Climate action

 

After the Sunday service at the UU Fellowship of Durango, the costumed participants made a parade and danced to the Monster Mash...then had treats that would have been in a "trunk or treat" but the weather took it inside the fellowship hall.

From the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (their October newsletter):

Visit UUSC’s Action Hub As part of the UUSC community, you help advance a world where all people can live with dignity and self-determination. Your solidarity is an essential part of this work. Watch our short video to find out what solidarity looks like in practice. Then, put your values into action by visiting our Action Center to explore the latest campaigns, sign petitions, and connect with policymakers.

Advancing Climate Justice at COP31

Each year, UUSC sponsors a cohort of our grant partners to participate in the Conference of Parties (COP) — the United Nations annual climate conference — where their experiences and expertise can be represented at the global stage. Next month, UUSC and our partners are traveling to Antalya, Turkey to advocate for urgent action to limit warming to 1.5°C and put human rights at the center of climate decision-making. 

Learn more about our priorities for COP31.

Each of us can play an active role in moving our world closer toward justice.

Thank you for your commitment to human rights — in the U.S. and around the world.

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UUSC’s History at COP

Each year, UUSC supports the attendance of representatives from our grassroots partners. We assist with funding, visa support, and strategic planning. Our collective typically includes Indigenous communities, faith-based organizations, and leaders from Pacific island nations.

Our advocacy centers on our FAIR framework:

• Fund Loss and Damage Initiatives: Advocating for wealthy nations to compensate communities for climate damages already suffered. The recently established Loss and Damage Fund represents a historic victory, though pledges fall short of actual community needs.
• Assess Progress Towards Climate Success: Supporting a rigorous process to honestly evaluate global progress toward limiting warming to 1.5°C.
• Increase Funding for Adaptation and Mitigation: Collaborate across nations to ensure that regions and locales worldwide have equitable access to funds for adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
• Raise Equity and Justice: Ensuring climate action addresses rather than perpetuates existing inequalities, with meaningful participation from climate-vulnerable groups.

Key Messages for COP31:

This COP has to be a point of inflection for the world community. The consistent demand of our partners has been to keep 1.5 alive, and we are now seeing the existential impacts that many have warned about. The negotiations over the last 10 years have shown a lack of political will, despite economic incentives (from the short to the long term) favoring renewable energy and sustainable solutions.

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• Abide by the ICJ Advisory Opinion by taking a human rights-based approach across all climate negotiations and prioritizing climate reparations
• Look to the examples set by frontline coalitions like Pacific Rising to create a model for intersectional, decolonial climate responses
• Prioritize the active participation and empowerment of frontline communities, especially women, youth, elderly people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people in decisions and policies that directly impact their lives
• Recognize Loss & Damage as the third pillar of climate action (alongside mitigation and adaptation)
• Ensure the Loss and Damage Fund has adequate financing and is operationalized though grants, not loans
• Make funding accessible and transparent to communities, not just states
• Respect traditional knowledge in climate governance and center the voices and leadership of indigenous peoples
• Center food system solutions based on peasant agroecology
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Women voters!

 

“Some whose names are to be found all through the Social Register marched side by side with working mothers with babies in their arms. A large proportion of the marchers were young girls who would not be old enough to vote were they enfranchised. They made up in beauty what they lacked in years and were cheered all along the crowded Fifth Avenue sidewalks.” New York Evening World newspaper, 23 October 1915.

Organized by Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, the largest political demonstration to its date in support of the right of women in the US to vote occurred on 23 October 1915. The demonstration consisted of a march of an estimated 25,000 people down 5th Avenue in New York City, New York. An editorial in the New York Times warned that if the suffragists ever accomplished their goal that “they would demand all the rights that implies. It is not possible to think of women as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen, or firemen.” The three mile protest march from Washington Square to Fifth-Ninth Street (where the Apple Store now is on 5th Ave) was also noted as the largest parade to its date ever held in New York City and attracted tens of thousands of spectators along its route. The state of New York enfranchised women to vote in 1917 - three years prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. In 1919, Carrie Chapman Catt would call for an organization she named the League of Women Voters, and that organization would be formed in 1920 and exists to this date.

