wizdUUm.net

Day 2 of GA 2007 has come and gone.  The highlights and the lowlights include:

Highlight: UUA President Bill Sinkford naming the elephant that's in the room and calling for us to consider how some of our grand old New England churches got to be so grand.  ie - consider reparations for slavery and what that would look like.

Lowlight: Attending the diversity workshop put on by DRUUMM where we were asked to name when we've felt marginalized at GA and having more than one Euro-American say that President Sinkford made them feel "marginalized" by calling us to consider our racially tainted past.  (It's a dangerous thing when someone learns a new word but not quite what it means.)

Last year at GA, the delegates voted to adopt "Peacemaking" as our Study Action Issue for the next four years.  Given that it was the only option, it showed that the SAI process was in need of revision.  Given that the language of the original text of the SAI was imo reactionary to the current war and potentially greatly divisive ("Let's decide once and for all whether UUs support "just war" or pacifism."), I was worried.  But I have been pleasantly surprised that the Commission on Social Witness and a core group of expert advisors have reframed the discussion, broadening it to encompass all aspects of Peacemaking, from the personal to the interpersonal to the international.

I didn't get back from Portland until almost midnight last night, an entire day of sitting in planes and airports. And I came back to a steam bath.

Before I left for GA, I had made plans to have brunch with Miles and then together we would attend the "Day of Action (to Restore Law and Justice)" rally in Senate Park. Co-sponsored by the ACLU, Amnesty International, NRCAT (National Religious Coalition Against Torture), and others, the purpose of the rally was to protest the U.S. perpetrated torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and call for the reinstatement of Habeas corpus, which was effectively suspended with the passing of the Military Commissions Act.