A note from Nicole Pressley, Field and Programs Director:

Whether you’re talking about organizing or Unitarian Universalism, you don’t get very far without mentioning the centrality of relationship, community, and learning. As a living faith, we commit to transforming ourselves and our world as we build beloved community. 

This is why I am excited to announce that Rev. Ranwa Hammamy will be joining the UUA’s Organizing Strategy Team as the new Congregational Justice Organizer. The OST is the base for all of the UUA’s outward-facing justice ministries, including UU the Vote, Side With Love, Love Resists, Create Climate Justice, and more. Rev. Ranwa’s skill, commitment to racial justice-rooted organizing, and invitational leadership are markers of their powerful justice ministry that have supported organizations like UU Justice Ministry of California and Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Ministries.  

As we build Side With Love’s organizing capacity and infrastructure, we’re looking forward to Rev. Ranwa sharing their powerful leadership to support congregational and local teams. By building new and stronger relationships with our Unitarian Universalist communities, we can create deeply connected networks of leaders to grow our impact, learn from one another, and reflect on collective work.  

I am so grateful that Rev. Ranwa has chosen to join our team and look forward to how they will support our congregations and leaders in transformational justice work. Come welcome Rev. Ranwa Hammamy in their new position at our Side With Love Action Center launch on Sunday, September 12, 2pm EST/1pm CST/ 12pm MST/11am PST.

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I am humbled and excited to join the Organizing Strategy Team as a Congregational Justice Organizer! 

I became a Unitarian Universalist in 2010, joining the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia and its choir. Every Sunday, when I sat in the choir pews, a flag swayed gently above my head, embroidered with an image of one of Unitarianism’s most prophetic ancestors – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. 

Over the years, I’ve come to learn so much about and from Harper’s bold and courageous faith, and how it motivated her perseverant work for abolition, universal suffrage, economic justice, gender equality, and more. As a Unitarian Universalist & Muslim, I hold a deep appreciation of how her lived faith wove together her African Methodist Episcopal roots and her Unitarian wings. 

I know that what I believe and how I act are inextricably connected. Whether it is teaching anti-racism in a Sunday school classroom in New York, interrupting inhumane immigration proceedings in San Diego, or protesting the desecration of sacred lands by Enbridge in Minnesota, my actions are out of a joyful obligation to my beliefs. 

As the Congregational Justice Organizer with the Organizing Strategy Team, I am excited to learn about, celebrate, connect, and support the ways YOU have found to live out your faith. Serving as the Executive Director of the UU Justice Ministry of California showed me how vibrant and varied our congregational justice ministries can be, and that is in just one state! I am eager to get to know you, your teams, your communities, your work, your dreams, your struggles, and your strengths, and help build those bridges that motivate bold and courageous action. And I am ESPECIALLY excited to meet you at the launch of the Side with Love Action Center on Sunday, September 12 at 2pm EST!

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Our world is at a turning point, and we have the power and responsibility to choose its direction. As Harper once wrote, “Are there not wrongs to be righted?” We can choose to continue the cycles of racism, capitalism, and imperialism by restoring the white supremacist status-quo that pretends to look like “change” when it knows we are tired or scared. Or, we can be bold and courageous like our ancestor Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and take new action in faith-rooted and collective ways. 

Through our collective faith-rooted work, Unitarian Universalist congregations can be epicenters of imagination and generativity. We have already witnessed this power. In the past 18 months our communities have met unfathomable challenges, grief, violence, and destruction with adaptability, resilience, steadfastness, love, and creativity. Our congregations have been physical and virtual spaces where we have sustained each other, remembered that we are always part of something larger than ourselves, and effectively embraced our shared power. And with the Side with Love Action Center, our congregations will grow even stronger as integral spaces for our interconnected work for liberation. By coming together on Sunday, September 12 for the Action Center Launch with others in your congregation – committee members, established justice teams, or anyone you think might be interested in organizing together within your community – you will be part of the next phase of our prophetic work as a faith. 

We face challenging times ahead, just as we and our ancestors have endured before. As individuals and congregations, we affirm and live by a set of principles that are not reserved for our most comfortable or privileged moments, but that speak the deepest truth in the most difficult and uncertain times of our lives. We all have parts to play in building that interconnected web of liberation, gifts that you and your congregation can bring, truths that your community and partners can share, and a faith that achieves its fullest potential and power when we come together to connect, create, act, and Side with Love. We need you – we all need each other – to build with us our new Side with Love Action Center so together we can build a bold, courageous, and liberated world.

