An important part of UUSC's message at General Assembly 2006 connected the founding of the Unitarian Service Committee in 1940 with the ongoing work of UUSC in 2006.

At a ceremony on June 13, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial recognized UUSC founders Waitstill and Martha Sharp as non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during World War II. They were the second and third people from the United States to receive this Righteous Among the Nations designation.

Two events at GA 2006 highlighted this recognition and connected it to UUSC's work today to end the genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

On Thursday afternoon, UUSC President Charlie Clements, Artemis Joukowsky, grandson of the Sharps, UUSC Program Director Atema Eclai, and UUSC Board Chair the Rev. William F. Schulz made these connections for an overflowing workshop crowd.

Clements opened by providing the background to the story and reporting on the recent events in Jerusalem. Joukowsky followed with an emotional personal testimony to the importance of his grandparents' work and UUSC's observance of it. Eclai brought the story into the presentation with a powerful description of what she saw in Sudan, punctuated by a song from Sudan rendered in her striking voice. And Schulz preached (yes, a Thursday afternoon sermon) to the universal importance of the Sharps' story and the extent to which it highlights the importance of organizations as a means of allowing large numbers of people to support and participate in the heroic work of individuals. The Sharps did, indeed, leave behind an organization that continues their work today.

Despite the fact that the workshop occupied the perilous after-lunch schedule slot, few heads nodded involuntarily during just over one hour of presentation and discussion.

Midway through the event, moderator the Rev. Diane Miller moved into the crowd to solicit reflections on this story, and several people offered their personal responses. The crowd was also able to view a short video presentation of Holocaust survivor Rosemary Feigl's testimony in Jerusalem to the significance of the Sharps in her life.

Then, during prime time at the Saturday evening plenary, Clements, Eclai, and UUA President the Rev. William Sinkford effectively condensed the key elements of the story into a fine 20-minute multimedia presentation to over 3,000 people in the conference center's great hall. Clements told the basics of the story with the visual accompaniment of still photos from the 1940s and the acceptance speech given in Jerusalem just days before by the Sharps' daughter, Martha Sharp Joukowsky. Sinkford and Eclai provided the connection to Darfur today with reports on recent visits to Darfur and refugee camps in neighboring Chad.

Creation stories do many things. They often inspire us to action by constantly reminding us from whence we have come. GA 2006 left many more UUs aware of the creation story of UUSC, which is, after all, an important part of the history of all who hold a Unitarian Universalist identity. May that story inspire us to live up to the example of the Sharps and the broad network of people that made their work possible.

GA 2006 is now best placed in the past tense. It drew to a close last night with the 2,000 or so hard core UUs who hung in until the very end of a five-day gathering.

The curtain closed (or would have had there been one) with a rousing rendition of the Senegalese harvest song, "Kaki Lambe". I wondered if the choir conductor was ever going to shut it down, but I have to admit that I was in no hurry for the last note. A harvest song is as good a way as any to send UUs back to 1000+ congregations, societies and fellowships. If the planners' intention was to infuse the moment with energy, success was theirs.

Tamara Payne-Alex struck just the right note when she used her five-minute reflection near the end of the proceedings to encourage those present to "pause to savor the moment."

For Ms. Payne-Alex, one of those rare admitted lifelong UUs, this GA was a bit different than some past ones. It might have been the realization that local Native people might have something better to do with their time than make us feel good about ourselves. Or the change might have come from the fact that this GA at least attempted to deal directly with our ongoing challenges around racism and differences, racial, gender and generational.

Whatever it was, she was ready to savor by Sunday night, and I take that as a good sign for a group of people pledged to make a difference in the world. I'm ready to follow Tamara's lead and pause to savor, too. If only we were better at pausing for any reason at UUSC...

As was the case last year, the UUA arranged streaming video of much of the plenary activities. If you can watch the entire thing, more power to you. But if you want to try my own best picks, then find your way to these four:

• The 20-minute presentation during Plenary IV on Friday night that united Charlie Clements' report on the Yad Vashem recognition of Martha and Waitstill Sharp with a presentation by Bill Sinkford and Atema Eclai on Darfur (only moderately self-serving).
• Then stay tuned immediately following the Yad Vashem/Darfur presentation to the Gulf Coast session that same evening when Rev. Tyrone Edwards, a Baptist minister, took a sleepy crowd in his hands and lifted it toward the heavens.
• The one woman show given as a sermon by Rev. Gail Geisenhainer of Vero Beach, Fla., at the Sunday worship.
• The choir's inspired performance during Sunday night's closing ceremony, especially the Canticle of St. Francis of Assisi.

