8.4.26 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:This past weekend, Unitarian Universalists from across the country joined thousands of people of faith, organizers, artists, and community leaders in Chicago for The Fierce Urgency of Now: National March into Marquette Park. Sixty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement marched into Marquette Park to confront segregation and racial violence, and we returned to continue that unfinished work. A diverse coalition came together to march for voting rights, immigrant justice, economic dignity, and a multiracial democracy where everyone belongs. Together with our partners at the Unitarian Universalist Advocacy Network of Illinois (UUANI), Side With Love proudly co-sponsored this historic public witness.
As we celebrate this powerful demonstration of solidarity, the work to protect democracy continues. This week, voters head to the polls in Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington for key primary elections that will shape races up and down the ballot this November. Our faith calls us to do more than respond during election season. Democracy is a sacred practice that requires us to organize, build relationships, and strengthen our communities for the long haul. Every conversation, every act of solidarity, and every voter we reach helps build the democratic future we seek together.
Join one of the 12 upcoming UU the Vote Solidarity Summits happening across the country! At these Summits communities across faiths will come together to build concrete skills to protect our neighbors, talk to voters, andco-create strategies for care as we confront authoritarian threats.
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.
Spotlight your congregation! Share your election work with UU the Vote using the UU the Voting Report Form.
Bodily Autonomy
Core Principle: Every body is sacred. We affirm that trans people are divine, abortion is a blessing, and no one is disposable. Attacks on identity are designed to divide us—solidarity is our moral and strategic mandate.
The Update: Congress is recognizing what birth justice organizers have been saying for years: communities need more access to trusted, community-based care. The Mamas First Act would expand Medicaid coverage for care provided by doulas, midwives, and tribal midwives, investing in the people who support families before, during, and after birth. At the same time, the future of one pathway into midwifery is facing uncertainty. MEAC’s withdrawal from U.S. Department of Education recognition has raised questions about midwifery education pathways and the future of the CPM credential. NARM and NACPM have committed to working with the midwifery community to protect the accessibility and integrity of the profession.
The fight for birth justice is a fight for both access and sustainability: ensuring families can receive the care they need and that birth workers have the pathways and resources to provide it.
Take Action:
Urge Congress to support investments in community-based maternity care, including Medicaid coverage for doulas, midwives, and tribal midwives.
Support NACPM’s advocacy and organizing work to strengthen community midwifery.
Resources:
Read: Read and share the joint statement from NARM and NACPM and advocate for solutions that protect accessible pathways into midwifery education and certification.
Join: Attend the 2026 Birth Equity Summit hosted by Funders for Birth Justice and Equity to connect with birth workers, community leaders, and advocates building a more just maternity care system.
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:Interdependence calls us to be in accountable relationships with our human and beyond-human kin. Our government, by consistently granting public land leases to extractive industries, betrays that responsibility. As of January 2025, more than 81% of all BLM-administered lands in the Western United States remain open to oil and gas leasing.
The situation is clear: we can have a truly livable and thriving future for all life on this Earth or our government can prioritize corporate profit.
According to the Center for American Progress, “In his second term, President Trump has taken action to remove protections from more than 86 million acres of public lands, threatening beloved landscapes and wildlife across the country.” Today, over 594 million acres of public land are at risk – threatened by milling, drilling, and development. It is difficult to comprehend that amount of land. It is devastating to imagine the trillions of life forms that make home among these lands: in the soil, marshes, canopies, root systems, forests, rivers, rocks, and shores. These lives must not be sacrificed at the altar of profit.
In July, Trump cut 91% of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, including 1.69 million acres of land from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and 1.24 million acres from Bears Ears National Monuments. This action also dissolved the Bears Ears Commission, “one of the nation’s most extraordinary models of collaborative management of public lands between Tribal Nations and federal agencies.” The Hopi Tribe, Diné (Navajo) Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Zuni Tribe deserve so much better than this blatant disregard for their sacred lands, stewardship, and sovereignty.
In the words of Davina Smith-Idjesa (Diné), co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and Diné (Navajo) representative on the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, “For Diné people, Bears Ears, or Shash Jaa’, to me is not simply public land. This is a part of our ancestral homeland and a living cultural landscape. Our histories are here. Our medicines are here. Our prayers, ceremonies and stories are connected to these places.”
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are just two of over 100 critical or developing public land threats. This extractivism and continued disenfranchisement of Indigenous communities is part of the ongoing colonial legacy of the United States public lands.
It does not need to be like this. Public lands do not need to be a resource for corporate profit or a weapon of colonial violence. Public land, and the many beings that make home there, deserve reciprocal relationships of safety, stewardship, and care. As we fight for dignified approaches to public land, Unitarian Universalists must remain in solidarity with Indigenous Water Protectors, and our communities must act to support Indigenous Sovereignty and Land Back.
If you want to learn more about the ways UUs are organizing to protect public lands, sign up for the October 21 Green Sanctuary Community Meeting, Defending Public Lands | Standing Rock 10th Anniversary to learn more about the ways UUs are organizing to protect our home.
Take Action:
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.”
This Threatened Public Lands map by More Than Just Parks shows the over 594 million acres of public land at risk and the more direct actions to take.
The 2026 UUA Action of Immediate Witness "Defend Against the Assault on Environmental Protections: Public Lands Rules and the Endangerment Finding" calls on UUs to act to oppose these policies, with 6 suggestions for how.
Resources:
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.
Read: “The Case for Returning U.S. Public Lands to Indigenous People,” and “How Trump and Congress Are Attacking the Endangered Species Act - and What You Can Do”.
Learn: The Public Lands Curriculum is an educational resource that aims to tell a more authentic and complete story of public lands.
Watch/Listen: More Than Just Parks has 63 beautiful short films featuring our public lands. Listen to this powerful All My Relations Podcast series on the Kanaka Maoli people’s movement to protect Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii.
Together, we practice the world we long for. Together, we win.