Rev. Ranwa Hammamy

Congregational Justice Organizer

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Each year, thousands of Unitarian Universalists gather together for our annual General Assembly (GA), where we learn about cutting edge thinking and practices in our faith, do the business of the Association, and join our hearts and our spirits together in worship, song, and action. This year’s GA was the second in which we assembled not in an overly-air conditioned convention center, but in online chat spaces and Zoom rooms and livestreams. And even though so many of us are yearning for the in-the-flesh experience of being together, this was a truly remarkable, soul-expanding week that underscored for all of us that the heart of Unitarian Universalist faith is love, and that the expression of that faith is our shared work for justice. 

Some highlights from the week:

• Our Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team was thrilled to see so many of you in our on-demand and live workshops (and we look forward to sharing some highlights and content from them in the coming weeks with those of you who did not attend GA, too!). We were especially excited to share our learnings coming out of the just-published UU the Vote report, and to publicly debut Side With Love’s new Action Center!

• We were also incredibly touched by your generosity in donating to the Side With Love special collection on Saturday, which raised nearly $33,000. Thank you so much for making the work possible. (If you would still like to make a gift, text SWL to 91999 or click here.)

• On Saturday, we partnered with African American Roundtable in phonebanking in support of a moral budget for Milwaukee, with less funding for racist policing and more resources for real social supports and structures of safety and stability for the people. More than 30 of you joined us in calling, and together we made more than 550 calls, and had more than 50 deep canvassing conversations with Milwaukee residents--many of which led to commitments of deeper engagement and support from the people we reached. Join us on July 8th for the next chance to join us and the African American Roundtable in support of the #LiberateMKE campaign!

• Building a democracy where everyone has a voice and where those historically excluded from systems of governance find justice, is a fight that continues beyond election seasons. Our co-Ware lecturers at General Assembly, Stacey Abrams and Desmond Meade, gave rousing commentary on what it means to build just and democratic futures for us all. It included passing legislation like the For the People Act and John Lewis Act to expand access to voting rights, remove money from politics, end harmful gerrymandering, and restore critical elements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also includes resisting the criminalization of protests and people with marginalized identities that move us closer to justice and liberation. And it includes partnering with those most impacted to dismantle systems of oppression and collectively reimagine communities and the systems that help us thrive. 

• Finally, we were inspired by the ways Unitarian Universalists engage in the democratic process together to articulate our shared values and call for embodied work for justice. This year, we were heartened to see the decisive votes that our delegates cast in favor of this year’s Statement of Conscience (“Undoing Systemic White Supremacy”), and the resounding affirmation of three Actions of Immediate Witness declaring our support for systemic solutions to address the devastation caused by COVID-19; our call to defend and advocate with transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Communities; and the urgency of defending democracy and combating voter suppression. 

It is always a gift to be together in worship, action, and embodying in the democratic process. We are grateful for all of you who engaged in GA activities with us, and with our siblings in faith. Stay tuned for many more opportunities coming soon to join us in the work as we continue to Circle ‘Round for Freedom, Justice, and Courage.

In faith and solidarity,

Rev. Ashley Horan, UUA Organizing Strategy Director

On behalf of the Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team

Unitarian Universalists are often called “the Love People” by our communities who see us out working for justice. From hosting free weddings for LGBTQIA+ people before marriage equality was the law of the land, to taking to the streets as part of the global Climate Strikes, to opening our sanctuaries to protesters fleeing state violence, to organizing with coalition partners to shut down immigration detention facilities, “the Love People” have been showing up for years to embody our values, take courageous action, and build together as a part of broader movements for justice and liberation.  

Sometimes, Unitarian Universalists have shown up holding our congregational banners.  Other times, it’s been at the call of joint UU campaigns like Love Resists or Create Climate Justice.  And sometimes, we’ve rallied together through efforts like UU the Vote, or in our yellow shirts as a part of Side With Love. 

For some UUs, however, it has been confusing to try to understand the relationship between these many different justice campaigns and programs. Too often, the existence of these many “brands” has made the work seem disjointed, or even that issues are in competition with one another for resources and attention. And as a result, we have not always been as aligned, coordinated, or powerful as we could be. 

One thing is clear: the world needs Unitarian Universalists to show up for justice with spiritual grounding, generosity, humility, courage, and concrete skills. At various moments, we may be asked to bring these resources to particular struggles--pushing for electoral justice and voting rights, combating criminalization, working for LGBTQIA+ liberation, resisting climate catastrophe--but fundamentally, these are all facets of our shared work for collective liberation. 

Since its inception, the Side With Love campaign in particular has articulated one of Unitarian Universalism’s most cherished values: that it is a spiritual practice to choose love over fear. The beauty and the power of Side With Love has always been that invitation to be brave, to show up when we’re called, to occupy space with loving resistance rather than fearful retreat. We are most powerful when we understand that all the issues we care most deeply about are fundamentally interlinked, and that each of us has a role to play in building a world in which all people can be free and thrive. When we bring our best selves to our justice work, whichever specific issue or campaign it might be, we are choosing to Side With Love. 