Before that last song, Judi McGavin, district coordinator of GA 2007 in Portland, Ore., offered all present a warm invitation to the City of Roses. As a truly liveable city that has broken new ground in all kinds of urban social and environmental policy--and has one of Unitarian Universalism's fastest growing congregations to boot--where better to gather this crowd next?

Saturday at General Assembly 2006 was all about the future.

In the afternoon UUSC President Charlie Clements hosted a gathering of UU seminarians. Originally scheduled to last an hour, the conversation turned out to be so exciting and full of ideas that it just kept rolling. Could UUSC provide JustWorks Camps with both theological and social justice content, the seminarians asked? What would it look like for UUSC to provide intersession opportunities at the many seminaries attended by aspiring UU ministers around the country? How can the Service Committee help these students deepen their commitment to social justice, while at the same time further their education? Many great ideas were shared that will be explored by UUSC over the coming months.

Later I attended the "Soulful Sundown" service hosted by the UU Young Adult Caucus. "Soulful Sundown" is a highly non-traditional form of worship service involving live rock-and-roll music and post-modern sermon form. It began with four songs from the St. Louis rock band The Jupiter Complex and then segued into the sermon I have been waiting to hear for too long.

Drew Tripp of the UU Young Adult Caucus took the assembled body of 150 on an extemporaneous journey that blended the history of rock-and-roll with the history of Unitarian Universalism. Two highlights of particular interest to UUSC was his explanation of the history of the Flaming Chalice - a symbol that was created by the Service Committee, and his stress of the importance of the story of Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp - two Unitarians he referred to as "rock stars," meaning, to him, individuals who rose high above the expectations of their time to radically change the lives of many for the better.

His inspiring, radical, and revolutionary sermon ended with a call to all assembled to themselves rise to the occasion and become UU rock stars. I left with an excited sense that this UU movement does indeed have many powerful rock stars preparing for a long life of dedicated service to our principles and ideals. As I finally laid down to sleep after another long GA experience, visions of how UUSC can help enable these future stars danced in my head.

I believe the collaboration will begin in earnest when Charlie Clements delivers the keynote at their ConCentric gathering this August in Maryland. Hope to see you there!

At an international women's breakfast during General Assembly, UUSC economic justice partner Dr. Winnie Mitullah was welcomed among other activists working to strengthen women's rights in countries such as Kenya, the Sudan, the United States, the Philippines, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India.

The group noshed and networked in a banquet room that overlooked downtown St. Louis, where historic mill buildings used to house workers in a once-thriving garment district.

In this "archway" city linking eastern states to the territories claimed after Jefferson's western expansion, beaver pelts were made into top hats using a mercury pelting process. Workers poisoned in those factories from the heavy metal came to be known as "mad as a hatter."

While St. Louis' fur and garment industries no longer exist, you can still find workers in the downtown area, with street vendors and informal traders in large numbers among them.

Throughout history, workers have always been a vital part of the urban fabric. Too often, their jobs have been hazardous. At the same time, workers have demonstrated enormous resiliency, responding to precarious economic and physical environments while contributing services and commodities that boost economies and make residents' lives easier.

Research shows that cities and towns benefit enormously when comprehensive urban planning and policies take into account the needs and rights of all of its residents, including workers, particularly women workers.

Globally, women workers constitute the largest percentage of the growing "informal economy." Female workers also face particularly challenging conditions as workers. Strengthening the rights of informal economy workers, with women and children at the center, is a core focus of UUSC's Economic Justice Program.

At GA 2006, UUSC highlighted the importance of "informal economy" workers throughout the world. Several appreciative workshop participants (and locals!) invited Mitullah, UUSC Program Director Atema Eclai, and UUSC Communications Manager Judy Rakowsky to tour the active market down the street from the convention center where local vendors hawked food stuffs and other commodities to St. Louis residents.


A street market scene is very much the same around the world, whether you are in St. Louis or Nairobi, Kenya. Winnie would know, since she provided key research and support to the Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders (KENASVIT).

This new Kenyan "union" of street vendors provides an example of the new kind of effective organizing and advocacy being done by informal economy workers around the world.

New "role models" for worker organizing and movement building are vital today, and Winnie shared perspectives on the innovative work of KENASVIT, with fellow panelist Tim Costello of Global Labor Strategies.

Winnie's workers' rights activism turns "research-into-action" and Tim's work can be found at a website which presents some of the best thinking being done today about workers rights in the global economy. It was great to share the news of their work and provide an opportunity for them both to meet each other.

Friday ushered in another very full day for UUSC at General Assembly. Many of the staff were up early and over at the America's Center combing the conference center for delegates to talk to about our Action of Immediate Witness, which focuses on ensuring fairness and accountability by government and contractors in the rebuilding of the Katrina-devastated Gulf Coast.

