staff Team exploration of The Interconnected Roots of Oppression and expand on Unity’s Double Helix model with a series of Wellspring Wednesday experiences. Interconnected Roots taught us how racial capitalism informs political, economic and social systems. Moving from Guilt to Activation: Owning Our Racism will help us recognize and reckon with somatic dimensions of our white racist heritage. Circle conversations will be used to share insights that potentially “break us open and allow us to be transformed.” Follow-up programming on activation will be offered in early 2027. Please attend two fall sessions in preparation for spring sessions. 

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.

​Since it became seated in spring of 2024, the Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission has created its own bylaws; developed sub-committees, work plans, and budget; hosted community listening sessions; and set the course for its next big steps: a Harms Report and a legislative proposal. The Harms Report will underlie future recommendations for repair and redress. The contract for production is being awarded this fall, and delivery of the Harms Report to the Commission is requested by the end of 2026. 

The Slavery Disclosure and Redress Ordinance (SDRO) will likely be proposed to Saint Paul City Council this year. Slavery Disclosure acts require that companies who wish to apply for government contracts investigate their history, and that of predecessors and acquisitions, for any links to slavery and the slave trade before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. In addition to companies that directly benefitted from the labor of enslaved persons, businesses like financial institutions and insurance companies that engaged in holding or transferring enslaved persons as assets or providing loans for their purchase, would also be required to investigate their records. Companies must then file an affidavit about their findings. Depending on how the ordinance is written, consequences for records of links to slavery must be disclosed to the municipality, and continued pursuit of a city contract might require public disclosures and hearings, programmatic support and/or financial contributions. Insufficient investigations or false affidavits could result in legal action or being barred from future contracts. 

SDROs have been enacted in other municipalities — Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, and more, as well as at the state level in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut. 

Members of Unity’s Racial Justice Team, and more recently the Board’s Reparations Committee, have attended monthly meetings of the Commission as a show of support and as an opportunity to develop personal and institutional relationship with the Commission. Quietly observing their policy work is a far cry from the “hard work of antiracism” as stated in our new ends, but we are preparing to learn, together with the Commission, what will be requested of white allies who commit to standing with them as their recommendations become actionable. The SDRO proposal will be the first public act of the Commission aimed at establishing accountability for historic acts of oppression that enriched the bottom line of enterprises now doing business in Saint Paul. 

We don’t know what kind of blowback the proposal might generate. The Commission will be asking for signatures of support from individuals and organizations to accompany the ordinance proposal to City Council. Most of us are probably comfortable adding a signature to a list of supporters and asking our City Councilperson to back a measure. Are we as willing to take it to the next level and ask organizations in our networks, or our workplace, to add their names in support of the SDRO? 

Learn from representatives of the Commission and Unity’s Board and Racial Justice Team at Wellspring Wednesday on October 1.