Memorial to Renee Good. ICE was following us, and car of legal observers was observing ICE, when one of the ICE vehicles turned around and attacked them, broke their car window and tried to kidnap the observers. More community members showed up, and eventually there were enough people surrounding the scene, blowing their whistles, that the ICE agents decided to leave.

Witness is important. Community is powerful. Moral voices matter. We have to tell these stories because stories shape reality. We must witness and speak the truth of the many with moral authority in a world devastated by depravity at the highest levels of power.

In those days in Minneapolis, there were 700 clergy from all around the country and all different faith traditions who will bring these stories back to their communities. 200 of those clergy were Unitarian Universalists. This is what it means to root into our values, gathering strength and nourishment from the truth of interdependence and the inherent worth of every human being. We nourish ourselves in the ground of those values and then pull them up into how we live, showing up for our neighbors again and again.

Not everyone does the work of justice and equity as a protester. We each have a role to play in the story of building the Beloved Community. Protesting The Horrors is only one. There’s also teaching, visioning, caretaking, dealing with the material realities of food and body and hearth. As Unitarian Universalists, we root ourselves in the practices that ground us in community, and engage in shared spiritual practice on Sunday mornings. Showing up matters, for each other and in the world. To meet this moment, we must practice showing up with courage, with one another, in community, grounded in our Unitarian Universalist values.