We are so excited to bring you the last episode from Season 2 of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership. In December, we had an opportunity to have conversations with a number of members Auburn's Resilient Leaders Across a Fractured Country, amplifying the lessons of spiritually-resilient leaders in the South, Midwest, and Southwest.

In today's conversation Caitlin speaks Paulina Helm-Hernández. Paulina Helm-Hernández is a queer femme cha-cha girl, artist, trainer, political organizer, strategist; troublemaker-at-large from Veracrúz, Mexico. She grew up in rural North Carolina, and is currently growing roots in Atlanta, GA. She is recent past Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), having joined the staff after coordinating the Southern regional youth activism program at the Highlander Research & Education Center for over 4 years. Paulina has a background in farm worker and immigrant/refugee rights organizing, cultural work, youth organizing, anti-violence work, and liberation work that centers people most affected by violence, poverty, war and racism. Paulina is also a founding member of the national First Nations / Two Spirit Collective, a queer & trans indigenous movement-building cadre, and has served on the boards of YouthAction, Student Action with Farmworkers and The Third Wave Foundation. Paulina currently sits on the Vision and Strategies Council of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, and is always exploring ways to deepen political unity with people willing to fight and organize for collective liberation.

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Grateful to bring you our next installment in our bi-weekly messages with a prayer, an ancestor and a song speaking to our spirits. We hope these resources may offer what we need in order to be courageously, steadily, humbly, on the side of love. One ancestor to lean on, one prayer for our messy lives, and one song to strengthen and soothe. Today we dive into sacrifice - what we are able to offer, what we are willing to do, and who we will become. Check out a bonus recommendation below from Southern Foodways podcast, Gravy.

“But the real sacrifice was the huge danger, the risk that they undertook in putting us up…those are all sung heroes. Heroes every one of them."  - Elizabeth Holtzman in conversation with Rosalind Bentley. 

What we have to give and what sacrifice means for us can look so many different ways. Check out this podcast about Hostesses of the Movement, Black women who took leadership and risks to resource and support organizing throughout the Civil Rights Movement.

ANCESTOR

Lydia Maria Child was a white Unitarian author, editor and activist committed to abolition, women’s rights and Indigenous sovereignty. She was an outspoken critic of Unitarianism in her day, including deep concern with Unitarian leaders’ unwillingness to explicitly and fully embrace abolitionism and their “cold intellectual respectability”. In her writings, she called upon readers to address the contradiction of the institution of slavery within Christianity, the extraordinary moral and physical degradation it perpetuated, sexual violence and the responsibility of the North in maintaining the system. There is much to learn from Child’s work today. You can read more about her here.

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We are so excited to bring you the next set of interviews of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership. In December, we had an opportunity to have conversations with a number of members Auburn's Resilient Leaders Across a Fractured Country, amplifying the lessons of spiritually-resilient leaders in the South, Midwest, and Southwest.

In today's conversation Caitlin speaks with Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele, the current co-director of the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee. Allyn was raised in Texas, Germany and North Carolina and is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who has served congregations in Juneau, Alaska, Nashville, and Springfield, TN. Allyn’s focus and interests lie at the intersection of radical pastoral care, institutional transformation, dismantling toxic white masculinities, and liberation-driven ministry and movement building, especially in rural and small town communities. He comes to Highlander from the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, where he has served as a member of the education team.  In the conversation, they talk about the necessity of white folks in supporting, resourcing and flanking Black women leaders, the particularities and importance of rural and small town organizing, any possibilities of the growth and transformation of faith institutions and more.

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Changing circumstances require nimble solutions. In a recent Ancient Song Doula Services training that Nora attended, the trainers remarked that for those anticipating the arrival of a baby making goals for birth is recommended over making plans for birth. Because birth, like many major life events, can be messy, chaotic, unpredictable and change at any time. Organizing for long-term change and transformation isn’t any different. We have to keep our eye on the prize while being gentle, flexible and rigorous in our approach. Today we are returning to you with our bi-weekly messages honoring an ancestor to lean on, sharing a prayer for our messy lives and a song to strengthen and soothe. We hope you find them of use to you and yours.

ANCESTOR

Egbert Ethelred Brown was a pastor who found his political assessment inextricably linked with his faith expression. Originally an Episcopalian, then Methodist lay preacher, Rev. Brown would go on to become a Unitarian minister. Though enrolled at Meadville Theological school in 1907, Rev. Brown was targeted and deported to his home country of Jamaica. Years later, Rev. Brown returned to the United States to complete his studies and go on to become the first Black man to be ordained a Unitarian minister. Rev. Brown was involved in the Jamaican trade union movement, racial justice in the United States and organizing for independence and due to a lack of ongoing financial support, his family relocate to the U.S. in 1920. He would go on to found the Harlem Community Church despite inconsistent support from both the British and Foreign Unitarian Association and the American Unitarian Association that throughout his jobs would require him to take on additional jobs.

Like Ethelred may we be persistent in our vision and creative in our implementation.

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How we show up, who we are, what we are bringing and who we are willing to become in our justice work matters. We are excited to invite you to the next webinar from Love Resists on Building Partnerships at the Grassroots next Tuesday, February 20, 2018 at 8:00pm ET/5:00pm PT. 

REGISTER NOW HERE

The conversation will cover questions including "How can an individual congregation—and the interfaith community, more broadly—approach new relationships with grassroots community organizations? How do we build trust, accountability, and a long-term commitment? What role is ours to play within a movement much larger than ourselves?"

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