HEEDING THE CALL
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth
WORKSHOP 5: THE CALL FOR COURAGE
2010
BY NICOLE BOWMER AND JODI THARAN
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 7:28:39 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest. — Maya Angelou
In this workshop, youth consider the role of courage in creating justice. They discuss courageous acts, big and small, as well as feelings of fear, and taking the consequences of actions.
This workshop also introduces a new tool for the Justicemakers Guide: an oppression continuum. The tool is explored lightly in Activity 3, Opposing Oppression, but more thoroughly in Faith in Action, in which participants can learn to be an ally to a marginalized group. This option includes several steps and is continued in subsequent workshops.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Is This Acting With Courage? | 10 |
Activity 2: Story — Life of an Ally | 10 |
Activity 3: Opposing Oppression | 15 |
Activity 4: Dealing with Fear | 15 |
Faith in Action: Allies, Phase 1 | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Heritage Festival | 30 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Think back to a time when you decided to take a stand about something that matters to you deeply. Were you afraid? If so, how did you work with your fear? Did you acknowledge it, suppress it, express it? How do you think this informed your choice to act?
Courage means different things within different contexts. Spend some time exploring this idea in your life and in the world around you. Ask yourself what you define as courageous. It may be helpful to write or draw as you reflect on this topic. How do you think hope figures into courage?
Now turn your attention to youth. Youth encounter many fears as they explore their autonomy. How do you think teaching youth about courage will help them develop as leaders? Healthy amounts of fear are important to human beings. How do you think the Unitarian Universalist faith supports the intersection of courage and fear, faith and action?
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather youth in a circle. Welcome first-time participants. If there are new people present, invite everyone in the circle to say their name. Ask if anyone would like to share anything noted in their Justicemakers Guide since the last meeting. Light the chalice, or invite a participant to do so, and recruit a volunteer to read the chalice lighting words:
May this flame,
symbol of transformation since time began,
fire our curiosity,
strengthen our wills,
and sustain our courage
as we seek what is good within and around us. — Bets Wienecke
Ask the group to be silent for a moment as they reflect on the words. End the silence with "So be it," or other appropriate words.
Ask someone to look up the word "courage" in the dictionary and read the definition aloud. Tell participants that "courage" is the theme of today's workshop.
ACTIVITY 1: IS THIS ACTING WITH COURAGE? (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth explore courage in seemingly small acts.
Ask for three volunteers to choose a scenario and read them aloud in order. After reading each scenario, ask the group if individuals were acting with courage. Different opinions are fine. If the group feels individuals are not acting courageously, ask for suggestions of other ways the individuals in the scenarios could act.
After discussing the scenarios, ask:
Invite youth to share their experiences. Remind them that acts do not have to be big to be courageous. Explore the role that the possibility of negative consequences and/or fear played in their experiences.
ACTIVITY 2: STORY — LIFE OF AN ALLY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth hear a story about Juliette Hampton Morgan.
Tell the group that they will hear a story about a woman who acted with courage. Tell or read the story. Here are questions to spark a discussion after the story:
Including All Participants
Have enough copies of the story to share so that visual learners can follow along.
ACTIVITY 3: OPPOSING OPPRESSION (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth discover a tool to help explain the process of opposing oppression and becoming an ally.
Explain that becoming an ally is one way we can help make our world a more just place. Say to the group that some groups of people are marginalized in our society. Individuals in these groups have a disadvantage in competing for resources to fill their needs. They often to do not have access to the same resources as the dominant group. Explain that the dominant group is not defined by numbers. It is not necessarily the largest group, just the group that holds more power and therefore more access to resources such as good education or jobs.
If the members of the dominant group have access to certain resources that others do not, we call that "privilege." Often members of a dominant group enjoy privilege whether they actively seek it or not. Can youth name some privileges Juliette Morgan Hampton had that African Americans in Montgomery did not?
Someone who belongs to the dominant group—who has access to more resources—can support those who are denied those resources by advocating for their rights and helping them gain access to resources. That is what being an ally means. That is what Juliette Morgan Hampton did.
Inform participants that there are steps everyone can take to help oppose oppression of marginalized people. Ask everyone to find the Oppression Continuum in the Justicemakers Guide or distribute Handout 1, Oppression Continuum, and review it with the group. Reading—or asking volunteers to read—each phase on the continuum and the description of each phase.
Here are a few questions to help process this tool:
If youth are keeping the guide electronically, remind them how to add new pages.
If you will not do the Faith in Action, Allies, ask youth if they consider themselves an ally to any others. Is there an identity group they would like to support as an ally? Use the Justicemakers Guide to note this desire and to track future commitments in this area.
ACTIVITY 4: DEALING WITH FEAR (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth explore fears and ways to approach their fears with courage.
