Category Archives: Liberal religion

New Orleans, day five

We were assigned to two different jobs today, on our service trip to New Orleans. One crew went to work at Rev. Josie’s food pantry, bagging groceries for people in need to pick up. The second crew went to work for Growing Home; I was part of the second group.

Growing Home is a non-profit agency that helps people claim vacant houses next door to them. According to their Web site: “Buy the lot next door, beautify it, and we’ll deduct money off the purchase price. The Growing Home program of New Orleans would like to help. Through Growing Home you can receive up to a $10,000 discount off the cost of a qualifying Lot Next Door for landscaping improvements that you make to the property.”

We went to the house of a Mrs. Washington, who was improving the lot next to hers with the help of Growing Home. Abigail, a landscape architect who works with Growing Home, had designed some nice plantings, and we began digging out plots for the plantings. After we had been working for about two and a half hours, a thunderstorm moved in, and after waiting half an hour we decided to take our lunch break. It just poured buckets of rain, maybe three inches in an hour. When the rain finally stopped, all the areas we had dug out were filled with water.

We figured out a way to keep working, which meant getting incredibly dirty. (Some of our crew took pictures of us at the end of the work day, and I will try to post some of them here eventually so you can see just how dirty we were.) Abigail had to get a truck load of soil for us, then some drainage gravel, and by the time moving the dirt and gravel it was 5:30 and past time to knock off work. We promised her we’d go back tomorrow morning for a few hours to finish the last remaining plantings.

Unfortunately, Rev. Josie’s food pantry had so many volunteers that they only had three hours of work for our other crew. They came back here and basically had nothing to do, which was disheartening. We’re going to have a meeting tonight to see if we can figure out a way to become more effective.

Next post in the trip diary.

New Orleans, day four

Today we split into three crews on our service trip here in New Orleans. One crew, with eight people, went back to Blair Grocery, where they put in a border around a garden plot to keep out weeds. One crew, with four people, went to work with Green Light, installing free compact fluorescent bulbs in houses where the owners had requested them. The third crew, with four people, stayed here at the Center for Ethical Living to help out with some much-needed maintenance work here where we’re staying. I worked on this third crew.

The Center for Ethical Living is definitely understaffed, and basically all staff time goes towards supporting the volunteers who come to stay here. That means that the volunteers who stay here do most of the custodial work, so the first thing we did today was to give all three bathrooms a thorough scrubbing, scrub the floors, and so on. We moved a broken freezer down from the second floor to the curb for pick up, reorganized the linen storage, and did some other miscellaneous tasks the Center staff asked us to do. The four of us — Alexa, Sam, Jo, and I — worked our butts off. I was even sore at the end of the day.

Tonight after dinner, most of our crew went off to take the St. Charles Streetcar, which is apparently the oldest street railway in continuous operation in the United States; it began running in 1832, is now powered by electricity, but the cars were originally drawn by horses. They rode the line from its terminus at Claiborne and Carrollton to Camilla’s, a popular eating spot.

Next post in the trip diary.

Phoenix: “another option”

Peter Morales, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), has proposed another option for the 2012 General Assembly (GA) of the Association. As various organizations organize to boycott Arizona over the enactment of SB 1070, delegates to this year’s General Assembly will be voting on whether to move the 2012 GA away from Phoenix in order to participate in the boycott. Morales has been in communication with Puente and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), two organizations that organized the protests in Arizona over Memorial Day weekend, and “we have received an invitation from Puente and NDLON to partner with them and to make our General Assembly in 2012 something far more than a normal GA.” Pablo Alvarado, director of NDLON, and Salvador Reza of Puente, sent a letter to Morales which said in part:

There will still be much to witness about in 2012. While SB1070 may be overturned by then, we anticipate that there will still be a terrible situation to deal with here in Arizona. The Ethnic Studies legislation that was recently passed needs to be overturned and there is currently proposed legislation that would mandate that children born in the U.S. of undocumented parents not be accepted as citizens. Meanwhile Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others will continue to deputize volunteers eager to enforce immigration law and terrorize our community. We need the faith community here to stand in solidarity with our movement and to galvanize others to condemn this growing human rights crisis and create a climate that welcomes and supports migratory families.

We ask that your 2012 General Assembly here in Phoenix be a convergence in cooperation with us and that together we design the best ways that UUs can witness, learn from, take action, and serve the movement here….

I have to say, I think this is an invitation we should accept. Not that you should listen to my opinion, which is fairly useless. Instead, you can read Morales’s complete statement here.

