Announcing 30 Days of Love
The message below went out to Standing on the Side of Love supporters on Wednesday, November 9, 2011. You can sign-up for these emails here.
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We are at a transformational moment. Standing on the Side of Love has taken hold among Unitarian Universalists, and also shown that it has broader, interfaith appeal. Our values are an integral part of yesterday’s stunning electoral successes for justice and equality in Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, Mississippi, and so many other places. You have embraced the open source nature of this campaign, bringing your banners into the public square, and taking love where you feel it naturally belongs — detention centers, transgender rights rallies, day laborer corners, vigils to counter Westboro Baptist Church, Keystone XL Pipeline protests, Occupy spaces, and polling places. Love is everywhere!
For the past two years in a row, our community re-imagined Valentine’s Day in spectacular fashion as a social justice holiday—National Standing on the Side of Love Day. Thousands of you took to your communities to celebrate the words and deeds of unsung heroes and to continue the effort to promote equality, acceptance, diversity, and inclusion. The breadth of public witness you engaged in was astounding, our values proudly displayed in our congregations and in communities across the country.
Because of the tremendous energy and interest in National Standing on the Side of Love Day, and our desire to make it easy for congregations and individuals to take part, we are excited to announce National Standing on the Side of Love Month: The Story of Us, the Story of Now.
This THIRTY DAYS OF LOVE, beginning Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and culminating with Valentine’s Day, will be a time for deepening our commitment to our mission through listening, discovery, community engagement, education, inspiration, celebration, lifting up, and daily, direct actions for love. One crucial element will be working to deepen congregational involvement with Standing on the Side of Love.
To whet our appetites for THIRTY DAYS OF LOVE, the Standing on the Side of Love campaign will hold a webinar on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time to share some ways that you can build on your congregation’s social justice work. The webinar will feature a conversation with two congregations that have used this campaign as a platform for their social justice to tremendous success and renewed congregational energy.
Click here to reserve your space at the webinar.
As part of THIRTY DAYS OF LOVE, we will bring you tools to engage in listening campaigns, community connection, theological reflection, collective sharing, community education, and direct action. We’ll have tangible resources for you in the coming weeks. In addition, as the populist Occupy movement has created a shift in the national discussion around economic justice, our campaign, which has historically focused on identity-based discrimination, will think critically about how those who are already marginalized because of their identity are facing even more difficult times. Today, you can start to think about how you might engage around these questions within your congregation and your broader community.
THIRTY DAYS OF LOVE is envisioned as a process, not an event. And you can begin now by making a commitment to attend our webinar on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time, featuring a conversation with Valley UU Church in Chandler, Arizona and First UU Church of Rochester, MN, who will talk about how they have grown their social justice ministries with Standing on the Side of Love to tremendous success and renewed congregational energy.
Click here to learn more and reserve your space at the webinar.
We are incredibly excited to engage in this process together—to embrace our underlying values and investigate what more we can do in our communities. We are sure THIRTY DAYS OF LOVE will result in beautiful conversations across the country culminating in a story of us, and a story of now. We don’t always know what the goals are, or where we will end up. But we know that at the heart of the process is love.
In partnership for a more just world,
Dan Furmansky
Campaign Manager
