UUA Announces Organizing Strategy Team

A photo of the organizing strategy team, including: Karen Brammer, Elizabeth Nguyen, Everette Thompson, Susan Leslie, and Audra Friend

The new organizing strategy team includes Karen Brammer, Elizabeth Nguyen, Everette Thompson, Susan Leslie, and Audra Friend.

The Unitarian Universalist Association is thrilled to share a new structure in the Association’s justice work. As of December 16, 2018, a new Organizing Strategy Team will be created to lead the UUA’s prophetic public ministry work. The team will consist of Side with Love Campaign Manager Everette Thompson, Director of Congregational Advocacy and Witness Susan Leslie, Communications Coordinator Audra Friend, and Senior Associate for Climate Justice Rev. Karen Brammer. Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen will lead the team as Organizing Strategy Director. Formerly a part of the Multicultural Growth and Witness staff group, the creation of an Organizing Strategy Team represents a mission-based realignment of staff.

“The inherent worth and dignity of so many is under attack, and our Unitarian Universalist values and the justice ministry that flows from them is required - for our survival and the survival of our siblings,” said Rev. Nguyen.

The Organizing Strategy Team’s role will be to drive strategy, strengthen the capacity of UUs to organize for justice, and to mobilize power and people for liberation. The team’s approach recognizes that there are countless issues and partnership that individual Unitarian Universalist and UU congregations are invested in, while also modeling focus on key intersectional priorities. The Team’s focus will be guided by the following questions:

  • Where are frontline organized communities who do not have the support of people of faith?

  • Where can we push faith-based justice work to be more unapologetic and courageous?

  • Where is the organic energy flowing?

“This continues the mission-based realignment around the Multicultural Growth and Witness staff group,” said Executive Vice President Carey McDonald. “By creating a team focused on organizing strategy and our intersectional priorities, we are elevating this work as a core priority of the UUA.”

The Team’s work will include Side with Love, which will continue to support people of faith and courage to flank social movements and offer creative, courageous spiritual nourishment. It will also include the UUA’s partnership in the Love Resists campaign with the UU Service Committee to counter criminalization and expand sanctuary. The Organizing Strategy Team’s approach will be to acknowledge that each person is needed to do the work of justice and play our part in the ecosystem that will bring us every closer to liberation.