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For the Rev. Elizabeth Mount, serving as a street medic is a way of living out their UU faith. “The Bible, the Old and New Testament, is full of stories of building community while fighting against empire and oppression. Our communities have always been more resilient than empire’s ability to oppress. We can imagine a community that’s more generous and more loving than this,” Mount said. (CNN, June 5)
Speaking at a protest in Statesboro, Georgia, the Rev. Jane Page publicly apologized to a high school classmate, Dr. Alvin Jackson, for signing a petition opposing desegregation when she was 13 or 14. Jackson and Page will both turn 70 this year. “I’m so ashamed, and went all these many years in fear that someone might find out,” Page said. “I’d been chanting with my friends, ‘Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.’ I signed it, and I am so, so sorry.” (Statesboro Herald, June 8)
Rosa Gutierrez Lopez, who has sought sanctuary in Cedar Lane UU Church in Bethesda, Maryland, for eighteen months, has received a sixty-day stay of deportation. This means that, for the first time in a year and a half, she was able to step off of the church’s property. (Montgomery Community Media, June 8)
Read UU World's article about Lopez’s time in sanctuary at Cedar Lane (Winter 2019)
Two women living in churches in Austin, Texas, are making masks for vulnerable people. Hilda Ramírez lives in St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, and Alirio Gamez lives in First UU Church. “We feel like a part of the community and we want to help,” Ramírez said. “We know pain, and we know what it’s like to worry.” The minister of St. Andrews, the Rev. Jim Rigby, said, “For the rest of us (quarantining) is something new and feels like torture. This has been their life for a small eternity.” (The Austin Statesman, June 4)