New Orleans, day three

Day 3 of our service trip to New Orleans

Our work assignment today was at Our School at Blair Grocery in the Lower Ninth Ward. Ten years ago, Blair Grocery had been a grocery, but it went out of business a decade or so ago. In 2008, a school was established to serve young people from the Lower Ninth Ward who basically hadn’t gone to school since Hurricane Katrina. A big part of the curriculum of the school is urban farming, and they sell the produce and eggs they raise in the neighborhood. So the people running Blair Grocery are not only addressing education through youth empowerment, they’re also addressing food security in the Lower Ninth Ward, a part of New Orleans that still doesn’t have a supermarket.

We were assigned two tasks at the beginning of the day. Carol, Maya, Nina, and I went to work on their main compost windrow, which was ten feet high, twenty feet wide, and perhaps fifty feet long. It was spreading out too much so we put up a fence made of pallets to contain one of the long sides. Then we climbed up on top of the heap and began shoveling the pile down against the fence. Compost piles get pretty hot — this one was steaming — and the day was blazing hot, so we took it easy so we didn’t get too overheated.

Blair Grocery is working several empty lots in the Lower Ninth. If you pay taxes on a vacant lot for three years in New Orleans, you wind up owning the lot. Blair Grocery has found some empty lots that are unlikely to be claimed by the old owners, and has been building gardens on them. The soil is not very good, so they truck in composted manure to grow vegetables in. The other group used wheelbarrows to move composted manure from one lot, where there is an established garden, to a new lots they’re now working. When it got too hot to work on the big compost windrow, some of us went over to help with this project. After lunch, we worked on several different things: sifting compost, rebuilding a wood rack

It’s amazing how many empty lots and empty houses there are in the Lower Ninth. This used to be a neighborhood where the houses are close enough together that you could talk with your neighbors next door through an open window; now only one house in ten is occupied, and it seems like more than half the lots no longer have houses. On many blocks, there’s only one occupied house.

We felt good about what we did today. Working at Blair Grocery seemed like a good way to support the community in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was one of the hardest-hit parts of the city, and which has been one of the slowest to recover.

Next post in the trip diary.

New Orleans, day two

It’s late at night, so just a quick summary:

We attended worship this morning with First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. We got to meet people from the two other groups that are here volunteering through the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal:– the youth group from the Columbus, Ohio, Unitarian Universalist church, and youth and adults from the Monterey Unitarian Universalist church.

In the afternoon, we received a general orientation, and then cultural sensitivity training, particularly around issues of race, and the peculiarities of New Orleans culture.

This evening, we finally got out work assignments. Work assignments will include Blair Grocery, Rev. Josie’s Food Pantry, Animal Rescue of New Orleans, Green Light, and Growing Home. More on our assignments later.

Next post in the trip diary.

In New Orleans

We arrived in New Orleans about three hours ago, rented our cars, and got to First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans where we’ll be staying. On the plane here, I wound up sitting next to two women from New Orleans. They told us about all the good cheap places to eat, talked about how angry they are with BP, and told me a little bit about how the continued cleanup is going.

Tomorrow, we will attend an orientation session with the groups from the UU churches in Monterey, Calif., and Columbus, Ohio. We will get our final work assignments then.

Next post in the trip diary.

Off to New Orleans

Tomorrow morning, I’m heading off to New Orleans with our church youth group to participate in rebuilding work. Yes, New Orleans is still being rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. Now, we will not be cleaning up the BP oil spill — apparently volunteers aren’t allowed to work on cleaning up the oil yet (’cause, ya know, BP is doing such a good job on its own).

Will post more from new Orleans beginning tomorrow evening….

Next post in the trip diary.

Budgets as vision statements

As I watch the debates on whether to move the 2012 General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) out of Arizona because of the boycott stemming from Arizona SB 1070, I am reminded that financial budgets are in fact expressions of our goals and dreams.

The current conflict about whether or not to move the 2012 GA will come to a vote at this year’s GA, which will take place in Minneapolis June 23-27. If there were no budget implications — if it cost nothing to move General Assembly in 2012 –there would be little discussion about whether to move it or not. But it will cost money to move GA in 2012; and the current UUA budget is tight to begin with, with layoffs and cuts for the past two years.

We’re seeing budget battles playing out in many local congregations right now. Many congregations have seen revenue drop over the past two years of the Great Recession, and most of those congregations have had to make budget cuts. What do you do when you have to choose between a paying full-time minister, and repairing a leaking roof on a historic building? What do you do when you have to have to choose between cutting your Director of Religious Education’s (DRE’s) hours, and paying a rising heating bill?

Making budget cuts is extremely painful, because every time we cut something out of a budget, we are cutting away a piece of someone’s vision. When we cut the DRE’s hours to pay the heating bill, we are cutting away at someone’s vision for the congregation’s ministries to children and youth. When we cut the minister to half-time in order to repair the leaking roof, we are cutting away at our vision of our congregation’s ministry.

