UUs for Racial Justice

UUs for Racial Justice Unitarian Universalist committed to confronting and removing racism from our communities.

The Caribbean did not produce revolutionaries by accident. It produced them because oppression demands it from people wh...
06/04/2026

The Caribbean did not produce revolutionaries by accident. It produced them because oppression demands it from people who know that survival without agency will never be enough. Here are three Caribbean revolutionaries who have shown the world how to hold your head up and speak truth to power.

Read about this week's Revolutionaries at https://bridgesuu.org/celebrating-diversity-jun-2026-week-1-title/.

Featuring:

Toussaint Louverture
Born into slavery in Saint-Domingue - the French colony that would become Haiti - and died in a French prison in 1803, one year before the revolution he led succeeded in establishing the first Black republic in the world.

Claudia Jones
Arrived in Harlem at nine years old. After her mother's passing, Claudia contracted tuberculosis at a young age. She channeled her grief and rage into becoming one of the most dangerous women in America. Dangerous enough that the United States government imprisoned her and deported her in 1955 under the McCarran Act. Jones was a member of the Communist Party, but her actual work was labor organizing, anti-racism, and women's rights. The Communist label was really the legal mechanism the government used to silence her - the same playbook used against Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and dozens of others during the Red Scare.

Una Marson
In 1932 a twenty-six year old woman arrived in London without knowing a single person and carrying only a suitcase and a manuscript. Within a decade she had built the infrastructure that gave Caribbean literature and voices their first global platforms. She became the first Black woman employed by the BBC - at a time when the BBC was the only voice of the empire that had colonized her island.

"I was born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of a free man." - Toussaint Louverture

Reflection: What does it mean to fight for things you may not live to see? Every tablespoon of sugar carries the history of who produced it at a high cost. How does Caribbean resistance live on in the things you consume, the music you love, or the art that moves you?

The Caribbean is a rich and complex world with dozens of islands, hundreds of languages, and five centuries of colonial ...
06/04/2026

The Caribbean is a rich and complex world with dozens of islands, hundreds of languages, and five centuries of colonial impact.

Caribbean American Heritage Month is a celebration of what survived across the Middle Passage in https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0032, the resistance and revolution held in the hearts and minds of enslaved people, and how their stories and spirits are reclaimed through ongoing resistance, invention, cultural expression, and institution-building across generations.

June is also Black Music Month, poetic timing since the genius of the African diaspora and Caribbean expression are inseparable in their influence on American music. To trace either is to arrive at the same place: enslaved people who were taught their culture had no value but survived to give the world some of its most enduring art.

See the full post at https://bridgesuu.org/caribbean-currents-voices-of-vision-art-and-liberation/.

Week 1: Roots and Revolutionaries
Week 2: The Sound of the Islands
Week 3: Word, Story, and Image
Week 4: Builders and Bridge-Makers
Week 5: Rising Voices

Multiple sclerosis touches millions of lives, reminding us that bodies are sacred, struggles are real, and no one should...
05/30/2026

Multiple sclerosis touches millions of lives, reminding us that bodies are sacred, struggles are real, and no one should face them alone.

As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including those living with chronic illness, their caregivers, and all who love them. Today, we stand in solidarity, advocate for accessible healthcare, and commit to building a world where everyone is seen, supported, and valued.

To find out more about MS, visit the MSIF website at www.msif.org.

🧡

Remembering Malcolm X | May 19On what would have been Malcolm X's 101st birthday, we honor a man whose journey embodied ...
05/19/2026

Remembering Malcolm X | May 19

On what would have been Malcolm X's 101st birthday, we honor a man whose journey embodied radical transformation.

Born Malcolm Little, he evolved through pain, incarceration, and spiritual awakening into a fierce advocate for Black dignity and self-determination.

What many don't know: near the end of his life, Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca shifted his worldview toward a more universal vision of human liberation — one that resonates with our UU commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Following his April 1964 pilgrimage, Malcolm X, then known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, significantly shifted his ideology towards global human rights and universal brotherhood. His post-Mecca speeches and letters, including the "Letter from Mecca," emphasize his renunciation of racial, particularly anti-white, indictments in favor of human dignity and equality.

His life challenges us to ask: Are we willing to keep growing, even when it costs us everything?

Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that "separat...
05/17/2026

Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," striking down school segregation and marking a pivotal moment in the fight for racial justice.

Seventy-two years later, we recognize both the courage of those who fought for this victory and the reality that the work is far from finished.

School segregation persists through housing patterns, funding inequities, and systemic barriers that continue to deny equal opportunity to Black and Brown students.

As Unitarian Universalists committed to the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we are called to more than remembrance—we are called to action.

What can we do?
- Advocate for equitable school funding in your community
- Support organizations working to dismantle educational inequity
- Examine how segregation shows up in your own neighborhood schools
- Listen to and amplify the voices of those most impacted

The promise of Brown v.Board demands our continued commitment.

Week 3: Creativity, Innovation, and Cultural Expression (May 15 to 21)Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander artists have lon...
05/15/2026

Week 3: Creativity, Innovation, and Cultural Expression (May 15 to 21)

Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander artists have long created from inside the tension that creativity is inseparable from the communities, histories, and urgencies that shaped them.

This week we honor an architect who redefines what it means to hold a moment, a poet who builds bridges across the Arab American experience one ordinary image at a time, and a Marshallese poet-diplomat who read their verses at the United Nations as her homeland is being swallowed by a rising sea.

Maya Lin was 21 years old and a Yale undergraduate when she was commissioned to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. The polished black granite wall, cut into the earth to enshrine the names of 58,000 dead, not alphabetically, not heroically, but chronologically in the order they died. This testament to the cost of war has become the most visited monument in Washington.... read more at: https://bit.ly/42XhIKF.

