SOCIAL Justice
ECCO, Our Social Justice Ministry Team, and You
This is a time of crisis and it gives us all a real opportunity to live our faith. SJMT supports our partner's initiative ECCO Covid-19 Response. There are real opportunities for you to help and to be involved, including:
* Employ Shine Together Co-op for grocery shopping and "take out" meal prep-all delivered to your door, using "no contact" standards (payment logistics currently being worked out, but identifying interested customers is very helpful!);
* Donate to support those at risk of homelessness or hunger - 100% of funds go directly to those in need;
* Volunteer to help Shine Together in "no contact" delivery;
* Receive or Provide Emotional Support.
For details and contact information, see "No One Stands Alone" below.
Thank you and stay well.
-The Social Justice Ministry Team
LEARN ABOUT THE
Sanctuary Movement
Dear congregation,
Given the growing urgency around Trump’s deporation machine even here in Massachusetts, where our neighbors are under threat of arbitrary arrest, detention and separation from their families and communities we must talk about our role in the humanitarian response to this crisis.
The three commitments of the UUA’s LOVE RESISTS campaign are:
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Expand Sanctuary
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Grow Solidarity
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Raise Our Voices
UUCGL has an opportunity to work in partnership with an interfaith network of people of conscience to provide rapid response support to those endangered by enforcement.
Please attend these worship services that will be informative, prayerful and discerning.
This toolkit from the UUA is hugely helpful in understanding our faith tradition’s history with Sanctuary and where we are now. It is a very good teaching tool and I encourage everyone to spend time reading it.
Here is an informative resource from Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice in Oregon.
Here is an article about the First Parish UU In Bedford, which is a level one sanctuary church.
This is an excellent resource on a broad range of subjects regarding sanctuary congregations and faith-based immigrant advocacy.
Please also read our handout Sanctuary Frequently Asked Questions to learn more about what it means for our church to choose to provide sanctuary.
NO ONE STANDS ALONE
The COVID-19 crisis is painful for everyone, but is hurting the most vulnerable among us the hardest - immigrants and people of color who so often pay the highest price in our unjust economy. To respond to the crisis, the Essex County Community Organization ( ECCO ), a North Shore organization with which the UUCGL has long partnered, is inviting our community to support one another, especially those most directly impacted, while also sowing seeds for a different future. There are three ways to make a difference:
First, you can donate and help raise funds for ECCO's No One Stands Alone COVID-19 Solidarity Fund , which will provide direct funds to ECCO families at severe risk of hunger and homelessness. Your contributions will go directly to ECCO families like that of Dolores, who has been sick with COVID-19 and has no way to pay the bills for herself and her two small children.
Second, you can support ECCO's immigrant worker-owned Co-op, "Shine Together", which has launched Shine Together Delivers to provide grocery shopping, and delivery services and the preparation of prepared meals during this time of crisis. You can act in solidarity by:
*Becoming a Solidarity Consumer that orders delicious prepared foods and/or groceries brought to your doorstep through no-contact delivery. Or, you can purchase gift certificates for future Shine Together cleaning services, to be redeemed once the COVID-19 crisis is over.
*Becoming a Solidarity Volunteer with Shine Together Delivers by shopping for groceries and/or offering no-contact delivery of Shine Together food and/or groceries.
Third, we invite you to offer and receive emotional solidarity to others in the ECCO community. You are invited to participate in this effort and/or to volunteer to help set up systems of emotional support.
We here at the UUCGL will be participating in all of these activities and will be reaching out to our church community, through calls and emails, in the coming days to ask if you are in need of food delivery services, or if you are willing to become involved in the Covid 19 Response in other ways; we will be providing you with the specifics on how you can donate and/or volunteer.
This is a time of crisis and it gives us all a real opportunity to live our faith.
To learn more about all of these opportunities, go to
www.eccoaction.org/covid-19-response
and/or contact any of the following church members:
Thank you and stay well.
-Martha, Scott and Debbie
and the Social Justice Ministry Team