At 11 a.m. we hosted an overflowing room of UUs at our workshop entitled "Class, Caste, Race and Gender in Disasters from Katrina to Aceh." UUSC program manager Martha Thompson and three program partners -- Kala Peiries from the tsunami-devastated area in Sri Lanka, Mary Croom Fontenot from ACT (All Communities Together) in New Orleans, and a UUA staff member reporting on the Holdeen India Program -- spoke for an hour about the inspiring relief work UUSC has been engaged in with them.

The next major UUSC activity of the day was our Annual Meeting and Celebration. It began with some live drumming, and quickly segued into a rousing speech by Charlie Clements. Awards were given out to outstanding volunteers, and a report on our plans for the upcoming year was shared with the overful room.

The packed day came to an end with an incredible joint plenary presentation by Clements and UUA President Bill Sinkford. Clements began by sharing the story of UUSC founders Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp whose efforts to save Jews from the Nazi terror was recently recognized when they were named Rightous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

Sinkford then told of the trip he took with UUSC on a visit to refugee camps in Chad that are housing many of the Darfurian refugees fleeing from the genocide currently occuring in their home country of Sudan.

Amazingly, this hectic pace continues in St. Louis.

Part of UUSC's advocacy program at this year's General Assembly was a collaboration with St. Louis Jobs With Justice on their Justice for Janitors Campaign. We hoped to increase our understanding of economic justice issues in the St. Louis area while making a concrete contribution to work being done by local groups.

The idea was simple: We would organize a small group of ministers and other UU leaders to meet with some local janitors and then go with them to visit a local employer to dialogue about the working conditions of janitors. We would also work with Local 1 of the Service Employees International Union to try to get an op-ed on this issue placed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Like many simple ideas to achieve justice, this one turned out not to be so simple.

Jobs With Justice suggested that we direct our attention to Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Enterprise is a large national company headquartered in St. Louis. In addition to being one of the largest customers of the largest nonunion company providing janitorial services in Greater St. Louis, Enterprise is an important corporate presence in the region, and has a good record on social responsibility. The UUA, UUSC and many UU congregations are customers of Enterprise, so we thought we could have a dialogue with Enterprise leadership as respectful customers concerned about justice for St. Louis janitors.

To no one's surprise, Enterprise did not greet our overture with unbridled enthusiasm. After no small amount of dialogue, and our assurance that we would not be accompanied by any media, Enterprise agreed to meet with us at their impressive headquarters in suburban Clayton.

The afternoon began with a meeting at the entrance to the America's Center where GA is being held. Two female cleaners who asked not to have their names used for fear of reprisals spoke a bit about what it is like to work for $6.50 per hour with no benefits. While the cost of living is lower in St. Louis than in cities like Boston or San Francisco, it isn't that much lower. $6.50 per hour is still a poverty wage that doesn't make ends meet.

Our 15-person delegation, led by UUSC President, Charlie Clements, and Rev. Suzanne Meyer of the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, was then shoe-horned into two vans for the trip to Enterprise. At Enterprise, five senior executives received us very courteously and listened intently to our presentation. After outlining what we saw as the inconsistency between Enterprise's progressive role in the community and the treatment of its lowest-paid contract workers, we asked if they would be willing to ask their janitorial services contractor to sit down and bargain with their janitors over working conditions.

The Enterprise executives first claimed that they had not been prepared for what we had come to tell them, and said that they would take our suggestions under advisement without making any commitments. In further discussion, however, they disputed some of the information we presented, insisting that all of their janitors are paid at or above union scale.

After an hour of sometimes frustrating back-and-forth, we left with the assurance that Enterprise would be open to continuing the dialogue. Since they had been unable to get any sort of meeting with Enterprise before GA, our friends at Jobs With Justice were very happy with the meeting and appreciative or our efforts to organize it. Some members of our delegation felt frustrated that we hadn't achieved more, but UUSC volunteer leader Nancy Nowak summed up most people's view by saying, "That was a great day. I really felt as though I had accomplished something." Because of the enthusiasm of the local people that accompanied us, I agree with Nancy.

In some small way, our presence in St. Louis has advanced the struggle for economic justice in that city. On Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will publish an op-ed article by Charlie Clements and Rev. William Sinkford entitled, "A Missouri Promise." Watch for it!

I am finishing my year as the ministerial intern at UUSC and what a way to finish!

General Assembly has been such a wonderful experience. I have spent the year working on outreach to ministers and seminarians for UUSC, and I can see and feel the power of those connections here at GA. The energy and passion of so many Unitarian Universalists fills me with hope and optimism about the work of the Service Committee.

The struggle for human rights and social justice is challenging and complex. But the combination of UUSC's bold and innovating programs with the passionate and deeply felt commitment of our congregations leaves me with little doubt that by working together, we can make a difference!