Invite participants to find a comfortable place in the room. Ask them to spend a couple of minutes thinking about their fears in doing social justice work. After two minutes, distribute slips of paper to every participant and ask them to choose one fear to write on the slip of paper. Tell them that the fears will be shared anonymously, but if they do not wish to discuss their fear, they can write "Pass" on the slip of paper. Collect the fears in a basket and take turns choosing and reading aloud one fear at a time. The group will discuss ways to approach each fear that would take courage. If not enough fears are offered, consider talking about these: fear that you will lose friends, fear of being ridiculed, fear of being wrong, fear of being rejected by members of a marginalized group, or fear of bodily harm.
Once the basket is empty, discuss the following:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite youth to stand in a circle and name someone they think has acted with courage. Thank first-time participants for their contributions to the group. Pass out Taking It Home. End the workshop with these words:
May we leave here knowing that courage doesn't always roar with certainty. Sometimes it's more like a quiet whisper of determination.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: ALLIES, PHASE 1
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth make a commitment to work toward becoming an ally.
Remind participants that the continuum contains steps they can take to become an ally and help alleviate oppression. Invite youth to participate in a long-term Faith in Action in which they use future workshops to become better allies.
Ask the group to choose a marginalized group or community that they would like to support as allies. This could be immigrants, people from racial or ethnic minorities, people from religious minorities, BGLTQ-identified people, people with disabilities, or any other group that is denied full access to resources and opportunities. It could be child soldiers, women forced to work in sweatshops, or people with mental illness.
Participants may decide on one target group, or they may work in small groups to ally with several target groups.
Point out that the first phase on the continuum is active participation in oppression and the second is denying or ignoring oppression. Ask, "What action can be taken to move from Phase 1 to Phase2? If someone answers that you need to stop actively supporting the oppression of others, ask if everyone feels comfortable working to actively not support oppression of their allied group. Have participants name ways to do this. Some suggestions are on the continuum. Youth might say that they already do not actively participate in oppressive behaviors. Affirm the goodness of this, but say you want them to be aware of making conscious decisions not to support the oppression of others.
Invite them to use the handouts you will provide at every workshop to keep track of their actions to oppose oppression. For example, if they choose to be an ally to people who are overweight and they hear a fat joke in a movie they are viewing with their friends, they would not laugh. They would note in their Justicemakers Guide the date and that they did not laugh at the joke. Make sure everyone understands the instructions. Ask everyone to note on Handout 2, Ally Action 1, the date, the group they want to be an ally to, and the answer to the first question, "What action do you want to take?"
Examine Handout 2, Ally Action 1, with the group. Point out the other questions under each step. Review these questions and have youth write answers on their handouts where appropriate.
Ask participants to bring this handout back at the next workshop. Then, they will commit to another step that will help them move along the continuum to being a better ally.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Discuss with your co-leader what went well in today's workshop. Discuss what you would do differently in the future. What left you feeling hopeful as a religious educator after this workshop? What did you learn from the youth? Do you think you helped youth feel courageous? Decision-making is important in this workshop. Did you notice the decisions you were making as a leader during the workshop? Discuss the next workshop and any special preparation that may be needed.
TAKING IT HOME
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest. — Maya Angelou
In Today's Workshop...
We explored courage as taking a stand in big ways and small ways. We heard a story about Juliette Hampton Morgan, a white woman in Alabama who took courageous stands of solidarity with the African American community throughout the 1940s and 1950s. We gained a new tool, the Oppression Continuum, to help us heed the call to create a more just world.
Courage
Oppression Continuum
Justicemakers Guide
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: HERITAGE FESTIVAL (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants learn about different heritages.
Invite participants one-by-one to place their object on the table and share how it connects to their heritage. Remember that there is no right or wrong way to connect. Allow participants to pass if they desire. If youth forgot to bring an object or there are visitors, they can place a "virtual" object on the table and share about what they would have brought.
After everyone has shared, ask
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 5:
STORY: LIFE OF AN ALLY
Juliette Hampton Morgan was the only child of Frank and Lila Morgan of Montgomery, Alabama. Her white skin and family pedigree gave her entrance to the finest shops, restaurants, galleries and concert halls. For much of Juliette's life, her privilege meant someone else did her laundry, cooked her meals and did her yard work. She was a public school teacher, a librarian in Montgomery's Carnegie Library and later served as the director of research at the Montgomery Public Library. These were acceptable positions for a white woman in society to hold. However, some of Juliette's activities outside of work were not as acceptable. She belonged to an interracial prayer group. The group had to meet in black churches because no white church would welcome them. Many of Juliette's friends and family members did not understand her desire to belong to this group.
One seemingly insignificant thing about Juliette's life separated her further from her privileged friends: she had severe anxiety attacks. These attacks prevented her from driving her own car so, to get to work, she rode the city buses in Montgomery. On those buses, she saw white bus drivers "use the tone and manners of mule drivers in their treatment of Negro passengers." She watched them threaten and humiliate black men and women who paid the same 10-cent fare she paid. They threw their change on the floor, called them derogatory names, and left them standing at bus stops in the rain.
