Healing the Divide
Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/07/2021
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Categories
It turns out that we won’t be able to watch The Reunited States of America tomorrow after all — I wasn’t able to share the movie over Zoom.  (If you would like to see it, you can rent for $4 at https://reunitedstates.tv/watch.)
Instead, we’ll watch and discuss a Ted talk by Valerie Kaur on the Revolutionary Love Project:
  The Revolutionary Love Project, founded by seasoned civil rights activist Valarie Kaur, inspires and equips people to ground their lives and social justice work in the ethic of love.  We produce stories that center the voices and wisdom of marginalized communities, generate thought leadership on how the love ethic can challenge systems of injustice, and build tools for people to practice the love ethic in our lives and movements.
Wikipedia describes Valerie Kaur as an American social activist, documentary filmmaker, lawyer, educator, and faith leader.  Her credentials are excellent: Stanford University (BA in religious studies), Harvard Divinity School (MA), and Yale Law School (JD), and is currently a Senior Fellow at Auburn Seminary and a “non-residential fellow”(she lives in Los Angeles) at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Security.
I also found it interesting that she is a Sikh and her experience growing up a Sikh in America is a big part of her being drawn to civil rights activism.
So I still hope to see you tomorrow at Healing the Divide.

Prior plan…
At our meeting this Sunday, we’ll watch the documentary The Reunited States. 
Here’s the trailer and a brief synopsis:
At a time when America is ripping apart at the seams, The Reunited States is a powerful and urgent documentary that follows some unsung heroes on the difficult journey of bridging our political and racial divides. Susan Bro, who lost her daughter when a car drove through a group of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, and David and Erin Leaverton, a Republican couple who travel to all fifty states in an RV to find out what divides us, are just a few of the characters profiled in the film. Each of these bridge-builders have realized that while our divides run deeper than they ever could have imagined, so does the love and hope to bring our country back together. The  film urges us to consider that everyone has a role to play in reuniting the country.
I really liked this movie — I found it powerful, moving, and inspiring.
It’s also an hour and 24 minutes long, which won’t leave us much time for discussion.   We’ll take some time for discussion Sunday for anyone who wants to stick around, and we can allow some more time in the following month’s meeting.

Healing the Divide is a UUCPA group that formed after the 2016 election to ask: 1) what do we not understand about others with more conservative viewpoints, and 2) what can we learn that will help us communicate even across wide differences in belief.

Zoom information will be provided on heal-the-divide@uucpa.org a day or two before the meeting.  If you are not a member of that email list, you can request to join by sending a message to heal-the-divide+subscribe@uucpa.org.

Questions?  Please contact Susan Owicki at heal-the-divide+owner@uucpa.org

Hope to see you there!

Susan

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