Written by Lisa Hartman, member of First UU Church of San Diego and UUSC's volunteer regional coordinator for Pacific Southwest

I recently returned from New Orleans, La., where I participated in a service project to rebuild housing and office space for the Welfare Rights Organization (WRO), one of UUSC's partners in the Gulf Coast. Director Viola Washington and her small staff work to link disrupted and displaced survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita with services and resources to help them return home and/or improve their living situations. WRO’s membership seeks to monitor policy and advocate policy changes on issues that affect members’ lives relating to welfare.

I, along with five other volunteers, hung drywall, repaired exterior holes with siding to protect the structure from further weather damage, did carpentry, painted – anything required to reopen the office and transitional housing space so that Viola could return to her office. Her husband James, a radiology tech, took time away from his job at the VA Hospital to instruct us. He, through necessity because of Katrina, had become a self-taught carpenter.

Working together as a team in the heat and humidity and sharing peanut butter sandwiches on the porch were a spiritual practice for me. “Chop wood, carry water,” as the Zen Buddhists say. There is a connectedness amongst peoples of all backgrounds, and I felt knitted into that connectedness.

This five-day project was supported by the UUA-UUSC Gulf Coast Volunteer Program. For five nights, 11 volunteers were housed on the second floor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. We cooked together, slept in dorms together, traveled together, made decisions together, worked together, played cards together, and met in the evenings to discuss our experiences together. My life has been enriched by being with those other people, many of whom I had never met before. I look forward to other opportunities to contribute what I have to offer and share with others in service.

Two years after Katrina, I am alarmed and saddened to see that city, state, and federal governments have neglected rebuilding efforts in neighborhoods that were severely damaged by the storms. One late afternoon, while walking through the city, I approached a mother and her son – they were sitting on a dirty sidewalk, asking for money. After giving her what little I was carrying in my pocket, I had to remind myself that this is America, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. She and her son are citizens. I am a citizen. I have a son. I could be her – dependent on the generosity of others to feed my boy.

Our government systems have failed. Nearly 125,000 New Orleanean families remain without permanent housing – some living in toxic trailers, some sleeping under bridges, some camping on the streets and in gutted-out buildings. Other residents simply cannot be located. Half of the schools have not reopened, as they succumb to a rapid state of decline, are eaten by mold, and blanketed by tenacious ivies. The financial district is a ghost town. New Orleans, home to generations of families, has been all but forgotten by the government. This is a travesty.

The Senate is now considering S.B. 1668, The Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, co-sponsored by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Mary Landriue (D-LA). This bill helps low-income families by providing permanent affordable housing. It will also help people get back into public housing. We can encourage our senators to support this bill. It is time that we demand that our national government step to the plate.

Written by Sarah Karstaedt, UUSC volunteer National Co-chair for Eastern Territory

My recent visit to New Orleans, as part of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's volunteer network leadership conference, has opened my eyes to the devastation that still persists there.

There is an urgent need for affordable housing for the city’s residents. The people who have returned to their damaged homes struggle against incredible odds. While their dedication and persistence are an inspiration to witness, they face rental costs that amount to as much as 86 percent of their salaries (for hotel workers and others in similar income brackets) to 37-49 percent of salaries for people in other professions. These hardworking residents deserve an affordable home for themselves and their families.

The good news is there is a way to help with this problem. My own senator, Chris Dodd (D-CT), is co-sponsoring the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act of 2007, which offers a way to address the housing problems in the Gulf Coast region.

This bill supports low-income families, by moving them out of FEMA assistance and into permanent, affordable homes, through the use of project-based housing vouchers. It provides help for families living in public housing by replacing housing units that were occupied before the storm and offering mobility counseling to assist residents in returning home. The bill also authorizes 5,500 permanent, supportive housing units for elderly, disabled, and homeless residents. It includes funding for fair housing and protects taxpayers and Gulf Coast residents through increased oversight and monitoring of federal recovery funds.

If you’ve been wondering how you can assist the beleaguered residents of the Gulf Coast region, contacting your senators and voicing your support for the Gulf Coast Recovery Act of 2007, is a great place to start.

Written by Nick Bloom, a participant in the fourth annual Freedom Summer: A Civil Rights Journey.

