Last week, In Good Faith published part one of our interview with NETWORK Lobby’s new Executive Director, Laurie Carafone, a member of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, DC. Read part one of our conversation before continuing below with part two below. Many thanks again to Laurie for being so generous with her time. 

In Good Faith: As you have mentioned, NETWORK was founded by and inspired by Catholic Women Religious and there’s an interesting parallel to Unitarian Universalism, where women are in a variety of leadership roles at both the congregational level and the national level. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of women in religious advocacy spaces?

Laurie Carafone:

NETWORK was founded by women on fire for justice, in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, which explicitly mandated seeking the common good and dignity for every person in the work of the church.

And so those 47 sisters, and really all of the sisters that came with them and after them, are the embodiment of that love in action that I talked about earlier. And that’s action that I have experienced in the UU tradition, as well.

You see this a lot in faith-based and secular social justice spaces from a variety of traditions, where we have women who have themselves experienced some marginalization in their own structures, including in religious institutions. There’s the delta between the messiness of human power and dominance, those proclivities that happen in institutions. Women religious have been one of many groups who have experienced that, but then have used that experience to turn it into good. [They] have a deep well of empathy and understanding for the importance of ensuring that all people can contribute fully their gifts.

In solidarity, women can work together within these powerful traditions. That holds so much sacred hope, right? And so many positives to really ensure that those experiences that they’ve had are being used for bringing as many people as possible into the net of well-being and thriving.

In Good Faith: Particularly in this time, when it is needed, what are your thoughts around interfaith cooperation, especially when it comes to advocating for vulnerable communities?

Laurie Carafone:

It’s critical that all people of goodwill, whether in faith traditions or secular traditions, come together right now in solidarity and cooperation. This is a time like no other. I can see and am proud that NETWORK is living out that value.

I am seeing that organizations across all traditions — and secular, humanitarian and civil rights organizations — are living this out at a fever pitch right now. Every day, NETWORK is readily sharing resources, trainings, anything that we’ve created, with others. There’s zero territoriality or ego at this point.

You see this in the incredible leadership of folks like Maya Wiley at the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights and many other organizations who are profoundly aware that this is the time to be strategic, to pool our resources. And any differences in approach, or maybe distinctions in communities that we’ve traditionally served, are melting away very quickly in the context in which we find ourselves, which is really existential.

One concrete example I’ll give you is that NETWORK has been working with several organizations, including the American Friends [Service Committee], Faith in Action, and others, who are explicitly thinking about the way that we can prepare our volunteer advocates. [These] number in the many, many thousands in our institutions. There’s such a need, both for speaking truth to power and lobbying directly on Capitol Hill, and also for individuals to speak from their own experience, to their lawmakers, to media, writing letters to the editor, and leaving documents that explain all of the terrible repercussions for people’s lives of the most recent, budget bill passed by Congress.

In Good Faith: Anything you’d like to add?

Laurie Carafone:

I’m just so grateful to be here. Working with the staff at NETWORK has been incredibly edifying. I was able to listen to a lot of their trainings and good works and read the incredible resources they put out even before I started. Now seeing, every day, the incredible commitment and expertise and just really the range of talent here, I understand how a staff of only about 24 people can have such an outsized impact.

It’s been humbling and really spiritually nourishing to me to be in community with so many women religious. I was recently at the Leadership Conference for Women Religious gathering, where there were 800 sisters, justice promoters and communicators, and throughout the entire week, I had sisters coming up to me and saying thank you so much for saying yes to this role, that NETWORK is [a] critical resource that we know we can rely on, that’s accurate, that makes it easy for us to do the advocacy work.

And one final note about that conference is that pulling together many of the threads that we’ve talked about today, we’re experiencing such an exponential increase in the level of partnership and collaboration across faiths and secular traditions in this moment.

And so, just to say that, in all of these different venues in all of these different ways, I’m seeing in the emails that I get every day from Pablo DeJesús [of Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice] and Rev. Rob Keithan [of All Souls Church Unitarian] and others associated with the Unitarian Universalist tradition, and at, for example, the We are All DC March that just occurred that there are Unitarian Universalists there. There are Catholics there. There are folks from every faith tradition, and secular traditions, who are in solidarity for peace and justice and really speaking out for what’s right at this moment.