The UU church in neighboring Kingston sustained extensive damage in the recent arson and vandalism attack. They have launched a 30-day crowd-funding campaign to help defray the costs of repairing and restoring their 1851 meetinghouse. They are using the platform Faithify, which is grounded in UU values and practices. Their goal is $30,000.
Our sister UU church in Kingston, Mass., was vandalized on July 4th in an apparent act of racist and anti-LGBTQ violence. We stand in solidarity with them and urge our members to attend the community service announced below:
If you are wondering what actions you can take over the summer to help preserve our democracy, the Social Justice Team plans to continue our Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts during July and August. These activities will include post-carding and learning more about our country's electoral system. Anyone who is interested can participate. We do not have the specifics on the post-carding campaign yet but plan to email the details as soon as we have them to those who expressed interest. We have email addresses for those who participated in the April post- carding session.
Narcan Training Narcan training will be given at the church on Monday, June 24, from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. The training will prepare participants to respond effectively if someone (visitor, pedestrian, etc.) suffers an opioid overdose/emergency. Narcan nasal spray (an over-the-counter drug) will be made available after the training. There is no charge for this session, and it is available to both congregation and the general public. Protecting Democracy In collaboration with the Workers Circle, our congregation wrote 500 postcards to voters in the Atlanta GA area urging them to vote in Georgia’s May 22 primary.
Quite a few folks in the congregation have been writing postcards to voters in Georgia to help motivate them to participate in the primary there on May 21. Just a few cards in our stack of 500 are still outstanding. The rest have been mailed. Please be sure to return your cards to Lois on Sunday, April 28, even if you haven't completed them. Can you contribute postcard stamps (no flags) or money to purchase them?
The Cash in the Plate for the month of April will be divided evenly among three “get out the vote” organizations: Movement Voter Project, The Workers Circle, and Working America.
This is an update about our on-going monitoring of the Haitian refugee situation here in town: The refugees continue to be housed at the Quality Inn, and the state is committed to covering the cost of both housing and food through June 30. All school-aged children are attending Middleboro schools; and last we knew, the town is offering at least some “English as a second language” training at the town hall. We are attending monthly UU Mass Action Immigrant Justice Team meetings. Several Massachusetts UU congregations are now providing temporary housing to immigrants (the state has contracted with the Brazilian Worker Center to manage those logistics for all refugees) as is the UUA, which has converted 2 floors of its Boston building into housing for refugees.
Our congregation’s March Cash in the Plate (CIP) will be donated to Brockton-based Health Imperatives that has as its mission “to improve the health and well-being of low-income, vulnerable people in Southeastern Massachusetts.” Because March includes a fifth Sunday this year, the proceeds of the CIP that day (3/31) will be given to the Mashpee-based Native Land Conservancy, a Native-led land conservancy that is working to purchase additional land to expand the conservancy.
The Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe is requesting donations to enable them to acquire 38 acres of their ancestral land on the shores of Triangle Pond, located between Great Herring Pond and Long Pond in Plymouth. This land stewardship project will involve traditional ecological practices and “sacred ceremonies, food sovereignty, community empowerment, educational opportunities, and cultural reconnection.” It will be a “healing model [of] land conservation to be passed down to future generations” and will have “numerous benefits for the…community in the face of climate change, such as soil enrichment, water quality protection, enhancement of biodiversity, and the preservation of local
The Dock C. Bracy Center for Human Reconciliation is sponsoring a project to this effect. From now until May 1, they are accepting visual art and/or 200-character written-word submissions, in either Youth (<19) or Adult (18+) categories. Entries may be submitted from now until May 1. Those that are accepted will be displayed on their Threadless Store site.
