8.11.26 Action Center Update
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:
There is no single movement and no singular action that will build a democracy where all of us can thrive. It will take all of us practicing together—deepening our compassion and care, and building visions with and for one another’s liberation.
In our work toward a multiracial democracy, we should be learning more about others as well as ourselves. Throughout this primary season, we have witnessed people come alive with joy, determination, and collective action. This powerful spirit of hope is cultivated through human connection: learning one another’s stories, building relationships, and allowing ourselves to be transformed in the process.
Mariame Kaba reminds us, “Everything worthwhile is done with other people.” Faithfully reaching toward the world we want means reaching for one another. It means connecting with voters through real, human conversations; showing up at the polls to protect voters and our elections; and working together to address the real suffering people are experiencing today.
Democracy is not simply something we defend. It is something we practice and build together.
Take Action:
Join Poll Workers Wanted: Info Session with Power the Polls, August 11, 2026 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET. Take action to defend our elections by becoming a poll worker! On Aug 11, at 7-8pm ET we’re celebrating National Poll Worker Recruitment Day with our partners at Power the Polls will join us to discuss how serving as a Poll Worker protects democracy and how you can get involved.
Join The Vote is Sacred on Tuesday, August 25, 7–8pm EDT. Join Interfaith Alliance, Protect Democracy, and Interfaith America to learn about the Faith in Elections playbook, which will equip you and your community to address polarization, share trustworthy information, and more.
Join GOTV, IVE, Oh My!: UU the Vote Office Hours, September 2, 2026 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET. Curious about the alphabet soup of electoral organizing? Join us to unpack the core concepts, tools, and strategies of faith-based voter engagement. We'll demystify terms like GOTV and IVE, share proven organizing practices, and help your congregation develop a clear strategy for reaching voters and protecting democracy this fall. Hear what UU the Vote teams across the country are doing and discover concrete opportunities to plug into the work right away.
Resources:
Listen:
Episode from Fascism Barometer Podcast “Don’t Cede The Country with Adrienne Evans.” Adrienne Evans is the Executive Director of United Vision for Idaho (UVI), an Idaho-based nonprofit and the state's only multi-issue progressive coalition.
Join:
Build community and democratic practice at your nearest Solidarity Summit. Solidarity Summits are gatherings where people of faith build skills and take action to address attacks to democracy and on our communities. From protecting abortion access, fighting data centers, and protecting trans youth, Summit brings together community care with electoral action. Join one of the 11 Summits happening across the country.
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 immigration enforcement continues to escalate, terrorizing our communities, separating families and harming citizens and non-citizens alike, headlines focus on other things. But we know that immigration enforcement and police continue to capture our neighbors. We know that we have a sacred duty to be part of the vast network of mutuality building protection, care, safety, and belonging. May we each find our role in community safety and care—whether through disruptive civil disobedience, sharing food and funds with neighbors, or building alternatives to our current system that punishes rather than heals.
Take Action:
Organize The Butterfly Stencil Ritual or Monarch Ribbon Ritual in your community
The Butterfly Stencil Ritual is a public act of remembrance, truth-telling, community care, relationship-building, and resistance. After ICE or another immigration enforcement agency takes people from a particular spot, participants return to mark what happened. The ritual holds grief and power together. We lament, but we do not gather in defeat. We make our neighbors visible, support impacted families, build new relationships, and strengthen our collective courage. From the HEAR THEIR CRIES A DELANEY HALL / EVICT GEO GROUP TOOLKIT, A Faith-Rooted Resource for Resisting Family Separation, Mass Captivity, and Normalized Cruelty
Organize to stop Detentions at Thursday’s Interfaith Call on Detentions: Promoting Community and Dignity, August 13, 7pm ET led by faith leaders working on the ground to stop mass deportations and the expansion of detention centers. UU Revs. Robin Tanner & Anya Sammler Michael will be speaking.
As immigration enforcement continues to escalate, terrorizing our communities, separating families and harming citizens and non-citizens alike, there is also increased public scrutiny of this country’s expansive immigrant detention center system, where inhumane conditions have only gotten worse. As immigrant deaths in detention centers reach record levels, many detained individuals remain isolated and cut off from legal, familial, and pastoral support. Across the country, however, communities, often led by faith leaders, are putting faith in action, building connections, responding to urgent needs, and speaking out for dignity, justice, and reform. The Interfaith Immigration Coalition (IIC) has created an Action Toolkit and invites you to this webinar.
Spanish interpretation will be provided. Attendees will leave with concrete tools to respond to a detention crisis in your own community, new connections with others organizing in your region, one advocacy action you can commit to right away. This event will not be recorded.
Resources:
Read:
As DHS captures more people in airports, Southwest Airlines is exercising their constitutional rights. For more on these rights, check out 4th Amendment Workplaces for UUs.
Learn:
Need a refresher on how your congregation can be prepared and supportive in ICE enforcement? This is a great, easy to read primer. An Immigration Enforcement Preparedness Guide for Faith Communities.
Watch/Listen:
Block & Build podcast episode: Hands Off Ohio! w/ Caitlin Johnson. Ohio organizer Caitlin Johnson joins to discuss the FBI raid on Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
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:
Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to honor the interconnectedness and inherent worthiness of all life. Across race, class, and zip code, every community needs and deserves clean water and air. For too long, polluting industries have treated our Earth as extraction and dump sites, targeting communities they assume can’t fight back.
In Ohio, toxic wastewater is bubbling up out of the ground, threatening the drinking water of 32,000 people. In Texas, Corpus Christi's water crisis may force the city to choose between residents and the oil and gas industry. In Louisiana, industry groups prevent Cancer Alley residents from knowing what’s in their air.
These environmental injustices cannot stand. Across the country, communities are fighting back. We are fighting for the world we all deserve: where clean water, fresh air, laughter, safety, and joy are abundant in every community.
Last week, more than a decade after a state of emergency was declared in Flint, Michigan, the city finally replaced its final lead water line. This massive victory for the safety and dignity of the Flint community is the result of a tremendous long-haul local organizing effort. In Southern Illinois, a grassroots movement is resisting corporate grab of water systems. In Pennsylvania, Communities Are Beating Back a Wave of Water System Privatization. In Michigan, Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 just suffered a major loss at the Michigan Supreme Court.
The tides are shifting. Amidst the degradation, communities continue to assert their dignity.
In this fight for life, let us hold on to each other.
Take Action:
UUs are fighting for clean air and water! Check out the Database of UU Climate Justice Actions by accessing the Mobilizing for Climate Justice Materials. Links to the database are in the Introduction and Sharing Progress.
In June, The U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved the construction of a 167-megawatt data center on 88.5 acres of desert habitat in southern Nevada. This will be the first data center allowed on public land. Sign this petition from The Center for Biological Diversity. Find and contact your representative to encourage them to co-sponsor or support this bill Representative Rashida Tlaib’s (MI-12) “No AI Data Centers on Federal Lands Act.”
Resources:
Read:
Learn:
Join:
Love is the Framework for Climate Justice online on August 19th, 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST. Unitarian Universalists are people who love. Climate Justice is how we practice loving our world. Elio Farley, the Side With Love Climate Justice Fellow, will kick off our fall Green Sanctuary community meetings by grounding us in Unitarian Universalist organizing frameworks. Together we will learn practical tools for approaching love as our strategy, ethic, and spiritual practice. In these times of fires and floods, we must courageously love. – 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.
Watch/Listen:
Together, we practice the world we long for. Together, we win.