One morning as she rode the bus, Juliette watched a black woman pay her fare and then leave the front door of the bus to re-enter through the back door, as was the custom. As soon as the black woman stepped off, the white bus driver pulled away, leaving the woman behind even though she'd already paid her fare. Incensed, Juliette jumped up and pulled the emergency cord. She demanded the bus driver open the door and let the black woman come on board. No one on the bus, black or white, could believe what they were seeing. In the days that followed, Juliette pulled the emergency cord every time she witnessed such injustices.
News spread quickly, and bus drivers began to bait Juliette, angering her so she would get off the bus and walk the rest of the way to her destination, sometimes a mile or more. White passengers would mock her as she got off the bus. Her own mother told her she was making a fool of herself and tarnishing the family's good name.
In 1939—16 years before the famous 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott—Juliette began writing letters to local newspapers denouncing the horrible injustices she witnessed on the city buses. Her last letter was published in 1957 in the Tuscaloosa News in which she thanked the newspaper's editor for his opposition to a local council of white men that he believed—and Juliette agreed—was contributing to continued racial violence. "I had begun to wonder," she wrote, "if there were any men in the state — any white men — with any sane evaluation of our situation here in the middle of the Twentieth Century, with any good will, and most especially with any moral courage to express it."
During her years of letter writing, Juliette was bombarded by obscene phone calls and hate mail. White people boycotted the library where she worked. They called her an extremist. Teenage boys taunted and humiliated her in public and in front of her staff at the library. Juliette's personal campaign against racism and injustice caused her to become estranged from friends, colleagues, neighbors and even her own mother.
Powerful white men and women in Montgomery demanded that Juliette be fired. The burned their library cards and boycotted the library. The library superintendent and trustees refused. The mayor withheld municipal funding to the library, in an effort to force the library to cut Juliette's position. On July 15, 1957, a cross was burned on her lawn. Juliette resigned from the library the next day and committed suicide that night, leaving a note that read simply, "I am not going to cause anymore trouble to anybody."
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, in his book, Stride Toward Freedom, remembered Juliette and gave her credit for first comparing the Montgomery bus boycott to Gandhi's work in India. In 2005, Juliette Hampton Morgan was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. Later that year, the Montgomery City Council voted to rename the main public library after her. Juliette's actions and her words are as relevant today as they were when she was alive: "There are thousands who want to change our old order, but they are afraid of speaking out. I believe that it is our biggest problem—overcoming the fear of decent white people."
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 5:
HANDOUT 1: OPPRESSION CONTINUUM
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 5:
HANDOUT 2: ALLY ACTION 1
I want to be an ally to _____________________________________________.
Step 1: Date
What action do you want to take?
What resources or materials do you need and how will you get them?
What hazards or risks are involved?
What obstacles might you encounter and how will you overcome them?
What supports do you have or could you obtain?
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 5:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: IS THIS ACTING WITH COURAGE?
1. Sophia, a 5-year old girl, walks out on the diving board. Her mom is in the swimming pool below encouraging her to jump. Sophia's legs are shaking. She tells her mom that she doesn't think she can do it. Sophia's mom offers more words of encouragement. Sophia plugs her nose, closes her eyes and jumps in the pool. Did Sophia act with courage?
2. Oliver is about to enter the 8th grade when a new family moves in next door. They have a son named LeRoi who is about to enter the 7th grade. Oliver and LeRoi discover they both love to play the saxophone and quickly become friends. The new school year begins and in the first week, one of Oliver's friends from elementary school begins teasing LeRoi in the hallway. Oliver is standing just a few feet away and watches LeRoi ask that the teasing stop. Oliver says nothing as LeRoi turns away with tears in his eyes. Did Oliver act with courage?
3. Lily has wanted to ask Delaney out on a date ever since they co-founded the LGBTQ Equality Committee at their college. She's been too afraid of ruining their friendship, though, so she hasn't said anything. Eventually she decides she can't handle not knowing if Delaney is also interested in her so she asks her out. Delaney is surprised. She thinks of Lily as a great person and a great friend, but she's just not attracted to her. Still, she's afraid of hurting Lily's feelings. She even considers saying "yes" just so Lily won't be hurt, but she decides against it. She tells Lily that she really enjoys spending time together because she thinks Lily is a great person and great friend, but she only sees them being great friends and nothing more. What emotions did they have in common? Who acted with courage?
FIND OUT MORE
Racial oppression
There are thousands of resources on oppression and racial/ethnic oppression in particular. Here are a few:
The Southern Poverty Law Center (at www.splcenter.org/center/about.jsp) is located in Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of Juliette Hampton Morgan. This organization was founded by Unitarian Universalist Morris Dees and Joe Levin in 1971. It is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists, and its tracking of hate groups. You can subscribe to Teaching Tolerance (at www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/general/TT_free_order_form_11-10.pdf) a magazine for educators.
Movies and books
The UUA website has movie guides (at www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/anti-racismmovie/index.shtml) for several ant-racist films. Other classic films and books that deal with racial or ethnic oppression include To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men.
Tatum, Beverly Daniel. Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? New York: Basic Books, 2002.
_________.Can We Talk About Race? Boston: Beacon Books, 2008.
Thandeka. Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000