• November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance; find a local event or consider your own remembrance.

• November 28, Giving Tuesday; if you give on Giving Tuesday, please think of SCUUJA this year! And if you want to stretch out what you give, nothing helps us more than monthly giving. You can make one-time or monthly gifts at: https://www.scuuja.org/donate.

• December 5, All-State SCUUJA Zoom Meetup; watch for more information about this end-of-year Zoom meetup for SCUUJA, and plan to attend that evening at 7pm!

• January 9, 2024, South Carolina Legislature convenes. We have a challenging legislative session ahead, and as we form issue teams and build our alert list, look for messages about where our voices are most needed.

• May 9, 2024, SC Legislature sine die, if they actually end without a special session this year.

• October 5, 2024, Second SCUUJA UU Fall Festival!Get it on your personal and church calendar now!

• November 5, 2024, Election Day; Plan to vote up and down the ballot, and in the meantime, vote in primaries, engage in UU the Vote, and get out the local vote as well!

To register for the SCUUJA Fall Festival, use the QR Code on the front page flyer or use this link:
https://forms.gle/kenLqcniRrrFm7pM8

You should receive a registration confirmation and soon after you will receive an email with a form for a requested donation of $10 per adult (not high school or younger) to help cover costs including lunch for everyone. To help us plan for food and logistics, please register by September 30 if possible! You may want to explore carpooling with others in your congregation who are going.

If you would like to help by volunteering, please fill out this form as well:
https://forms.gle/Va6xBCjrYoNq98nF6

The program runs from 10 am to 4 pm on Saturday, October 7. Link to the full schedule here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f9h4ro_KAGgUJAdTsxvyFmUXMuGxVzSk3c391RjsUfY/edit?usp=sharing

We hope you can come to this first ever gathering of all ten UU congregations in South Carolina with a Banner Parade, introductions, learning, fun and fellowship. This is a family friendly event, and we are planning child care for young children, arts and crafts for all ages, drumming circles for children (ages 3 and up), intergenerational singing and storytelling. The justice sessions include Advocacy 101, Addressing Gun Violence, Anti-racism and Legislative Action, Climate Action, Women’s Reproductive Rights and LBGTQ+ Work, and UU the Vote looking toward 2024. Come to celebrate, learn, meet Unitarian Universalists from around the state, and work for more justice in South Carolina!

--Rev. Jean

When the newly all-male South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a severe six week statewide abortion ban on August 23, it reversed the Court's decision less than a year earlier that a nearly identical ban violated privacy rights in the state constitution.

After this new restriction, SCUUJA is exploring ways our congregations can support abortion access and reproductive justice in the state, working with partners and building on existing resources. This will be a topic in one of our justice workshops at the October 7 Fall Festival. In the meantime, here are some resources for you to explore:

From the Women's Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN): https://www.scwren.org/abortion-access-resources/

From Side With Love, wider UU resources for congregations about reproductive justice and abortion access: https://sidewithlove.org/reproductive-justice

Information about a recent Planned Parenthood challenge of the law, which refers to a "heartbeat" even though the embryo at six week is not yet a fetus and the heart has not yet developed at that point: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/planned-parenthood-sues-to-expand-south-carolina-abortion-access-under-strict-new-ban

Whatever happens in our state, SCUUJA will continue to work for justice, including access to abortion care.

On September 8, the Rev. Jean Heriot spoke with Mrs. Brenda Murphy, the President of the NAACP South Carolina State Conference and member of SCUUJA’s Board, about what is happening across the state.

Of particular concern is book banning. The NAACP SC has been monitoring local school districts across the state as challenges to books in schools and libraries have increased. The conservative organization, Moms for Liberty, has been active across the state working to ban books that mention race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and LGBTQ+ perspectives. Local NAACP units are attending local school board meetings to express their views and to encourage parental input regarding what is appropriate for teaching/learning in schools. Listings of potential books to be banned are usually not made available for parental review and input prior to presentation to the School Board. The NAACP advocates for parental input when decisions are being made and for the process to be inclusive. They partner with other advocacy organizations to stop book banning as the current process exists.