And so, going forward, we are proud to announce that all of the UUA’s justice work will be housed under the Side With Love banner, through which we will continue to offer UUs regular opportunities for political education, spiritual sustenance, skills-based trainings, and mobilizations for action. We will be explicitly building on the infrastructure, organizing experience, relationships, and momentum we developed in 2020 through UU the Vote. In that vein, we will also invite UUs into specific work on issue-based campaigns from time to time: Side With Love will be encouraging people to #UUtheVote in 2022; to #CreateClimateJustice in partnership with the UU Ministry for Earth; and to declare that #LoveResists criminalization, along with our beloved partners at the UU Service Committee. These campaigns will be aligned and coordinated, and part of the overarching organizing strategy of Side With Love. 

To better reflect this intentional integration into Side With Love, we have also re-structured our Organizing Strategy Team--the UUA staff group that holds responsibility for the outward-facing justice ministries and campaigns of the Association. Working together, this team will be focusing on creating an impactful, engaging, nourishing multi-issue hub where UUs come to ground our spirits, grow our skills, and act together for justice. Following this message, you can see brief profiles of each of the Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team members, along with contact information and details about the portfolios of work they lead. 

In short: we will still be supporting our partners, congregations, and people of faith and conscience who are concerned about climate justice, decriminalization, democracy, and LGBTQ+ and gender justice as well as other issues that require a faith-filled response. We’re simply being more intentional in our declaration that all our prophetic justice work requires us to Side With Love.

To hear more reflections about how Unitarian Universalists are being called to Side With Love in the coming time, and ways to get involved, join our team at UUA General Assembly for our live workshop, “Harvesting Lessons, Planting Seeds: Reflections on Organizing, 2016-2021” on Thursday, June 24, 5:00-6:30pm ET/2:00-3:30pm PT. Check out all our General Assembly offerings here.  

We are so grateful for the ways Unitarian Universalists continue to Side With Love in so many ways, and in so many places. The work that lies ahead of us is immense, but we know that we carry on the legacy of generations before us who have brought us to this point. We are excited for our next phase together, and we can’t wait to build with you. We are so glad to be in the struggle together. 

In faith and solidarity,

The Rev. Ashley Horan, UUA Organizing Strategy Director 

On behalf of Side With Love’s Organizing Strategy Team

Meet your Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team

The Rev. Ashley Horan (she/her) is the UUA’s Organizing Strategy Director, and leads the Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team. In this role, Ashley shapes the big-picture vision and goals for the UUA’s outward-facing justice work, advises senior UUA leadership on justice-related issues, and supervises the staff team that designs and implements the work of Side With Love and all its related programs and campaigns.  

Nicole Pressley (she/her), formerly the National Organizer for UU the Vote, now serves as Field & Programs Director, and as a member of the Side With Love leadership team. In this role, Nicole supervises the team of field organizers, and creates opportunities for UUs to engage in leadership development, skill building, and collective action.

Everette Thompson (he/him), formerly the Campaign Manager for Side With Love, now serves as Political Education & Spiritual Sustenance Strategist, and as a member of the Side With Love leadership team. In this role, Everette designs opportunities for UUs to deepen their political grounding and analysis of critical justice issues and movements, and offers ways for people to nurture and sustain their spirits as they engage in long-haul work for justice. 

Audra Friend (she/her) serves the Side With Love team as Data, Communications, and Technology Specialist. In this role, Audra creates the technical infrastructure that makes our digital organizing possible, and supports the creation of compelling narratives that link our values to our actions for justice. 

Susan Leslie (she/her) currently serves as our Coalitions & Partnerships Organizer, after 29 years on UUA staff in a wide variety of justice-related roles. As a part of the field organizing team, Susan focuses on supporting strong, accountable connections between UU congregations, frontline movement partners, and faith-based coalitions. Beginning July 1, Susan will be working 60% time in her last year on staff before retiring in July 2022. 

The Rev. Michael Crumpler (he/him), Multicultural & LGBTQIA+ Programs Director, is based in the UUA’s Ministries and Faith Development staff group, and contributes 40% of his time to the Side With Love team. Michael holds Side With Love’s LGBTQIA+ and gender justice organizing, oversees the UUA’s Welcoming Congregations program, and publishes the Uplift newsletter and blog. 

Aly Tharp (she/her or they/them) is the UU Ministry For Earth (UUMFE) Director of Programs and Partnerships, and serves as an ad hoc member of the Side With Love team. In this role, she serves as a liaison between the UUA and the ecosystem of UU climate justice organizing, and oversees Create Climate Justice, a joint project of the UUA and UUMFE. Aly collaborates and advises on climate- and earth-justice related organizing and strategy. 

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