UUCC

Social Action Brainstorming Meeting Minutes

January 12th,  2007

The following is a summary of the comments from a Social Action Brainstorming session held at the UUCC on the evening of Friday, Jan 12th, 2007.    Participants engaged in some brainstorming on various topics, discussing recent near-death experiences, and had a generally enjoyable evening.  The results of the brainstorming discussion is summarized below.  True to the nature of brainstorming some of the items may not be practical or well supported, but such comments can serve as catalysts for other ideas.  

 

This report also includes comments sent in by email from those unable to attend, and some additional comments made in the days following the brainstorming session.

 

Additional comments and suggestions are welcome.

Why a Successful Social Action Program is Important:

  • Exercises our ethical muscles - helps us be better people. It’s just the right thing to do
  • The desire to “pay it forward” to build a better future
  • Alleviates depression, let off steam, promotes a positive self image
  • Makes us feel more powerful in the world – and antidote to powerlessness
  • Carry out our spiritual values  - complements our other religious activities
  • Recruiting for the UUCC,  publicity, visibility
  • Gets new people involved, learn new names, and strengthen the UUCC community
  • Gives guidance for people who haven’t been involved in social action but want to be.
  • People learn the issues better by learning from others
  • Serve as role model for our children – engage them in intergenerational activities
  • Active witness, active citizenship is important
  • Makes us connected to the broader international community
  • Helps us influencing public decision makers
  • Acting as a religious community adds authenticity to the action

 

What we Could Have Done Better in the Past

  • The social action committee has developed a tendency to isolate itself from the rest of the congregation activities.  We need to fix that.
  • Notify people farther in advance of events, and give more effective notice.
  • Better meeting minutes – made available for others to read.
  • Update Social Action section of UUCC web site on a more timely basis
  • Better outreach and publicity for activities, specifically for the Peace Path activity
  • Better outreach to the children in the congregation
  • Get more actively involved in Martin Luther King day remembrance activities

 

 

Brainstorming on Things to do in the Future

(organized into various topics)

Improved Communication with the Congregation

  • Produce a regular social action newsletter
  • Provide a public access computer at the UUCC sanctuary
  • Monthly SAC column in the UUCC newsletter

Local Area Outreach

  • Help in the midtown Kingston area, including helping struggling single parents
  • Boys and girls club volunteers – also YMCA, YWCA, and ASPCA,
  • Big Brothers, Big Sisters – give a kid a day out
  • Respite care – what kind of little things can we do?
  • Sponsor a child for summer camp with our 5th Sunday collection
  • Work more with People’s Place, and make sure they know what we’re doing for them
  • Help Claire Litteral with her efforts to take leftover food to People’s Place
  • Hudson River Great River Sweep cleanup
  • Get aligned with a hot local topic. Consider a forum on growth and development in Ulster County and the greater Kingston/Esopus area.  Do it on the Hudson on a boat to look at the shoreline.  Invite the press and members of local governments, and other experts like Scenic Hudson.

Environmental and Sustainable / Responsible Living

  • Publish regular “enviro-tips”
  • Environmental study – toxic chemicals under the sink
  • Congregation membership in a CSA, such as Four Seasons
  • Buying cooperatively in bulk
  • Focus on living a sustainable, responsible life
  • Food preparation and cooking together
  • Get members of the congregation to go on a low carbon diet
  • Support the Bill McKibben  “National Day of Climate Action” on April 14th - http://www.stepitup2007.org/
  • Personal & Household Healthy Living
  • Get a volunteer group to live “radically simply and responsibly” for week or so and report on their experiences.
  • Consider some way to make an Earth Day splash.  So often what we do is personally symbolic, but garners little attention.
  • Looking at the requirements to become a “Green Sanctuary”
  • Global Climate Change efforts:
    • planting trees in the tropics, such as at Cloudbridge
    • Ian & Jenny would happily do a presentation again, either for all, or just RE
    • host a weekend seminar in conjunction with local groups such as Sustainable Hudson Valley, and invite commercial businesses such as Solar installers.
    • Perhaps we could Offer rides in a Prius?

Other New Activities / Teams

  • Anti-racism team
  • Promote better food and diets in the local schools
  • Food issues:  Elisa (“Future of Food” film + speaker)
  • Support “Generosity Sunday”  - for a global marshal plan promoted by the NSP
  • Legislative ministry – and economic justice for NYS
  • More organized letter writing campaign effort, including letters to local newspapers
  • Clean Election effort
  • Have a weekly or monthly letter table on a topic and have congregants write to politicians.  Challenge congregation to do it; their choice of topic, their choice of recipient.  Set a goal (1000 letters in a year?)  Publicize (after we get it going) that we are doing so.
  • Stimulate dialogue on corporate pay excess, and the highly related issue of tax fairness and progressive tax policy from a social justice standpoint.  
  • Have an RE focus on South Africa for a few weeks.  Cover such things as:
    • A white SA woman (Gail Johnson) who has founded a home (actually it looked like her own house) for AIDS orphans
    • the 12 year-old boy who died of AIDS and spoke very movingly at an International AIDS conference.
    • Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid
    • The AIDS crisis
  • Involve the RE students with an outing to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Could they perhaps “adopt” an animal? – ie, raise funds for its support, do research on its needs, have the younger children draw pictures,  write an essay or story about it.

Working More Effectively

  • Work more collaboratively with other UU Congregations
  • More Interfaith efforts
  • Meet with and connect with other groups and link up / piggyback with other efforts – don’t re-invent the wheel but do provide a UU presence  in other actions.
  • Help people get over their fear of demonstrations (protests)
  • Have people give regular testimonials on different topics and experiences
  • Concentrate on simple practical social actions, such as with Enviro-tips
  • For one year one in on one direction – have specific concentrated goals.  Really focus, one theme for a specific time.
  • Plan monthly or quarterly seminars, prepared by a members.  For example, have sessions on health care, electronic voting machines, separation of church and state, global warming, energy use and alternatives, new urbanism, pcb containment, etc.
  • Take a topic (ex. Global warming) and do a kick-off with a noted presenter, to then have latter session on subtopics like the impact of global warming on biodiversity, health, pacific islanders, the poles, the northeast, our plains, etc.



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