The SC NAACP and local units are engaged in redistricting for local school districts. This has been an ongoing process and need due to challenges communities are faced with at the local level, especially the merger of school districts. Other challenges being addressed by the NAACP SC include the use of public funds (vouchers) for private school funding, a law recently signed into effect by the governor.

At the national level, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Alexander v. State Conference of the NAACP. Though a lower court ruled that the South Carolina’s redrawn 1 st Congressional District map was racially discriminatory, the SC state is challenging the decision. President Murphy is hopeful that the SCOTUS will agree with the State Supreme Court decision that lines are to be redrawn to reflect the equitable and fair representation of the people.

Finally, the NAACP South Carolina State Conference Convention will be held October 12 th through the 15th in Sumter, SC. Congressman James Clyburn will be in attendance and other Statewide Advocacy Groups. The theme for this year is “Preserving Our Heritage and Public Education”.

Partner Column--Sue Berkowitz, Executive Director of Appleseed Legal Justice Center & SCUUJA Board Member

Thousands of South Carolinians, many of whom are essential workers who have provided critical services during the pandemic, have gone without healthcare for far too long. South Carolina is one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid under the federal law that guarantees the matching funds. Both red and blue states have taken advantage of the federal law.

Due to the lack of expansion in South Carolina, there is a large healthcare gap in the state. Some South Carolinians are making too much income to be eligible for Medicaid and also not enough to afford care from the health insurance marketplace, leaving them with no healthcare options in between. This is called the Coverage Gap.

If South Carolina decided to expand Medicaid today, over 345,000 individuals would be able to enroll in Medicaid and have a real option for healthcare. Families would be healthier, small businesses employing these low-wage individuals would have more productive workers, and the state and counties would save significant dollars from being relieved of the financial expense for providing healthcare to the incarcerated.

Get Involved: Join as a Member of CoverSC

Organizations who join as a member support Medicaid expansion and will take an active role in using coalition messaging with the organization’s constituents and informing the Coalition of its communications and events relevant to Medicaid expansion.

Join as a Supporter

Organizations or individuals who join as a supporter are in favor of Medicaid expansion and are willing to have their name listed as such, and will be informed of the Coalition’s activities.

See the CoverSC website at: www.coversc.org 

After a determined effort led by women in the South Carolina House and Senate and allies and activists for reproductive freedom and justice, defeating the House abortion ban and preventing the Senate ban from passing during the regular session, the six-week Senate ban (S474) passed this week in special session and was signed by Governor McMaster on May 24. However, a Circuit Court judge has now granted an injunction against the new law while it is challenged in court, so for now abortion remains legal in South Carolina up to 22 weeks.

A similarly extreme six-week ban was previously found to be an unconstitutional violation of privacy rights by the state Supreme Court, but the law's proponents are counting on the current all-male Supreme Court to ignore that precedent and uphold the ban. Regardless of what the Court ultimately decides, SCUUJA and our partners will continue to uphold reproductive freedom, gender justice, and rights for all people in South Carolina. We thank everyone who has called, emailed, and showed up for this and other justice issues. Our work at the State House will continue, but not everything is about the legislature. We will also continue working with our UU congregations on the spiritual, educational, and direct service sides of justice, including abortion access. Our efforts will be needed no matter what happens next, so thank you for remaining connected to SCUUJA and our partners through it all.

In January of 2022, we launched the South Carolina Unitarian Universalist Justice Alliance (SCUUJA) with the support of the UU Funding Program and a few committed UUs. Who could have foretold that in just a year we would have so much support and engagement for the work of justice in South Carolina! Our congregations and our partners responded with optimism, faith, and commitment to bring changes in our state.

