T&J Edition 2: More Pandemic Ways to Engage

Dear T&J Community,

There were a few additions submitted by our community members, with ways that we could continue to remain active and support our community during this pandemic.

• Support local POC-owned restaurants. Jennie Flaming sent this link to a list of South End/ID/Beacon Hill restaurants owned by people of color that have delivery and take out. They just added another tab that has options in north end/downtown neighborhoods too. Anyone can access and edit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EBnf9ysBWKo9O0MbZvaKrEc_qmezYfJ2waDNzznNSbA/edit?usp=sharing

• Sign this Change.org Petition for Seattle Restaurants United. "Seattle Restaurants United is a coalition of local restaurants and bars urging City, State, and Federal legislators to boldly protect our businesses and employees from destitution, thus protecting our community from losing a vital part of itself."

• Give to Union's Neighborhood Fund, which will be used to support our Kakáo baristas and local organizations (LUV, Compass House, ICS, etc).

As far as a way to gather together and continue these conversations, we wanted to reach out and see if there is interest from this community to have a monthly Zoom call/meeting? Unfortunately, Sayuko, Megan, and Nichelle, who typically organize the T&J events, are feeling quite maxed out with having our kids at home, trying to homeschool, and work at the same time, but we wanted to see if there were some of you in the community that might be interested in taking this on? Perhaps a book club (some ideas: "I Bring the Voices of My People" by Chanequa Walker-Barnes, or "The Very Good Gospel" by Lisa Sharon Harper, or "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" by James H. Cone)? Or some other format? If you feel like you would be interested in taking this on, we'd be quite supportive in helping arrange the Zoom meeting and participating as well. Please just respond to this email with your idea, and we'll help make it happen. 

Please continue to be well! 

Blessings to you all during this time of isolation.

T&J Edition 1: Ways to Engage During COVID-19

Dear T&J Community,

What a crazy and unprecedented time. We are all experiencing this together, even though we are social distancing and in our own silos. While you are at home, wondering how you can help in the community, here are a list of ideas. Places to donate, ways to advocate, and opportunities to volunteer. 

If you have any other ideas, please send them our way, and we can share with this group.

Blessings of safety and health for you all.

• Donate to local agencies that are supporting communities in need by providing food, shelter, and services

  • Food Lifeline

  • WA-BLOC "Feed the Beach" - feeding students lunch during the COVID-19 shutdown

  • Rainier Valley Foodbank

  • Support ANY Foodbank - a list is here

  • Support Shelters - Noel House 

  • The YMCA is providing childcare to first-responders, increasing their Hunger Initiatives across the region, hosting blood drives, and continuing to care for teens and young adults in their home program

• Donate blood - if you are healthy, there is a shortage of blood supply

• Support your local businesses & restaurants, particularly those that are POC-owned - buy gift cards, make donations

• Volunteer - COVID-19 Mutual Aid Solidarity Network

• Sign this Change.org petition supporting Governor Inslee forgiving rent/mortgage for 90 days

• Call your US representatives today and demand they pass the #FamiliesFirst coronavirus bill. It contains: 

- Free testing

- 14 days paid sick leave

- 3 months paid family leave

- Expanded unemployment insurance & food security

- Medicaid funds

Lives are on the line. (202) 224-3121

• Advocate for those being held in jail awaiting trial: 

Northwest Community Bail Fund is asking you to contact your city, state and county executives to support our call for:

• The immediate release of all pre-trial non-violent detainees from all King County and WA state detention facilities.

• A halt to new arrests and bookings and wealth based detention.

• Release of other vulnerable jailed neighbors based on health risk.

Who to contact:
Governor Jay Inslee: 360-902-4111/email
County Executive Dow Constantine: (206) 263-9600/ email
Seattle City Attorney Dan Satterberg: 206-477-1200/ email 
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin: 206-684-4000/ email
SPD Chief Carmen Best: 206-625-5011/ email

For information on contacting State legislators, click here.
For Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier click here.
For Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers email

What to say:
Hi, my name is _____, and I am a Washington resident who is concerned about the impact of Coronavirus on people who are detained.  We are calling for the immediate release of all non-violent pretrial detainees as well as detainees with at-risk health conditions.  We further call for a moratorium on new arrests, bookings and cash bail for all crimes that do not have immediate impact on public safety. Public safety includes those we choose to lock up in close quarters.
Can we count on you to prevent detained people from dying during this pandemic by taking these actions?

--
Truth & Justice StudioMISSION STATEMENT :: Truth & Justice creates space to educate and mobilize people by lifting up marginalized voices as catalyst for social change. We are a community within Union Church in Seattle, WA. 

Prayer of Confession

Union Church Worship. March 15.2020

Based on Romans 12:9-16. Written and prayed by Peter Lyons

Father in Heaven,
We come before You to confess our sins in what we have done and left undone.
Our love and mutual affection is not like yours: it is not always genuine;
it is not pure. We don’t try to outdo one another in showing honor,
but instead get a little twisted out of shape if others don’t honor us.
We’re not zealous and fervent in spirit the way Jesus is,
even though You have given us abundant reason to respond to You that way.
We’re impatient in tribulation, not rejoicing in the hope of your deliverance,
but instead find ourselves cyring out in despair, “How long, O Lord?”
We forget to pray for those who persecute us.