The prolific Poet, Author, Editor, and Songwriter, Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis to a Palestinian father and an American mother, and grew up between Jerusalem and San Antonio. For more than forty years she has been what she calls a wandering poet - crossing borders on the strength of language alone, leading workshops ... read more at: https://bit.ly/42XhIKF.

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a Marshallese poet, performance artist, and Climate Envoy for the Republic of the Marshall Islands. In 2014 she stood before the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Summit and performed "Dear Matafele Peinam," a poem written to her infant daughter. The powerful piece is a promise of “home” made to a child whose home may not survive.... read more at: https://bit.ly/42XhIKF.

"We are the ones who will live with the consequences of your decisions." - Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, UN Climate Summit

Reflection: When has art changed the way you understood a political or moral crisis? What would it mean to you if the work of these artists was not just as inspiration, but as an invitation to engage with the worlds they are inheriting?

Every journey begins before the boat, before the border, before the leaving. It begins in the place that became unsafe, ...
05/12/2026

Every journey begins before the boat, before the border, before the leaving. It begins in the place that became unsafe, or unlivable, or simply somewhere a future could no longer be imagined - or somewhere a different future called. Migration is not a single event. It is a long unfolding - a negotiation between what was carried and what must be let go, a tension between the experience held in the body and the experience required to survive.

Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander communities have crossed oceans under colonial flags and fled wars that others started. They have arrived in countries that did not want them, and yet - having navigated exclusion laws, xenophobia, occupation, and displacement across centuries - they have kept thriving.

What diaspora produces is not grief alone. It produces literature, music, ceremony, and coalition. It produces people who carry two worlds, with a complex relationship to both.

Voices of the Crossing
Ocean Vuong arrived in the United States as a refugee from Vietnam at age two, raised in Hartford, Connecticut, by a mother who could not read in any language. His debut novel...

The Korean American poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong grew up in Los Angeles as the daughter of Korean immigrants, navigating the particular invisibility the United States reserves...

Tusiata Avia is a poet and performer of Samoan and New Zealand European descent, born in Christchurch during the era of Dawn Raids, violent government sweeps targeting Pacific Islander communities...

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian American poet born in Seattle and raised across the Arab world...

READ MORE about these authors at https://bit.ly/4dfOFId.

Reflection: What has been carried across generations in your own family, spoken or unspoken, that shapes who you are today? What would it look like for your congregation to move beyond solidarity from a distance into genuine relationship and covenant with immigrant and diaspora communities?

Honoring Motherhood in All Its FormsThis Mother's Day, we celebrate the many ways people nurture, care for, and love.We ...
05/10/2026

Honoring Motherhood in All Its Forms

This Mother's Day, we celebrate the many ways people nurture, care for, and love.

We honor:
💗 Mothers - biological, adoptive, step, and foster
💗 Those who mother without the title
💗 Grandmothers, aunts, mentors, and chosen family
💗 Those grieving mothers no longer with us
💗 Those longing to be mothers
💗 Those for whom this day brings complicated feelings

Motherhood isn't one story - it's countless acts of love, sacrifice, guidance, and presence.

In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, we recognize that families come in all forms, and that the work of nurturing and raising children belongs to entire communities.

Today, we give thanks for all who have mothered us, and for the opportunity to care for one another with tenderness and grace. May we all find ways to honor love in its many expressions.

Today, people across the country pause to pray, meditate, and reflect.As Unitarian Universalists, we honor the many ways...
05/07/2026

Today, people across the country pause to pray, meditate, and reflect.

As Unitarian Universalists, we honor the many ways people seek connection with the sacred - through prayer, meditation, silence, nature, community, and action.

Prayer takes many forms:
🙏 Words spoken in solitude or community
🌿 Quiet presence in nature
✊ Working for justice and compassion
💭 Meditation and mindful reflection
🤝 Acts of service and love

We believe that authentic spiritual practice calls us not only inward, but outward - toward healing, justice, and beloved community.

However you connect with what is holy, may your practice today deepen your commitment to love, equity, and the flourishing of all people.

Week 1: Ancestral Roots and Cultural FoundationsWe start where all life begins: our sacred breath. Every culture carries...
05/05/2026

Week 1: Ancestral Roots and Cultural Foundations

We start where all life begins: our sacred breath. Every culture carries stories that shaped their answers to the deepest human questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? What binds us together? Because how a people understand the origin of life shapes their relationship to everything else: law, land, family, and the sacred.

Across Pacific Islands, creation stories vary as richly as the islands themselves. These are foundational understandings that shape language, art, and spiritual practice.

In Aotearoa (New Zealand), the Maori tell of Ranginui the Sky Father and Papatuanuku the Earth Mother. The gods were torn apart, a sacrifice that let light shine into the world, and from it humans were breathed into existence. You witness this expression of breath as the force of life in the haka, where forceful exhales in welcome, departure, grief, or war call down the heavens and declare presence.

Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) hold the sacred breath as ha, the life force in "Aloha" (alo = presence; ha = breath of life). You feel it in ha breathwork or oli chants, where rhythmic exhales invoke creation's spirit and affirm connection. Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian traditions carry their own distinct stories of breath and emergence. What unites Oceania from West Papua's tip to Rapa Nui's edges is sacred breath as each island's cultural core.

Please read our full post with links for you to explore at https://bridgesuu.org/week-1-ancestral-roots-and-cultural-foundations-may-1-to-7.

Reflection: How do you connect with the idea you are sustained by the same force that moves the stars? Does honoring the sacred breath of all life inform the way you see the world? Let us know how breath tradition speaks to you and informs your spiritual practice.

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