The United Church of Christ has issued a warning to Conference Ministers and others to be on alert for attacks on liberal churches. Those supporting racial justice, LGBTQ equality, immigrant rights, economic rights, etc. may become targets of extremists. 

The alert is based on threats made to various churches in advance of both promised rightwing extremist actions at state capitol buildings and at the upcoming inauguration.  The alert particularly focuses on January 17-20.  

Here is a link to a Newsweek brief story on this alert.     Here is the UCC statement.  

We do not think this is alarmist.  We think it is a prudent warning.

Many of you may recall that a few months ago an historic Black church, Asbury United Methodist, in Washington DC was vandalized for its "Black Lives Matter" banner.  The same happened in Sacramento, CA to a UCC church there.

This warning, while originating with UCC, is not limited to that denomination's churches.  Any church that has promoted justice issues or possibly with congregations that are dominated by immigrants or people of color may also be vulnerable.

Clearly state capital cities are a prime area of concern, but any area that has encountered contentiousness, threats, or high levels of political action need also to be on alert.

We recommend contacting your local police department and noting this warning.  As UCC recommends, those churches able to hold gatherings due to their COVID status, may wish to revert to online or other remote forms of worship from tomorrow through next week.  

Blessings on all of you, part of our beloved community, with heartfelt prayers for your safety and for that of your churches and centers of worship.  May all be safe from harm.
​

​Dear Friends:
 
Our elections are the foundation blocks of our democracy. Free and fair access is imperative.  We have only four months until the next general election, November 3, 2020, and assuring that everyone legally entitled to vote can vote is essential.
 
Black Church PAC has created the contemporary “Freedom Summer” program to reproduce the courageous voter registration drives of the early Civil Rights Era.  While this drive is targeted to more Southern states than to our northern and western ones, every state has pockets of voter suppression. No one is immune.
 
Monday, July 6 at noon California time, there will be a webinar on Freedom Summer voter registration drives.  You are invited to participate if you are Black clergy and laity or if you serve a diverse population in areas where voter suppression or obstacles may occur.
 
To register for this critical voter registration and enhancement webinar, please click here  
 
Other steps you can take, no matter where you reside, is to prepare for long lines and delays at the polls. While in California all voters will be receiving “vote by mail” ballots, things still can go wrong, and support for those standing in line will be needed,
 
Bring cases of water, some food, folding chairs.  Enlist your youth to hold line spots for voters needing bathroom breaks. Have masks available for anyone without one. Think about entertainment (socially distanced, of course).  There will be spots in every state, even California, where things will not go smoothly.  We need to anticipate those problems, be prepared to help voters vote. 
 
Thank you!

Join Faith Leaders In Demanding Congress Support the Equality Act

As people of faith, we urge Congress to support the Equality Act. Our faith traditions teach us that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, straight, cisgender, and queer people are all created with sacred dignity and worth. We are taught to respect and love others as ourselves in our words, deeds, and laws. Now is the time to update our federal laws to respect and uphold the sacred dignity and worth of all people. In doing so, we will live up to our nation’s values of freedom, equality, and opportunity for all.

In our country today, LGBTQ people—our neighbors, family, friends, and fellow congregants, and for some signatories, we ourselves— are at risk of being fired from a job, refused a place to live, refused service in a place of business, told to leave a bathroom, or refused critical medical care because of who they are or who they love. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or, gender identity is unjust and immoral. We call on Congress to remedy this injustice by passing the Equality Act. This legislation ensures equal protection for all people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
​fpl.actionkit.com/sign/equality-act-congress
As people of faith, we believe it is possible to both protect LGBTQ people from unjust discrimination and uphold the freedom of religion. That freedom is one of our nation’s most fundamental values, which is why it is protected in the Constitution and remains protected under the Equality Act. As people of faith, we rely on this freedom every day to hold the beliefs we choose and to practice our faiths free from discrimination. It does not give us the right to harm or discriminate against others or impose our religious beliefs on others. We value the freedom of religion and the freedom from discrimination, and we urge Congress to protect both by passing the Equality Act.

