John, thank you for this wonderful explanation of the full process related to Amendment 52. And thank you for your wise, effective, dedicated work on behalf of Earth and all beings.
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John, three comments.
First, thank you for taking an active role in the denominational affairs. Many people sit on the sidelines. You did not.
Second, your lengthy explanation highlights a major shortcoming of the process regarding the discussion of the proposed Article II language. Clarity is often lost in the disjointed âgive and takeâ on a forum board such as discuss.uua.org.
Too little time is provided at General Assembly for debate. In the end, too few UUs are engaged in the conversation. Little clarity is offered to delegates on which to base their voting decision.
The third and most important observation is the lack of respect for âdemocratic votingâ that has crept into the Associationâs governance.
Delegates voted overwhelmingly for Amendment 52, which included the removal of the sentence, âwe work to repair harm and damaged relationships.â
Yet that language was reincorporated into the final proposed Article II language.
What is the value of delegate voting if post-voting discussions can simply nullify that vote?
This post-vote maneuvering is why many UUs have lost trust in UU leadership to be honest brokers in the governance of the Association.
I wish I could say this overriding of a GA delegate vote is a one-off, but it is not.
In 2021, GA delegates voted down a UU leadership-sponsored amendment to reduce the number of presidential candidates from âtwo or moreâ to âone or more,â effectively ending our only guaranteed election in the Association. Yet, we had only one candidate and a slew of excuses why the GA vote was ignored.
I urge a NO vote on the proposed Article II, regardless of any amendments that may pass.
Before embarking on such substantial changes to the purpose of the Association and the character of liberal UUism, we need to honestly examine the reforms that are needed to make the discussion of the Associationâs business less opaque and the decisioning process more democratic.
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UU the Conversation is sponsoring two 30-minute Zoom Meet-Up Sessions during General Assembly. No pre-registration is required. Simple click the Zoom link and join the discussion. See UU the Conversation for more information.
Meet Up Session #1
⢠Date: Thursday, June 20, 2024
⢠Time: 2:00 PM Eastern, 1:00 PM Central, 12:00 Noon Mountain, 11:00 AM Pacific
⢠Zoom Link: Click this Link to join this Meet-Up Session
Meet Up Session #2
⢠Date: Friday, June 21, 2024
⢠Time: 2:00 PM Eastern, 1:00 PM Central, 12:00 Noon Mountain, 11:00 AM Pacific
⢠Zoom Link: Click this Link to join this Meet-up Session
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The broken-link document (I think itâs the same one) is here: https://www.uua.org/files/pdf/p/proposed_csai_intersectional_white_supremacy_20171228.pdf
What was adopted at GA 2021 is here: https://www.uua.org/files/2021-06/SOC_Undoing_Systemic_White_Supremacy.pdf
Which was linked from here: General Session V, #UUAGA 2021
The goal, for me, in dismantling racism within our congregation is not to have more Black UUs in the pews. It is instead to ensure that those Black UUs who are called by our shared values feel fully welcome in our congregations. If Black people prefer a Black majority space, I honor that. And I also want to ensure that I have done the work to ensure that they are welcomed fully in our UU congregation, should they choose to attend or join. I think it was the book Mistakes and Miracles that summed this up rather succinctly saying something like, âNot all congregations can be multicultural, but all congregations can be anti-racist.â
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I think of a covenant as âa contract with soul.â
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The following quote from the first of your links above is all UUâs need to know about the intent of the A2 re-write. âDecentering whiteness calls us to decenter individual dignity for our collective liberation.â So much for the UUism weâve known, not to mention our country as weâve known it.
This is what you think is âbrilliantâ?
It helps if commenters use the Reply button. This system allows readers to click forward and backwards through threads, but only if commenters use Reply every time they are replying to a specific comment. As we get into tomorrowâs sessions, comments will come so thick and fast that NOT using the Reply feature will bury your comment many comments down, completely untrackable.
Does UU Environmentalism Still Matter?
Article II and Amendment 52 - An Unexpected Change
This article was written in April 2024. Since then more information on how the wording change to the Value happened. The basic premise of the article remains the same.
The wording of the final, proposed Article II, up for vote at the June 2024 General Assembly (GA), contains an unexpected change. The proposed new Value of Interdependence, positioned to swap for the current Seventh Principle regarding environmentalism doesnât seem to serve the same purpose. The new value seems to change the focus to managing harmful human interrelationships, rather than concentrating on protecting the earth and all beings.
Alert delegates recognized this change in direction and proposed Amendment 52 at the 2023 GA to insure that the Interdependence Value focused strictly on the environment. Amendment 52 passed by a vote of 78.4% of the delegates.1 However, during the ensuing months, as I see it, the Article II Study Commission chose to ignore the vote of the delegates and doubled-down on their path to remove or lessen environmentalism as a value.
So whatâs up with all this? Similar to many of the new Article II Values that pull phrases from the current set of UU Principles, the proposed Interdependence Value incorporates some of the wording of our Seventh Principle. The Seventh Principle, as we commonly understand it, promotes respect for the earth and natural world. It reads as follows: " Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." 2 However, the new Interdependence Valueâs focus seems to point to interdependence of humans with each other, not strictly with the environment. The emphasis appears to be on the repair of harmful interpersonal connections.
