Report from This Year’s Online General Assembly

by Margaret Henderson

Hi all, I’ve just spent the last 4 days immersing myself online in GA (the UUA’s annual General Assembly) with over 2,000 other UUs, and it was fabulous! Here are some of my favorite moments:

• I felt privileged to watch and read thoughtful debates about this year’s Actions of Immediate Witness, which are: to care for those still being impacted by Covid, to support the human rights of Palestinians, to support scared and grieving Jews, and to work this summer to nurture vulnerable individuals being affected by climate change;
• the 2 Co-Moderators have added Process Observers this year, who would occasionally stop the Pro and Con comments when they threatened to become too emotionally charged or provocative;
• after 40+ years, the official statement of our UU goals was changed from 7 Principles and 6 sources, to 7 values with Love at the center, by an 80% to 20% vote.
• the gentlest, most artistic Ware lecture I’ve ever seen. It was on Disability Wisdom by Julia Watts Belser, with beautiful artwork on each slide to illustrate her point;
• a fabulous discussion between 2 Black trans artists from “The Black Trans Prayer Book,” Lady Dane and J Mase III, that taught me volumes about their world view;
• the beautiful speech for Sunday worship given by Rev. Molly Housh Gordon on “Weaving Our Lives.” (UUCD wisely used this for our Sunday service as well)

I love GA because every year for me it clearly shows our UU beliefs and ways of being in action. For instance, the Con line of potential speakers (those opposing a proposal) is described as the “Concern” line, not the “Contra” line, as a way to stress discernment and the hope for consensus over an adversarial model. As another example, every speaker gives a brief visual description of themselves for visually impaired folks. This is simply an attempt to share “the visual information that a non-blind person gleans automatically,” like age, skin color and gender presentation. (More details at https://www.uua.org/files/2023-05/Guide%20to%20Self-Descriptions–UUA.pdf.) 

There was also a great two-part talk on Fat Liberation – its history and current status, given by the head of NAAFA (naafa.org) and by the author of “Fat Church.”

If any of these whet your interest, I encourage you to explore more, either online or by asking me about them. And I hope many of us can attend next year’s GA in Baltimore, MD June 18-22, 2025. UUs are such wonderful people!