Early on we saw the introduction of anti-trans bills and anti-Critical Race Theory bills (anti-CRT) in our state legislature. The Rev. Lisa Bovee-Kemper, then development minister at the Greenville UU Fellowship, drafted a letter in opposition to the anti-CRT bills, SCUUJA shared it widely across the congregations, and nearly 200 individual UU’s signed it. We sent it on, and along with many other partners, those anti-CRT bills were defeated. The Rev. Pippin Whitaker, then director of SCUUJA, organized with the SC United for Justice and Equality and with the Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN) to speak out and lobby against anti-trans bills and all but one of these were defeated.

Meantime, Rev. Pippin and Rev. Jean Heriot (director of organizing and training) went across the state and spoke to all our congregations and heard what each congregation was doing with respect to justice work. We held state-wide meetups on Zoom so that folks could hear and learn from each other. We also did a trans training with Alex Kapitan, a trans UU leader.  Rev. Jean took up the coordination piece for the UU the Vote initiative and worked closely with Ms. Brenda Murphy, SC NAACP president, to help organize get out the vote work in our congregations. Two congregations, Spartanburg and Aiken, took on the UU challenge to become “Good Trouble” congregations magnifying the voices of UUs. All congregations did voter rights work: our partner organization Vote Forward reported UUs across the country sent out 5.7 million letters! SC was a great part of this effort!

Then over the summer, Rev. Pippin accepted a call to the Athens congregation, Rev. Jean did interim work as director, and the board hired Rev. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley as the executive director starting September 1. Over the summer, the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court brought the SC State Legislature into action as they tried to pass restrictive anti-abortion bills. This effort had us heading back to the State House, as members of our congregations and Rev. Jean came to Columbia to testify against these bills, and congregations sent letters and made calls to state representatives. Currently, things are in flux as the most restrictive anti-abortion bills did not pass and the bill banning abortion after six weeks is still being litigated in the courts. We know new anti-abortion bills will be forthcoming this January. We must be even more vigilant.

We were also working on building our board, our mission statement, bylaws, and financial base. Thanks to your generous contributions, we met a matching grant of $5,000 from Fathify. By September, we reached our full board complement of seven: with UU justice leaders and partner organizations serving the most vulnerable in our state. We have on our board an organizer from WREN, Kenya Cummings, the director of SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center, Sue Berkowitz, Esq., and the president of the SC NAACP, Brenda Murphy. Board members from our UU congregations include Rick Hahnenberg (Spartanburg), Board President; Pat Chaney (Greenville); Richard Hayes (Charleston); and Connie Quirk (Columbia). We held a board retreat in September to plan for the coming year, followed by a meetup with congregational members in December to elicit their priorities. We have also contacted our partners to determine what they are placing on their list of actions in the coming year. All these conversations are helping inform SCUUJA about next steps (see above by Rev. Nathan). We wrote another grant to the UU Funding Program and received it.

We kept you posted about all these actions and plans using emails, our newsletter, posts to Facebook and calls to action. We are so thankful for the many ways you work with us and with those centering the voices and authority of people experiencing injustice across the state. Together we work toward a more just South Carolina. Blessings indeed!

Rev. Dr. Jean Heriot

SCUUJA is a proud co-sponsor of "You Can Count On This" DRUUMM Public Worship

May 4th, 2022

8:30 PM Eastern/ 5:30 PM Pacific

RSVP https://tinyurl.com/DRUUMMPublicWorship

Rev. Tyler Coles, Guest Preacher

Dr. Zanaida Robles, Musical Artist

Faith can be both a guiding light and sustaining force throughout the course of one’s life. Yet in a world that is all too cruel and harsh, faith can be twisted, becoming instead a tool that fosters both isolation and a sense of underwhelm. What do we do when this happens for us as Unitarian Universalists? Come, let us gather in the fortifying spirit of love made known in community as we re-member ourselves, for ourselves, in the presence of all that we choose to name as Holy.