10.27.26 Action Center Update

Written By Side With Love

Welcome to the Action Center Weekly Update. Each week, we’ll share:

  • A brief analysis of critical issues in this political moment

  • Immediate actions you can take

  • Resources to deepen knowledge and strengthen our collective work to side with love

Nothing is inevitable. Justice movements are built by ordinary people who come together to defeat oppression and nurture a loving world. You are not alone. We have power. Together, we can create a just and thriving future.

Movements are strongest when we act together. Organize with your teams and networks, and take these actions in community. For practical tools, see our Organizing School and Trainings & Webinars.

Democracy

Core Principle: Democracy is not a destination but a practice rooted in interdependence and the worth and dignity of all. While authoritarianism consolidates power, we are the majority—and we must organize to build a truly multiracial democracy.

The Update:
With only seven days to go until Election Day arrives once again, grassroots movements across the country are demonstrating how democracy is not limited to how we engage at the ballot box. It is something we build, defend, and sustain together. Following the October 17 No Kings mobilizations, organizers are turning collective energy into coordinated action through voter protection, election monitoring, and nonviolent community response networks. Organizations including Indivisible, SURJ, Seed the Vote, and May Day Strong are strengthening relationships across movements, preparing communities to respond to potential election interference, and building the infrastructure necessary to protect democratic participation beyond any single election.

At the same time, a Black-led coalition including the NAACP, National Urban League, and Black Men Vote mobilized to create National Black Man Voter Day reaching thousands of Black men through community conversations, voter education, and neighborhood organizing. Their work offers a reminder to us all that in order to build a truly multiracial democracy, you must invest in the leadership, participation, and political power of communities historically excluded from it. Across these efforts, we see a shared commitment to something that no electoral outcome can take away from us: the relationships we build, our ever-expanding collective capacity, and the skill we cultivate as organized communities. We are what makes democracy possible. Elections matter deeply, but the work of democracy belongs to all of us, every day, and it will continue long after the ballots are counted.

Take Action:

Resources:

Decriminalization & Immigration

Core Principle: Criminalization and dehumanization deny the dignity of our communities. Safety cannot come at the expense of others. As people of faith, we proclaim a future of care, abundance, and mutuality—not domination.

The Update:

As ICE agents across the country have been instructed to ramp up daily arrest numbers by 1,000 to 3,000 people a DAY,  people are continuing to build our power.   Last week UUs joined the  Haitian Solidarity Pilgrimage with Unshackle Springfield (Ohio), and we are working to stop detention centers from Appleton, Wisconsin to a 528-bed ICE immigrant child and family jail on top of a toxic waste site adjacent in Alexandria, Louisiana. As the Trump Administration surgically and broadly executes its plans to criminalize larger and larger segments of our population, we must continue to assert our value in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  May we recommit to our work to free, support, and value all people from execution chambers to immigrant detention camps. 

Take Action: 

Resources:

Pastoral Care for People Detained by ICE, October 28th, 1-2:30pm Central Time, 12 MT, 11 PT

 Gather for an opportunity to learn from people with direct experience with pastoral care for people detained by ICE. Faith leaders have a unique and powerful role in supporting people who are detained, amplifying their stories, and shedding light into the facilities where they are held. Learn from Minnesota faith leaders and their attorneys who have gained access to a variety of detention centers both in and outside Minnesota, and build relationships with people in the work. There will be space for attendees to share resources and wisdom from their own experience. Offered by MARCH (Multifaith Anti-racism, Change and Healing) Register here 

Climate Justice

Core Principle: A just and loving world is also a flourishing one. A fossil-free future is possible, where clean energy is a human right and all beings thrive. To get there, we must create new systems, norms, and practices.

The Update:
This week, we are focusing on how the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) impacts data centers.  We’ve previously shared a more thorough Unitarian Universalist approach to BAAJA and how BAAJA threatens Tribal Sovereignty and the ways Unitarian Universalists have aligned with Tribal nations against continued encroachment on their lands for decades.

How BAAJA Impacts Data Centers: Key Takeaways from Earthjustice  

  • The bill’s changes to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) would clear a faster path to development of data centers on public lands.  Spurred in part by President Trump’s July 2025 executive order to accelerate data center development, there are currently at least 12 proposed data center projects on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land across western states.

  • The bill would direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to revise its transmission pricing policy and undertake a rulemaking so that data centers pay the costs both for the use of existing grid infrastructure and for needed grid expansion to accommodate new large loads.

  • The bill would enable needed tracking of data center energy consumption.

  • Provisions that make gas even more quickly accessible could accelerate the current “speed-to-power” rush to fuel data centers with gas, as discussed above.

Households should not pay for data center grid expansion and usage, especially when electricity bills force 1 in 5 Americans to cut back on food.  It is good that BAAJA aligns with this.