We believe equality is a right. Our nation’s laws must uphold our values of loving and caring for our LGBTQ neighbors as ourselves. As people of faith, we have an obligation to be part of healing the world. We will not cease in pursuing our commitment to these values until Congress has passed legislation protecting all people from discrimination and fully funds enforcement of these protections. We lament the ways in which religion has been used throughout our nation’s history to justify discrimination, including on the basis of race. We refuse to be complicit in attempts to use religion to marginalize LGBTQ communities.

We call on Congress to pass the Equality Act today.

Click here to Join Faith Leaders In Demanding Congress Support the Equality Act

Dear Friends,
 
Our nation faces one of its most grave crises. We are watching the chief executive amass unprecedented power, defying the rule of law. Nothing in our history has prepared us for this challenge to our Constitution, to our statutes, to our interactions among the branches of government.  We are fighting for the soul of democracy.  No one can stay idle in the face of this challenge.
 
I was born in the early wave of the post war “baby boom”. I grew up with “Holocaust Consciousness” followed quickly by awareness of post-war threats to our own democracy in the wave of anti-communist fervor from many in Congress and society. Then came a growing awareness of the evils of Jim Crow segregation.  To say I was a scared little kid would be an understatement.  I remember my parents watching the Army-McCarthy hearings, not understanding much other than the danger to innocent people, Hearing my parents and their friends talk about those threats to democracy and equality, to justice and fairness was pretty overwhelming.  
 
I have dreaded the day I’d have to find my courage to stand up against something as evil and scary as fascism had been in Europe. Would I have what it takes to resist? To be as brave as Miep Gies who hid the Frank family? To defy authority in the name of democracy and of my faith in Jesus’ teachings on justice for all people?  
 
In 2003, just before the start of US bombing of Iraq, I participated in an 8-state convening against hate crimes that even then were on the rise. The last night we saw a film about German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his anti-fascist resistance during the Third Reich.  In the discussion that followed, the group leader said, “Be prepared from here on, to lay down your life for what you believe.” When asked what that meant, he said, “Devote your life to standing for justice. And, if needed, to lay down your life for that purpose.”  
 
It was incredibly sobering and frightening to hear this. Would we need to do this? In America?
 
We at the Council of Churches have tried to live by that principle: lay down your life for what you believe.  Some of you know that we have been under siege from vandalism and threats for doing exactly that. Some of our denominational affiliates have been contacted by extremists demanding they drop out of the Council, always by those who detest our stands for equality and for justice. No one has dropped out, and the retaliation, while minor, has resulted in vandalism, stalking, threats. 
 
And yet we have stayed the course. Did we have any real alternative?
 
Now we call on all of you to do whatever you can for love of our fellow human beings, for the preservation of democracy, for the protection of the rule of law.
 
Remember the “Faithful Five Minutes” of calls to your elected officials every day. Bolster the strong, chastise the weak. Speak up and out for justice and our Constitution. 
 
Rally when you are able. Join diverse coalitions of immigrant rights groups, labor, racial justice groups, civil rights groups, and diverse faiths then go to your representatives’ and senators’ offices, both federal and state level.  Fight for the rule of law. Stand against oppression.  Keep abreast of current events. Speak out where needed. Your voice is powerful. 
 
We are struggling to keep the soul of our nation intact. This is the greatest threat we have faced since the Civil War.  Today as I write, it is the 154thanniversary of the Confederate surrender, the Army of Virginia, to the forces of the Union Army at Appomattox. It saved the nation.  Can we do this again, this time we hope without the bloodshed?  
 
Only our actions through law can prevent another civil war, another rise of dictatorial power, another threat to democracy and our constitution.
 
I may be retired, but I will never stop working against injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.

Please do whatever you can, however you can, for as long as you can.  Our nation’s survival is on the line.
 
Thank you. Blessings on all you do.
 
