“Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” You may know the quote from the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis, but you might not know that we got an award for doing just that.
UUSM has earned the status of being a “Good Trouble” congregation, thanks to our work with UU the Vote on the 2022 election.
Between July and December 2022, we sent 5,800 postcards to encourage people to participate in the election. We also registered 50 voters, recruited two poll workers, and knocked on more than 500 doors to help pass Measure ULA in Los Angeles (a transfer tax on mansions that pools revenue to address housing affordability in Los Angeles). The standard was 20%, but we had 21% of our congregational participating in UU the Vote activities — that’s more than 50 people who cared, who came, who connected and who caused our success.
Of course, we did not do it alone — we worked with Reclaim Our Vote and other UU the Vote partners on post-carding efforts, and they got us the address lists, postcards and stamps that sent our messages all over the country.
Applause to Jacki Weber for her leadership and to all those who came to the post card parties in September and October of last year. We can never know just exactly how much good we did, but we made some good trouble. John Lewis would be pleased.