This suggests a strategy when we’re trying either to cut a budget, or to move money out of one budget category into another budget category. When I get excited about a vision, I won’t give that vision up quickly, nor will I give it up at all if I don’t see a more compelling vision. Visions are a matter of the heart. Thus, if you want to change a budget that supports a vision that I’m excited about, your strategy should be to engage my heart — to get me excited about your new vision.

This is why I think it helps to think of budgets, not as dry statements of facts and numbers, but as passionately emotional vision statements.

The view of a fiscal conservative

What are the fiscal implications for moving the 2012 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) from Phoenix, in response to a call for a boycott of the state of Arizona in response to SB1070, the law that allows harassment of anyone who’s not white state and local police to demand proof of citizenship status? If General Assembly is moved from Phoenix, the current contract calls for cancelation fees which have been variously reported at $600,000 to $650,000. In addition to paying those fees, a new location for General Assembly will likely result in higher cost because we are not planning far enough in advance. Let’s lay out some possible ways to come up with this money, from a fiscal conservative’s point of view.

The true fiscal conservative looks at both sides of the ledger. Starting on the expense side, where could we cut costs to come up with part of this money? The most logical place to cut costs is in the budget for the 2012 General Assembly. If the 2012 General Assembly were to include only those business matters required by the bylaws, I believe the schedule could be reduced to a single day. By cutting out workshops, worship services, lectures, and the like, non-delegates would not attend, reducing the space needed for General Assembly. It would also make sense to hold the meeting within driving distance of Boston to allow UUA staff to cut travel costs, while needing no expenses for overnight lodging for staffers. Total cost for the new location would then be reduced substantially.

Aside from that, I would be extremely unwilling to cut costs out of other denominational programs. The past two fiscal years have seen layoffs and staff cuts. Departments have been cut (e.g., the Washington office for advocacy), or merged to save money (e.g., the office for identity-based ministries no longer has an independent existence). An unanticipated expense of $650,000 would likely result in additional layoffs of at least half a dozen more UUA staffers. And there is no fat left to cut from the UUA budget — we’d be cutting muscle and bone.

Now let’s turn to the revenue side. Paying for this boycott offers an opportunity for concerned Unitarian Universalists to live out their ethical values by increasing their financial giving above their current contributions to local congregation and the UUA Annual Fund. It makes sense to set up a fund, managed either by an independent 501(c)3 or by the UUA (although there are staff costs to managing an additional fund), where concerned individuals and congregations would have the opportunity to contribute to directly offset the cost of moving GA. Given that Unitarian Universalists have the second rate of giving to their religion, as a percentage of annual income (at 1.5% of annual income, second only to Catholics), there is plenty of room for Unitarian Universalists to raise their giving to the denomination.

I’d like to see the following challenge issued to Unitarian Universalists:– For Unitarian Universalists who currently give less than 5% of their annual income to their faith, I’d like to see them give an additional 1-2% of their income to the fund for moving General Assembly. Those who are currently giving 5-10% of their annual income to their faith could give an additional 0.5% of their income to this fund. Those who give on the basis of their total wealth rather than income (because their wealth is larger than income) could give an amount of between 10%-100% more than their current contribution to their faith, depending on how much or how little they’re currently giving. Obviously, one would start by looking for big donors; individual contributors take a lot of work. I will add that if such a fund is set up, I’m prepared to write a check for 0.5% of my annual income (since I currently give 5% of my income to my church). I will also add that such a fund drive might have larger positive implications, in the way that a capital campaign in a local congregation often winds up boosting regular giving.

From a fiscal conservative’s point of view, boycotts come with financial implications; they are not free. Think of the Montgomery bus boycott, which required working people to deal with a much more difficult commute; their lost time was worth a great deal to them. Think also of the time when some Unitarian Universalist congregations pulled their assets out of companies doing business in South Africa, and then had to deal with decreased investment income, which they made up through cutting expenses and trying to increase donations (and, I might add, fiscal conservatives were some of the heros and heroines of that movement, since they were the ones who figured out how to make that boycott happen through cutting expenses and increasing donations).

The above discussion purposefully avoids the question of whether the boycott of Arizona is the right thing to do. But the larger question of whether or not the boycott of Arizona is the right thing to do cannot avoid the question of how to deal with the financial implications of that boycott; those who object to the boycott will most certainly raise that point. Personally, I know I have very little patience with those on either side of the issue who aren’t looking realistically at the financial implications; in order to win the votes of people like me, the fiscal implications must be addressed (N.B.: I’m not going to General Assembly this year, so my opinion is essentially meaningless).

Presumably, those who advocate the boycott are already considering this point as they plan their strategy for the inevitable floor fight at the 2010 General Assembly. If I were advocating for the boycott at the 2010 General Assembly, I would already be working on fundraising, knowing that if I could make an opening statement saying that I had raised, say, $100,000 towards the added expense, I’d probably win.