We are concerned that BAAJA will encourage gas-powered data center development on public lands.  As Unitarian Universalists we covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation, to create and nurture sustainable relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice and to work to repair harm and damaged relationships through our Seven Principles and our newly adopted Shared Values.  We have, over nearly seven decades, proven to be champions of the Earth, as a collective, beginning with the 1966 Natural Resources General Resolution which called on us “to preserve our forests and wilderness areas and curb pollution and spoliation of air, water and land by urban growth and industrialization.”

As such, we Defend Against the Assault on Environmental Protections and commit to protecting public lands from the many executive orders, laws and regulatory rule changes that allow industry, especially the fossil fuel and other extractive industries, to put our human and more than human communities in jeopardy.

We do not want data centers built on public lands.  BAAJA weakens many of the top legal strategies currently being leveraged to block and delay data center development. 

According to a new analysis from the Center for Western Priorities, this bill “would give President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum two years to approve data centers, nuclear facilities, and fossil fuel projects on public lands, then make those approvals nearly impossible to reverse.”

Do you trust politicians to place the needs of everyday Americans over the wishes of powerful technology corporations?  To prioritize the planet over profit?  

Do you want to give up your power to fight back, accepting that these approvals will be nearly impossible to reverse?  If politicians approve construction of a data center, transmission line, or pipeline that harms a community, there should be a way for them to intervene, to protest, to protect their community through the democratic process.  Wouldn’t you want to protect your community?

Pause a moment to imagine your community thriving, flourishing, in 2050.  Where are the data centers?  Do they even exist?  What role did you and I have in shaping those decisions? 

Take Action: 

  • Call your members of Congress to OPPOSE the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA):

  • Find their phone number here. Leaving a message counts too!

  • Sample script: 

    • Hi, my name is [NAME] and I live in [CITY, or "your district"]. I am calling to ask [REP NAME] to reject the so-called "permitting reform" bill, which would be the biggest rollback in environmental protections we have ever seen, and is a clear giveaway to data centers and the fossil fuel industry. Passing this reform would reward toxic and polluting industries while cutting the ability of vulnerable communities and tribes from opposing bad projects. Stand with the people and reject permitting reform.

  • Sign on to any of the following petitions opposing BAAJA:

  • Write to restore Solar for All. The Solar for All was a grant program under the Inflation Reduction Act that provided opportunities for low-income households, Tribes, and other disadvantaged communities with the funds to provide solar energy alternatives. In August 2025, the EPA under the Trump administration, terminated the grant program.  Lawsuits were filed by RI’s AFL-CIO and another filed by Harris County, Texas. The two federal courts have now ruled that termination unlawful, and the letter below asks your member of Congress to call on EPA to restore the program and release the $7 billion already committed to lowering energy bills nationwide.

Resources:

Wednesday, November 18, 2026 7:00 PM -  8:30 PM ET (Please note the Time Zone!)

Reimagine Together Again (and again and again...) The Climate Justice revival energy continues with an invitation to Reimagine Together: Fractal Practices for Faithful Climate Justice. Designed to flexibly meet the needs of your congregation or organization, this new curriculum invites us to Begin Together & then proceed in all learning directions, developing and nourishing the skills and connective tissue necessary for participating in the possibilities of a world where all beings may flourish. The Rev. Deanna Vandiver of Ever Unfolding and Rev. JeKaren Bell, UUA, both members of the original UU Climate Justice Revival Planning Team will join us to introduce this encouraging resource. --- Guided by UU values, the Green Sanctuary community nurtures resilient, thriving communities through climate actions that prioritize justice. All are invited to join our monthly community meetings to learn together, support each other, and celebrate progress.

Wednesday, November 4, 2026 7:00 PM -  8:00 PM ET (Please note the Time Zone!)

Drop into any of our monthly Office Hours to ask questions, learn what other congregations are doing, and get the support you need to create climate justice in your community. Offering shared learning and mutual supports, the new Green Sanctuary 2030 process and community of practice are here to support any UU working on climate justice. 

Guided by UU values, the Green Sanctuary 2030 community nurtures resilient, thriving communities through climate actions that prioritize justice.  When we gather to celebrate progress together, we create a community of shared learning and mutual supports.

To prepare for our time together, please review our short Green Sanctuary 2030 Orientation Video and FAQ.

The Green Sanctuary 2030 Community meets on the third Wednesday of the month at 7ET for 90 minutes for a conversation about UU climate justice. Green Sanctuary Office Hours are on the first Wednesday of the month at 7ET for 60 minutes.

In the recent fights against data center expansion, more advocates are learning about the often-overlooked forum for decision-making on energy: Public Utilities Commissions (PUCs). These commissions provide state oversight and regulation of utilities like electricity, gas, water, and transit. PUCs are a direct line to those entrusted to protect the affordability, health, and safety of utilities. Learn how local organizations are fighting for safe, clean, and affordable utilities and infrastructure.

In this training, they will:

Provide an overview of the make-up, function, and power of Public Utility Commissions in state government.

Analyze and discuss successful campaigns to push Public Utilities Commissions to further climate justice and climate resilience efforts.

Uplift ongoing climate campaign that participants can plug into

 Together, we practice the world we long for. Together, we win.

Side With Love
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10.20.26 Action Center Update