I know, General Assembly is in full swing, but my head is still in Israel. It's hard to shake the images, the sounds and the feel of such an ancient place. We walked on 2,000-year-old stones and witnessed history in the making.

I had the honor of being part of UUSC's delegation to attend the moving ceremony at Yad Vashem on June 13, 2006 naming two of our founders, Rev. Waitstill and Martha Sharp, as Righteous Among the Nations for their courageous work during the Holocaust. Their daughter Martha Sharp Joukowsky accepted the posthumous award and explained that her parent's "were modest and ordinary people, who responded to the suffering and needs around them…as they would have expected everyone to do in a similar situation. They never viewed what they did as extraordinary." But we know how rare they were. Waitstill is only the second American man and Martha is the first American woman to be named Righteous Among the Nations.

After the ceremony, we went on a tour of the Yad Vashem museum. There was one exhibit that most stayed with me. It was a series of black boxes mounted on the wall. They were not unlike the boxes found at plane crashes that help explain what led to a disaster. Each one had a photo of a SS officer on the front. When opened, the boxes contained background information about each person. Virtually all the SS officers were well-educated white men in their 30s. In their earlier lives, they had been pharmacists, lawyers and even protestant ministers. Some boxes included loving notes the men sent to their own families in the midst of the war describing the murderous work they were doing. These black boxes told the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary evil.

It says in the Talmud that to save one life is to save the world. The Sharps did that and so much more. Their lives inspire all of us ordinary people at UUSC to continue to fight for human rights and for an end to the genocide in Darfur.

Last night, GA 2006 took flight at the America's Center in St. Louis. The opening celebration of GA had many notable moments.

GA opened, as it should, with music from the Jazz Edge Orchestra, a wonderful, 17-piece big band. Several welcomes, reflections and a couple of the longest hymns I have ever sung followed the Jazz Edge.

Dr. James McLeod, of Washington University's College of Arts and Sciences, spoke eloquently of the role of Unitarian minister Charles Greenleaf Eliot in the founding of Washington University and in the creation of a public school system in St. Louis. The First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, founded by Eliot, has had a continuous presence in St. Louis for 171 years.

About midway through the program, Linda Friedman, chair of the GA Planning Committee rose to give the Native American acknowledgement that has characterized every GA since 1998. This one was a little different than in previous years. Her job was to tell the Assembly why the traditional nod to the First Nations would not occur.

The Planning Committee had the perfect person to contact the Osage Indians that had once roamed over 30 million acres of land around the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. One member of the Planning Committee had close connections with the Osage, having worked on their reservation in Oklahoma years earlier.

The Osage elders that she visited remembered her and welcomed her. But when asked if they would come to participate in the opening of the General Assembly, they gave an unexpected response.

"Why should we drive four hours [from Kansas City] to speak for two minutes at your meeting so that you can all feel good about yourselves. That work is your work, and you should do it."

So there was no Native American acknowledgement last night, or was there? In the telling of the dispossession of the Osage, and the response they got from the Osage elders, the UUA may have achieved more than it would have with the usual acknowledgement.

It was a night for introspection. As part of his opening remarks, Rev. William Sinkford noted that "in Fort Worth last year we fell short of our exectations. Sinkford noted that some youth of color left last year's GA feeling disrespected and wondering if Unitarian Universalism could be a spiritual home for them. He spoke frankly of that challenge and pointed the audience to a report on the GA 2006 incidents written by a UUA commission. I consider it good news that we are ready to confront such challenges rather than sweep them under the rug.

The crowd at this year's GA feels larger and more enthusiastic than last year's. I'm looking forward to speaking with lots of UUs about the world and UUSC's modest contribution to making it a better place.

I arrived yesterday afternoon in St. Louis for this year's General Assembly and was amazed at the Unitarian Universalist presence clearly visible around the city. As I stepped off my airplane I noticed banners throughout the airport welcoming the UU community to St. Louis, and it just continued from there. Every street light, bridge overpass, local business and hotel has a poster somewhere welcoming us.

After getting settled I headed over to the Omni Majestic Hotel for a UUSC reception for ministers which was well attended and full of ideas and great conversation.

Today, Wednesday, is the first official day of the assembly, and I have spent the morning watching the convention hall come to life. The UUSC booth is right smack in the middle of all the action, and impossible to miss with its giant banner that hangs down from the rafters.

At the booth we have a bustling advocacy center where people can get involved with some of our different campaigns, and immediately email or call their representatives in Washington D.C. to let their voices be heard.

The booth is also stock full of interesting information, merchandise, and of course many different UUSC staff members looking to chat up anyone who is interested. It is shaping up to be a great week here in St. Louis - hope to see you all here soon!