Elizabeth Sholes
Director Emerita Public Policy

“Hello Brother”.
 
Words of greeting.
 
“Hello Brother”.
 
Words of peace.
 
“Hello Brother” were words from a young Muslim man who stepped up trying desperately to deflect the gunman entering a Christchurch, NZ mosque Friday March 15th. The words, meant to stop the shooter, were the last words the Muslim man spoke. He was killed. Forty-eight more lost their lives before the rampage through two mosques ended.
 
In this latest of horrors, the rampant self-justification from the shooter’s own words shows he thought Muslims deserved to die.  As the shooter in Pittsburgh, PA earlier shot down Jews for the same demented reason and Dylan Root shot nine Black AME Christians in Charleston, SC. They deserved to die for simply being who they are. Sikhs slaughtered in WI, Unitarians in TN. These are the victims of both religious hate and racial hate, but many more acts of violence have taken down people just trying to live their lives. We are losing count.
 
This isn’t a “Muslim problem”. This isn’t a “Jewish problem”. This isn’t a “Black problem”.
 
It’s a white Christian problem. 
 
Before anyone says, “not all white Christians”, let us consider, in our hearts, if we have done all we can to make sure we didn’t turn a blind eye, stay silent instead of speak. Have we earnestly done all we can do to stop the new global wave of white, Christian terrorism, for that is what this all is, from spreading unchallenged?  We have to search our hearts and our lives to see if we can do more.
 
I, for one, am tired of showing up after the fact. I hate candle light vigils and don’t attend them. I’m sick of press conferences decrying bloodshed and loss of valuable lives. I’m anguished by the sense of impotence at failing to prevent another senseless massacre.  I’m frightened that there will be more.
 
Forty nine dead in New Zealand.  Eleven in Pittsburgh.  Nine in Charleston.
 
When will it end? 
 
We are in the grip of an administration that demonizes “the other” be it immigrants, Muslims, people of color.  We have unleashed waves of hate and resentment from white people who think equality means a loss to them.  Males who see female equality as a threat.  If you have to enforce your superiority with violence, are you really superior at all?
 
We can’t dismiss this thinking that we would never do this kind of thing to anyone. It flourishes if we tolerate it, if we don’t actively stop it.  Silence is tacit assent. 
 
We have to stand up, speak out, act affirmatively not passively in the name of our country’s promise and our faith’s direction.  This isn’t on Muslim, Jews, Sikhs, Unitarians. It isn’t on Black people, Brown people, immigrants, indigenous people. 
 
It’s on us: white, middle class, mainstream Christians.  We are the only people who can speak out and uphold these truths of nation and faith.  We can stay silent no more.
 
Hello brother. Hello sister.  Hello everyone. End the silence. End the violence. It’s on us.

From our friends at staywoke.org:

We just released a Report revealing how Police Unions and Associations prevent California lawmakers from addressing police violence.
Read the Report here.
 
Here are some of the major findings:

• Police unions and associations have given $5.5 million to candidates for California’s state legislature since 2011.
• Police unions and associations have helped fund the campaigns of 118 of the 120 current California state legislators.
• California legislators in either party who do not support police reform bills receive substantially more money from police unions and associations than those who support reform – especially Democrats who do not support police reform bills.
• Once they help elect California’s state legislators, police association lobbyists spend substantial amounts of time and money to convince them to oppose police reform – spending nine times as much as the NRA to lobby California state legislators.

 
It will take all of us to convince legislators to stand up to the police associations and pass bills that address police violence and accountability.
Here’s how you can make a difference today:
 
Go here to find your California state legislators, then call them and tell them to support four important bills: 

• AB 931, a bill that would make police deadly force a last resort; 
• AB 3131, which would restrict police militarization and; 
• SB 1421, which would make records of police misconduct public.
• SB 1186, which would create limits on the acquisition of police surveillance technologies

 
And if you’re interested in joining a group of researchers, students and activists working on projects to address police violence in California, reply to this email.
 
StayWoke.
 
-Samuel Sinyangwe