How Do We Imagine Justice? explores how groups and individuals recognize that imagination is a practice and we need to cultivate our imaginations in their fight for justice. adrienne maree brown, in her book Emergent Strategies, wrote that “I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.” This workshop provides a framework that helps individuals and groups break free from the “someone else’s imagination,” get a clear understanding of how our creativity and imaginations guide us on our path towards justice. 

This workshop is designed for congregational groups (including social justice committees, ministers, and religious educators), activists and community organizers, and anyone who desires to root their justice work with creativity and imagination.

Community Action Circles (CAC) serve as a way to practice gathering online to take collective action together as well as a training-by-doing for leaders of State Action Networks, congregations, and local accompaniment groups who are eager to experiment with new tools for helping community members feel connected and motivated to concrete actions from grassroots partners. 

This has been an iterative process that we have learned from other organizers and are eager to keep adapting for different groups’ needs, including youth groups, and groups working justice issues related to criminalization, immigration, and/ or climate justice. 

UUCSJ and ARTE (Art and Resistance Through Education) invite you on a Social Justice Mural Tour of NYC, including some of ARTE’s own work in East Harlem! During this interactive, participatory workshop, participants will: Discuss what constitutes public art and explore the intersection of public art and social justice; Understand the use of artivism (art + activism) as a tool of social justice; Spend time analyzing artwork by activists focusing on immigrant rights & mass incarceration; Leave with a better understanding of how public art can be used as a tool for activism in their own communities. Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE) is a grassroots, community-based of New York that engages young people to amplify their voices and organize for human rights change through the visual arts.

The G.R.O.W. Fellowship will equip UU (and UU adjacent) young adults of color and white young adults with the skills, spiritual grounding, and community to engage in justice work within and beyond our Unitarian Universalist faith.

This program is open to all alums of GROW / Thrive / Shift, as well as young adults (ages 18-35) seeking to commit to a spiritually-grounded community of praxis for these times. This offering is hosted by Unitarian Universalist institutions and open to all participants who are excited about integrating spirituality into your work for justice and liberation. Visit the Events Calendar for more information! 

The somatics bodyworker MawuLisa Thomas Adeyemo tells us “There is so much that I feel is possible that happens at the level of the body. When we slow down enough to listen to the language of the body, there’s just so many answers that are there.” In a society that so often sees our bodies as separate entities from our whole selves, how do we learn, feel, and know these answers that Adeyemo says our body has? How do we truly engage in healing justice and holistic healthcare if we have learned not to feel what is happening in our bodies? This workshop seeks answers to these questions through feeling and living into trauma-informed self-care and embodiment work. We will go through practices for self and collective embodiment as well as investigate what it means to hold and address suffering and trauma in our bodies.

This workshop is designed for congregational groups (including social justice committees, ministers, and religious educators), activists and community organizers, and anyone who desires to root their justice work in creativity and imagination.

This workshop examines U.S policies historically which have both directly and indirectly influenced immigration and migration and how this correlates with current events. This workshop allows for a deeper discussion around the root causes of migration, as well as who benefits from the current system of enforcement and laws. Special attention is paid to how U.S. policies have influenced the U.S/Mexico borderlands.

Explore the prices of everyday groceries in Border Town Mexico in order to compare the cost of those items with groceries purchased in the United States. This interactive workshop leads to discussions on how our food system guarantees low prices for some but not others, and how different it is to shop and eat in Mexico.

This workshop focuses on providing a space to reflect and address the difference between being a part of the struggle and providing support for those directly affected. We explore the intricacies of social action and contextualize the concepts of charity, “white savior” complexes, and understand what true solidarity might look like. Participants will reflect on the healthiest ways to form long and meaningful relationships in their own communities, that will help further our quest for liberation.

Provides a space for participants to plan how they are going to move forward into action either as individuals or as a group once returning to their communities.