It was about a year ago that I first learned about Freedom Summer: A Civil Rights Journey, a JustWorks camp of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. I read the description of the program after my parents first mentioned it to me, and I was intrigued. As a participant, I would have the opportunity to go visit all the sights of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and work in one of the local communities that we would be visiting.

This sounded great to me, as I had never had a chance to really visit the South in any capacity other than Florida, and I thought it would be good to familiarize myself with this part of my country, and get to see the historic and exciting landmarks of the civil rights movement. I jumped on the opportunity. I had absolutely no idea of what I was getting into.

My dad, my friend Ari Brouwer, and I embarked for Atlanta the Friday before the Civil Rights Journey began, and arrived Saturday. I was ready to see the sights that, for some unbelievably naïve reason, I thought I had a good understanding of. After spending the next day at Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Center, the concept of understanding was blown thoroughly out of my mind.

I don’t believe that I had ever felt as humble as I did walking in the shadows of these civil rights giants, and learning of the thousands of individuals who played such a pivotal role in the movement, especially the children. Also, I met Dr. King's sister, which was almost surreal.

Throughout the trip, I continued to read and hear about more and more people who had contributed to the movement, including Nelson Malden, the barber of Dr. King. His stories of the Montgomery bus boycott and his firsthand experiences with Dr. King were amazing to hear. In fact, from the mayor of Selma, James Perkins, to Sam Walker at the Voting Rights Museum in Selma, to Greg Atchinson of Montgomery, every story opened a wealth of new knowledge to me that my school curriculum seemed to left out.

Although the whole trip was amazing, the one experience that stood out to me the most were our nightly meetings with Kimberly Richards of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. When I first heard about these meetings, I figured they were sort of something we would endure at night in order to get to the next day of sight seeing. This may have been the worst judgment I made all trip. Miss Richards showed us all ideas of race and racism in this country that I had never touched. She showed us the system of racism in this country, one that I had really thought was over.

No one had ever explained to me before that our nation was founded on the ideology of race in order to sustain the power of Europeans. She explained the racial tensions we all feel, and it was truly enlightening. For me, who had always thought that of course I was not a racist, racism just comes from ignorant people and the KKK, I realized how wrong I really was.

If you get the opportunity to go on this journey, do it. You will come back with tools to attempt to achieve racial equity in your own communities, and knowledge you may have not known was out there. It truly was a "Civil Rights Journey."

Written by John Bloom, a participant in the fourth annual Freedom Summer: A Civil Rights Journey.

This was such a transformative week, seeing civil rights history come alive. To me, the day that stands out the most was our day in Selma, although it was typical of encounters that we had throughout the week. There, Sam Walker of the National Voting Rights Museum gave us a run-down of the events that led to the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights in Alabama, an event that was one of the greatest triumphs of the civil rights movement, and which helped to spark movements throughout the nation.

The stories we heard were local ones: middle school kids running out of school early to join in protests in front of the Dallas County Courthouse; driving by the auto dealership of the man who was the primary suspect in the killing of Rev. James Reeb after Bloody Sunday (the dealership is still owned by the suspect and in business today); local women who worked tirelessly to pay poll taxes and train African Americans how to pass the voting literacy tests; personal memories of Bloody Sunday when state police beat nonviolent protesters after they crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge; and of setting up camps along the route for the march to Montgomery.

Throughout the week we met ordinary people, like Nelson Malden of Montgomery, who cut Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s hair, and who not only recalled conversations with him, but shared his memories of the relationship of Dr. King to the Montgomery community. We watched the Spike Lee documentary, "Four Little Girls," in the presence of Chris McNair, father of Denise McNair who was killed at the age of 11 when a white supremacist ignited a bomb on September 15, 1963 in the 16th Street Baptist Church.

We experienced all of this with a group of honest, sincere, good humored people -- some Black; some white; some late into their middle age years; some in their early teens. It was an honor to spend a week with each and every one of them. What I'll take away the most is that the civil rights movement was certainly one of charismatic and brave leaders, but also of ordinary people who can inspire all of us today to take a stand against the injustices that have resurfaced with such force.

