An Engaged Life

As a new staff member attending GA with UUSC for the first time, I have had the privilege of interviewing our workshop presenters each day. After Frances Moore Lappé’s presentation, I enjoyed the opportunity to sit down with her to discuss social justice issues and hear her advice for those who want to get involved in effecting change.

Lappe’s parents taught her early that an engaged life was the good life and the issues of the day that faced the world were also the issues discussed at the family dinner table. She remarked, though, that the Vietnam War was a "wake-up call" for her and social justice has been her life's work ever since.

When I asked what advice or words of encouragement she had for UUSC's hard-working activists, she replied that “what the world needs now precisely is to raise our voices.” By speaking up, she said, we face our fear of rejection and we risk feelings of humiliation, but these emotions that rise up inside are signals to us that we are in new territory, and are doing the right and just thing.

GA attendees lined up to speak with Lappe as she signed copies of Democracy’s Edge at UUSC’s booth. She will be taking pre-orders for her next book, Getting a Grip, throughout summer by contacting info@smallplanetinstitute.org before its public release on October 5.