Report from GA 2006
The UUA's General Assembly 2006 was held from June 21 to June 25 in St. Louis, MO. For a complete report on workshops, planeries with RealAudio and video, please check out our UUA GA Website.
A/PIC's
presence at this year's General Assembly was once again significant
although our number was small. Emma Min-Gi carried our banner during
the banner parade. We shared a booth at the exhibit area with DRUUMM
where we sold t-shirts, gave out copies of our brand new brochure, and
the latest issue of Hot Rice. Our booth was in a good location right
across from the UUA Bookstore and diagonally across from the Beacon
Press booth. We saw a steady stream of visitors to the booth during
exhibit hours. Most of them, however, seemed to be there to check out
and sign up for the new UU Allies for
Racial Equity group.
A big thank-you to Mark Watanabe who organized
the A/PIC luncheon on Saturday in the nearby Kitchen K Restaurant. A
total of 12 people showed up at the luncheon: Mark Watanabe, Joseph
Santos-Lyons, Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris, Young Kim, KokHeong McNaughton,
Kevin Mann, Jennifer Strong, Catie Chi Olson, Kat Liu, Naomi Barke-Lake,
and Sally and Denise Brown. Christopher Long also dropped in from an
adjacent table to socialize. In addition to Kevin, Kat, Naomi and Christopher,
two other newcomers who connected with us during GA but were not able
to attend our luncheon have since joined our mailing list: Erin Robbason
and Matthew Anderson. Welcome to all!
Although she wasn't able to attend GA this year, current A/PIC Chair Jennifer Ryu was honored along with her partner Preston Moore amongst those who received their Preliminary Ministerial Fellowship this year during the Service of the Living Tradition, which was held on Friday night.
As a follow-up from the unfortunate racial incident during the Closing Ceremony at last year's GA, the UUA Board appointed a Special Review Commision who gave their report during Planery I as well as a workshop (#4044, below). The Commission's final report to the Board was released in April 2006 and is posted on line here. The theme of this year's GA is "Toward Right Relations," with special emphasis on anti-racism, anti-oppresion and multiculturalism. Many of the workshops and programs reflect this theme. Some of them are reported on the GA website, in particular:
- #2019 Building Intergenerational Community
- #2036 In Covenant - How Do We Work Together in Healthy Congregations?
- #2046 Dismantling Chaos Session #1: Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression Workshop
- #2050 Right Relations: Congregations' Role in Local and Larger Communities
- #2058 Why Here? Why Now? Why Us? The Urgency for White Ally Activisim
- #3019 Class, Caste, Race, and Gender in Disasters from Katrina to Aceh
- #3055 Oppression Through the Lenses of Ableism and Racism
- #4023 Making Families Matter: Affirming and Nourishing our Faith Communities
- #4044 Race, Youth, and General Assembly: What We've Learned
- #4070 Affirming a Multicultural Unitarian Universalist Identity
- #4073 Building Inter-Racial, Multi-Cultural Religious Community
- #5006 Multiracial Families - A Growing Experience
Three A/PIC members were elected to the DRUUMM Steering Committee during Saturday's DRUUMM Annual Meeting. They were: Rev. Manish Mishra (as President), Catie Chi Olson (as Second Vice President) and Cathy Chang (as incumbent Treasurer.)
GA Archives:
GA05 -- Fort Worth, TX
GA04 -- Long Beach, CA
GA03 -- Boston, MA