A couple of thoughts:

• At least three people who we spoke with said that they had never seen the United States more polarized either internally -- or around the world -- than ever before. These were people who had seen "Bull" Connor drive around Birmingham inside of a white tank terrorizing the African American population.
• On the last day, we all participated in service projects in Birmingham. Mine was at a social service organization serving adults obtaining a GED. We were in charge of cleaning out and reorgaizing a storage shed behind the center. The center looked to be a place that did amazing work with very few resources -- much like other similar organizations I have seen in Pennsylvania. All around the center were photocopied pictures and posters of images that we had seen all week: protesters being fire-hosed, photos of the girls killed at 16th Street Baptist Church, etc. It was a reminder of how important and alive the moment in history that we learned about this week is to the people in communities all over the South, and especially in Alabama.

Written by Nancy Nienhuis, a participant in the fourth annual Civil Rights Journey.

Imagine walking into your polling station and before someone hands you the ballot, they tell you you have to answer a couple of questions. "Okay," you say. And then they ask you, "How many bubbles in a bar of soap?" and "How many feathers on a chicken?" You can't answer, so they tell you that you can't vote.

Those questions were actually on the test they used to give blacks in the south in order to remove them from the voting lists. Whites didn't have to pass the tests. This is just one of the many things I learned this week during the Civil Rights Journey.

These days have been packed with information -- did you know that during the Montgomery Bus Boycott many bus drivers were laid off and became police officers?!? We've walked where Dr. King walked, we've talked to people who knew him. We've even heard from Mr. Nelson, the man who used to cut his hair.

On this trip, history not only comes alive, it talks to you. I'll never think about civil rights in the same way. Some things we've encountered made us shake our heads with wonder at how inhumanely people can treat each other -- Birmingham police turning dogs on children, for example. And other things give us hope. The heroes of the movement aren't the ones who made the changes we know now. The changes were made by everyday people, by people like me and people like you who, when the time came, chose to do something instead of walk away.

More than anything else, this trip and the history I've been introduced to in such a personal way remind me that I keep the fight alive and keep us all moving forward when I choose in every small moment of a regular day to do the right thing. No matter how tired, I must do this. If 500 people can March from Selma to Montgomery under threat of death, I can do this.

Joseph Santos-Lyons, the UUA director of campus ministry and field organizing, recently took part in a UUSC fact-finding trip to Ecuador.

Who speaks for you when you're down? Who helps you see the depth and the connection of problems where you live? Who do you trust to tell you the truth?

I've always been an organizer who works primarily from communities of which I am a part: age groups from youth to now mid 30-somethings, identity groups such as mixed-race children and families, and affinity groups like my baseball card collecting friends. The passion and the dedication that comes from organizing in one's own context has been a lifeblood for me.

I've spent two full days now with leaders from Mi Cometa, the Guayaquil, Ecuador community organization that organizes for the welfare of an impoverished neighborhood. I'm learning a lot about their mission and programs, and meeting some of their staff. Many of them started with Mi Cometa over 15 years ago as children in their various educational and empowerment programs. Their current general secretary was one of these young people, and that to me is truly amazing.

The ownership, the power of voice and of right relationship, and the accountability is remarkably different with leaders who come from the community. These have been principles I've been trying to live more fully in my life, often with a lot of difficulty. Still, there are ways for people like me, I believe, and sometimes it just starts with a commitment to place.

Joseph Santos-Lyons, the UUA Director of Campus Ministry and Field Organizing, recently took part in a UUSC fact-finding trip to Ecuador.

UUSC is supporting a legal and organizing project around the human right to water. One of the manifestations of the violation of this human right is the contamination of the public water system in poor and people of color communities. Guayaquil, Ecuador, had one such incident that affected eight public schools.

More than 150 children were diagnosed with Hepatitis A over the period of several months from a number of schools. The outbreak was caught early on by school doctors, and information was shared with the authorities and the water company (Bechtel), yet no action was taken and the schools were blamed for poor sanitary conditions.

Mi Cometa, a community group and UUSC program partner, and their public watch partner the Public Observatory Network, kept organizing from the first outbreak in 2005 into today. The debate has been very public, mentioned in the papers, radio, and television. The effects of the outbreak are still being dealt with: children are reporting chronic physical and mental health effects. This trauma, and the lack of a meaningful immediate government response, is fueling more social action around the human right to water.

We visited one of the schools with the largest outbreak, and met both children and their parents. Mi Cometa invited the children to draw pictures of their experience with Hep A, and parents talked about what political action they could take. The energy was really high!