January Meeting, in San Antonio

So, what’s the UUA Board been up to now? Maybe a short vacation in sunny South Texas? Yeah, right! It rained most of the time we were there. Other than the fact that I didn’t get my usual morning walk, the rain didn’t slow us down a bit.

There were lots of reasons for making the move to San Antonio, but I consider it of extreme symbolic significance that we met someplace other than Boston. The UUA is not focused on Boston or even New England. The main reason for moving out of Boston was to better connect with members of the congregations in South Texas. We hope to meet in other areas of the country during future meetings. Maybe the MDD could host the next meeting.

Why South Texas; why San Antonio? In my last post, I quoted Will Saunders. He explained it well. More important at this point is what we gained by meeting in San Antonio.

We met with clergy and members of several Texas congregations (including members of the El Paso congregation; an MDD congregation). We shared some serious meetings, great fellowship and Sunday morning worship. The meetings gave Board members the opportunity to test, yup, they were the guinea pigs, our new efforts at “Linkage.” The whole idea is for members of the Board to better connect with congregations. We can be, we need to be, in much closer conversation about what our Association should be doing, what we can do better, how the Board and staff can better support congregations. Congregations in all districts, all size categories, lay and professionally led, etc. were selected at random to participate in these continuing conversations. I’ll pass along an update as those conversations occur.

Rev Morales has promised that we will hear a lot more about immigration in the coming months. Based on immigration controversies in many states and in congress, that focus is most timely. We met with an organization headed by a group of Roman Catholics from one of the San Antonio churches. The group has a strong UU element from several San Antonio area congregations. We heard about the local and area organizing that they are doing to further comprehensive immigration reform. That part, I expected. Most of us knew the issues and what is needed to change the legal barriers. What had a much stronger impact were the stories, related by victims of unreasonable, unjust immigration law and policies. The impact is startling when you can put a face to the problem; when you can directly understand the affect that our immigration laws have on families and individuals who are in every sense except the credential, active, contributing members of our communities. We heard from both personal and legal perspectives about what is needed in immigration reform: we need a path to legitimacy. That might not mean citizenship, but it does mean a means for folks who have been in the country, in some cases for many years, to be able to get a driver’s license, to be able to work at jobs above the menial level, to be able to stop hiding from any official notice. The time has come for comprehensive immigration reform.

Enuf for now – stay tuned.

Lew