We do not always avoid evil because of the harm
it does ourselves and others, but find ourselves involved in it.
In these timese of growing contagion and fear of getting sick,
we don’t contribute to the needs of thes saints
as much as we should, or show hospitality.
We get so involved in our own fears
that we don’t find space in our hearts to weep with those who weep.

Forgive us, Father. Forgive us and make us the people You want us to be,
with a pure love for others, more like your deep love for us.
Help us take your healing message to the needy, the fearful and the lonely,
in such times as this.

In Jesus’ name we pray.

On God's Road: Learning from Jesus

If Jesus were just a good teacher you might expect his very first words of public teaching to be about morality, sin or judgment. That is not where Jesus goes. Being God in the flesh, Jesus’ words are focused on what God is always focused on: reconciliation—between humans, ourselves, the environment and at the center of it all, with God. 

The Beatitudes reveal that? When taken as a whole and seeing how one leads into the other and back again they do.  Jesus is not teaching action but character infused with God’s Spirit to be like Jesus’ character that leads to receiving grace and then the action of living life single-heartedly trusting Jesus and partnering with Christ’s Spirit so that every relationship, familial, social, economic can thrive. 

Jesus’ first words are words not of condemnation but blessing. They are words that bring ongoing blessing to us like the sense one gets when you know you are on the right road. No matter what turns, obstacles or weather, there is the peace and joy of anticipation that good things, very good things, are ahead. And there are. 

James B Notkin

Union Newsletter Archive

Here are past newsletters for your reference:

• 4/25/21

• 4/11/21

• 3/21/21

• 3/14/21

• 3/7/21

• 2/28/21

• 2/21/21

• 2/14/21

• 2/7/21

• 1/31/21

• 1/24/21

• 1/17/21

• 1/10/21

• 12/24/20

• 12/20/20

• 12/13/20

• 12/6/20

• 11/22/20

• 11/15/20

• 11/8/20

• 11/1/20

Truth & Justice 2019 Advent series | 25 Steps Toward Justice

25 Steps Toward Justice

Learn, reflect, pray, act, and be transformed.

Exploring issues of injustice—and their toxic effect on our world—can be uncomfortable. But we believe that God Emmanuel, who sends us as his agents into the world, will accompany us with his boundless grace, reminding us that we "belong to God and the Spirit in us is far stronger than anything in the world." (1 John 4:4)

Day 26: PRAY

Teach Me to Listen

Teach me to listen, O God,
To those nearest me,
My family, my friends, my co-workers.

Help me to be aware
That no matter what words I hear,
The message is,
“Accept the person I am. Listen to me.”

Teach me to listen, my caring God,
To those far from me –
The whisper of the hopeless,
The plea of the forgotten,
The cry of the anguished.

Teach me to listen, O God my Mother,
To myself.
Help me to be less afraid
To trust the voice inside –
In the deepest part of me.

Teach me to listen, Holy Spirit,
For your voice –
In busyness and in boredom,
In certainty and doubt,
In noise and in silence.

Teach me, Lord, to listen.

Amen.

-Prayer of John Veltri SJ 

REFLECT

Take a moment to reflect on the past 25 days. Talk with someone or write about what parts of this advent journey have left an impression on you. Looking back, what stands out to you? What did you struggle with? Did anything prompt you to explore or research in more depth? Did you feel moved to get involved in anything or take action in a certain way?

Here is a list of the 25 Steps Towards Justice 2019. 

1) A Blessing of Hope

2) Quality of Mercy 

3) "Biased" 

4) Representation and Beyond 

5) Diversity vs. Equity

6) “Undoing Racism” 

7) Decolonizing our theology 

8) The Thrill of Hope in a Weary World

9) “This Land” The History of Native Lands

10) Living on Duwamish Land

11) “The Lord loves the homeless”

12) Death by Gentrification

13) Poverty, Income Disparity, and Immigration

14)  “Fishers of Men” ICE Tactics

16) Time to listen: Recentering History

17) “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” 

18) Courageous and Costly Living

19) Why We Can’t Wait 

20) Reparations 

21) Asian Misrepresentation in Media 

22) Letter Writing: Throwing Breadcrumbs at Mountains

23) Climate change 

24) The “Cultural Genocide” of Uyghur Muslims 

25) Keeping Watch Over Bethlehem

26) Prayer: Teach me to listen

Thank you so much for participating! Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. (Email truthandjustice.union@gmail.com.)

 “Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other.” -Romans 12:10 

UPCOMING EVENTS

Jan 11, 2020: World Relief Volunteer Orientation 9am @World Relief (Kent)  Free
Jan 20, 2020: MLK Prayer Breakfast 7am @The Sheraton
Jan 24, 2020: Power with not Power Over: Accountability in Action for White Women All Day @2100 Building (Mt. Baker) $150-$300
Jan 30, 2020: The True Cost (film) 6:30pm @Mt. Baker Community Club  Free

Jan 15 - Mar 4, 2020  Kitchen Table Conversations | Unpacking Indigenous Issues Wednesdays, 6:30-8 PM @ Kakáo (415 Westlake)
A space to examine settler-Indigenous relations in our region, engage with literary and expressive arts created by Indigenous peoples, and learn how to become an ally of Indigenous rights. Discussion topics include: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women #MMIW, Contemporary Native Arts, Duwamish Land and Land Acknowledgement. 
Facilitated by Lydia Heberling, instructor of American Indian and Indigenous Studies at University of Washington. Email Adrienne for more info/sign up.