Chicago Chalice Connection - UU Holiday Giving Guide, 2016

Transcript

1. Chicago Chalice Connection, 2016
2. Season’s Greetings! Once again, the young adults of Chicago Chalice Connection invite our UU community to join us in the giving season by supporting community organizing that puts our principles into action. The 2016 UU Holiday Giving Guide prioritizes organizations that are local/Chicago-based, grassroots-led, and with whom we have relationships. We chose groups organizing on a variety of fronts that work from an intersectional analysis, and whose communities challenge supremacist systems and work towards collective liberation. This year, as you invest in family, fellowship and gift-giving, please also consider investing in organizations doing the sacred work of building our beloved community.
3. Founded in 2003, A Long Walk Home, Inc. (ALWH) is a Chicago-based national non-profit that uses art to educate, inspire, and mobilize young people to end violence against girls and women. http://www.alongwalkhome.org/
4. Black Lives Matter Chicago is an intersectional vehicle that values Black people and our right to self-determination. We fight for justice with families most impacted, while working to create just and equitable systems. https://www.blacklivesmatterchicago.com
5. Founded in 1965 by community and religious activists, KOCO has been an instrument of grassroots democracy in Chicago’s north Kenwood and Oakland communities for nearly 50 years. Historically, KOCO consistently led campaigns that increased the resources available to youth families and area residents. www.kocoonline.org
6. Liberation Library provides books to youth in prison to encourage imagination, self-determination and connection to the outside worlds of their choosing. We believe access to books is a right, not a privilege. We believe books and relationships empower young people to change the criminal justice system. http://www.liberationlib.com/
7. Collective of Muslim women, femmes, & non-binary people of color organizing & advocating for our communities locally and internationally. Twitter: @MuslimsOrganize
8. The Dakota Access Pipeline protests, also known by the hashtag #NODAPL, are grassroots movements that began in early 2016 in response to the approved construction of Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States. https://www.nodaplarchive.com/
9. Organized Communities Against Deportations is an undocumented-led group organizing against deportations, detention, criminalization, and incarceration, of Black, brown, and immigrant communities in Chicago. They utilize grassroots organizing, legal and policy work, direct action and civil disobedience, and cross-movement building. http://organizedcommunities.org
10. More About This Guide Chicago is blessed with many people working for justice in a variety of ways. This guide is not a comprehensive list of organizations deserving of our support. It is however a compilation of organizations that some of us UU young adults have been supporting over the past year as we strive to live our faith as fully as we can. In creating this guide, we developed a set of principles to determine what Chicago-based work was important for us to lift up in this moment. We prioritized organizations that: • do multi-generational work • engage in local justice work that has a racial justice lens • are led by people most impacted, frontline communities • create a balance of work to tear down oppressive structures and build up new, liberatory spaces and practices • have a CCC member connected to their work
11. About Chicago Chalice Connection Chicago Chalice Connection is a ministry of Unitarian Universalist young adults in the Chicagoland area joining in supportive community to cultivate spiritual/religious growth and engage in local struggles for justice. Chicago Chalice Connection is made up of educators, retail workers, baristas, organizers, parents, software programmers, nannies, students, musicians, comedians, ministers. Some of us are unemployed, and many of us underemployed. Some of us are life-long UUs; others came to UUism just in the past year; and a couple of us don’t call ourselves Unitarian Universalist, but love the openness of Chalice Connection and Unitarian Universalism. Our spiritual paths are as much of a spectrum as the neighborhoods we live in across our great city. We believe that our connection to ourselves, each other, and our neighbors is our greatest strength as we try to build the world we dream of.