The original Interdependence Value in the proposed Article II voted on at GA 2023 read as follows:
"Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence. We covenant to cherish Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life, and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.3
Amendment 52 approved at GA 2023 indicated that this value statement should read as follows:
"Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. With humility and reverence, we covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation, creating and nurturing sustainable relationships of repair, mutuality and justice."4
Note that the clause, â. . . we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.â at the end of the original Interdependence Value was expected to be removed by the amendment. However, the finalized Article II proposal, published in October 2023, appeared as follows.
Interdependence.
We honor the interdependent web of all existence. With reverence for the great web of life and with humility, we acknowledge our place in it.
We covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation. We will create and nurture sustainable relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice. We will work to repair harm and damaged relationships.5
The finalized proposed Article II still contains the statement, âWe work to repair harm and damaged relationships.â that the amendment removed.
How did this happen? The Article II Study Commission has the authority to wordsmith the approved amendment, and they did that in the first line. Humility and reverence were moved from the second part of the Value statement to the first.
However, wordsmithing should not mean ignoring the vote of the delegates. In my estimate, that is exactly what the Commission has done by retaining the last sentence of the Interdependence Value - they ignored the mandate of the approved Amendment 52.
Perhaps the Commission questioned whether the voters really intended to remove that clause from the Interdependence Value, thereby making the value focus solely on environmentalism. If there was a misunderstanding by the Commission or an error regarding the intention of the vote at the 2023 GA, there were remedies.
The Board could have declined acceptance of this version of the final Article II proposal, directing the Commission to incorporate into the final proposal what I feel is the objective of the entire Amendment 52 by eliminating the contested clause/sentence. This action would have addressed any misunderstanding by the Commission.
As a next step option, if it was felt that the problem lay in the intentions of the amendment vote and in accordance with UUA Bylaws Section 15.2(a)6, the Board could have proposed a new amendment for a vote at the 2024 GA. This proposal would add the contested clause/sentence back into the modified final Article II proposal that, in accordance with Amendment 52, did not contain the clause/sentence.
The Board did not take either of these actions. Instead, the Board chose to accept the Commissionâs final proposal, which, in my view, failed to follow the directive of the adopted Amendment 52. From my perspective, instead of following the desires of the majority, the Article II Study Commission and UUA Board chose to ignore the voters and purposely retained the contested clause.
I believe that the proposed, new Value of Interdependence, positioned to swap for the current Seventh Principle on environmentalism, intentionally serves a different purpose than that prescribed in the current Seventh Principle of our faith. In my opinion, the delegates clearly voted to retain the singular emphasis on environmentalism in this value. However, as I see it, the Article II Study Commission and UUA Board appear to have intentionally ignored the votersâ desire to institute Amendment 52. I believe that the proposed Interdependence Value diminishes the value of environmentalism while, in its place, raising the role of managing harmful interpersonal relationships. In my judgment, the Commissionâs and Boardâs actions present reasons for thinking twice about how to vote on the latest Article II proposal at the 2024 GA.
1 https://www.uua.org/files/2023-06/Results%20-%202023%20General%20Session%20III.pdf, page 2.
2 Unitarian Universalism's Seven Principles
3 Amendment 52 to Article II - Proposed by John Millspaugh
4 Ibid.
5 https://www.uua.org/files/2023-10/a2_final_line_num_10312023.pdf, page 2.
6 https://www.uua.org/files/2022-10/uua_bylaws_10312022.pdf, page 22.
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Leilani, almost all of your comments begin with an expression of gratitude for someone elseâs comment, which is wonderful, but I can never tell who or what youâre responding to. Will you please begin using the Reply button in the lower right of the comment youâre responding to, so readers of this thread can follow the conversation? Thanks.
Youâre confusing me with someone else here, Frank. I never used the word âbrilliant.â I just posted the links that others were struggling to find.
It seems like a real stretch to me to read that change as meaning that this value is no longer about protecting the environment. The amendment included ânurturing ⌠relationships of respect, mutuality and justice.â All the added language did was add that we would repair those same relationships where they have been damaged.
To me, the last sentence of the covenant trumps everything else in the Interdependence Value.
Hi JDStillwater, I went back through dozens of my comments on A2 in this thread and only handful had thank you beginnings and of those few, most had attributes to who however I did find a few that did not, so I went through and added them for you.
Awesome. Thanks! Using the Reply feature (as you did here) makes it unnecessary.
I appreciate your consistently-positive participation in this conversation.
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I intentionally and purposefully use the reply feature only sometimes because often Iâm writing generally and other times what Iâm replying to gets flagged and removed or edited but thank you for your feedback. Hopefully youâll have an easier time following now.
I beg your pardon. But I stand by the substance of my post.
Can you please explain how you think the antiracism agenda UU is pursuing can actually heal the centuries-old racism we all grew up in? Specifically, how does calling our religious institution white supremacist actually help to heal those wounds? Why must white people go through a process that mirrors Christianityâs Original Sin? How does emphasizing skin color/identity heal?
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of course, donât do that 3 times in a row, or you will have to wait for someone to reply to you before you can make another comment. I can see being silenced for 15 minutes or so after 3 comments, to avoid too many rapid replies, but a hard stop until a reply is demoralizingâone cannot know when/if someone will reply.
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You can watch the UU the Conversation video just shown at the start of General Session II at this link.
You are also invited to attend a 30-minute UU the Conversation GA Zoom Meet-Up Session #2 on Friday, June 21 at 2:00 PM. Follow this link for the Zoom link and information. You can discuss the video or any other topic you would like to share will fellow UUs.