Thanks to FB post by Jim Welch

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We must do democracy. That goes far beyond simply casting your vote. We must all actively champion the causes that ensure the common good.

 -Martin Luther King III, human rights advocate (b. 23 Oct 1957)

Inanna, or Ishtar, or ?

 Another goddess...

another full moon.

From Debra She Who Seeks...

A three dimensional sculpture made by Sacred Source (India) and painted silver by Debra, photo by Debra.

The Burney Relief now in the British Museum.

Sacred Source sells their sculpture as bare clay titled Lillith.

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Quoted from: Girl God Books on FaceBook

Based in Norway

 

"Archaeologists agree that agriculture was originally developed by women, along with pottery, weaving, and Neolithic religion, which most likely centred around ritual dance. Women have long been the keepers of both horticultural knowledge and ritual dance, which are connected in multiple ways. On a practical level, flat round threshing grounds make ideal floors for circular dance, while metaphorically, the threshing floor represents the generous womb of Mother Earth, and of human mothers by extension.

The dance circle itself serves as a vessel of symbolic rebirth, as it recreates the womb or lap or embrace of the Great Mother, and offers abundant unconditional love to all those who join the dance. The connection to Mother Earth is reiterated over and over in the dance songs, as well as in the dance steps: the most common dance pattern traces the motif of the Tree of Life, which has been a key symbol of the Mother Goddess since ancient times. I believe this is because visible patterns of veins in the human placenta branch out from the ‘trunk’ of the umbilical cord into a tree shape, which midwives around the world independently name the Tree of Life. In this way, the Tree symbolises the life-giving sustenance of the Divine Mother which we receive when we dance.

Circle dance traditions survive best today in southern and eastern Europe – the same area where egalitarian matriarchal civilisations flourished for thousands of years. This region, named Old Europe by archaeologist and archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas, was the cradle of sophisticated societies which honoured the Goddess, celebrated nature, made beautiful art, shared resources, and lived in partnership. These peaceful egalitarian matriarchies formed the foundation of human culture from approximately 7000-4000 BCE, and longer in some places, for instance until 1450 BCE in Crete."

-Laura Shannon, excerpt from her paper, "Women’s Ritual Dances to Heal Somatic Trauma" - featured in Spells for Survivors: Returning to the Holy Her

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I'm interested in history...ancient history...as it depicts a time when civilizations existed with  completely different foundational aspects to those of today.

The goddesses might not just be mythological stories; they were in all probability central to the lives of culture as Gimbutas posits. Her work is based on findings in archaeological sites where no defensive structures were found. No community dikes or defensive walls. No weapons. A culture where peace was expected, lived in daily lives, where neighbors weren't a threat.

When I learned of the ancient systems of these cultures in the 1990s, it changed my entire sense of feminism. Goddesses were central to civilization at one time, before patriarchy took over. So I started reclaiming the divine feminine in my life. 

This easily melded with the need for our world to address the issues of climate change. Our survival as a civilization depends upon removing reliance upon fossil fuels. This is the big picture. In 200 or 500 years, it's highly unlikely that plastics will still be around, nor cars and trucks and planes running on fossil fuels. (Whether or not humanity is stil around is another philosophical question)

Then think forward as far as we think back to the ancient times. Ha! What will remain from our poor culture when it's buried beneath the soils?

Nope, can't buy my vote this way!

So the law stopped the president from political advertising on TV using government money to get votes. 

Lots of people did receive a $90 deposit... who's grateful?

This is the next step. 

Elders, wake up and smell the poop! Of course we want our grandchildren to have great little bank accounts.

But do not let a politician sway your votes by again using the government to advertise for his party!

This is ILLEGAL! I'm sure of it.

I got this email yesterday morning...from the actual Social Security site...or perhaps a very good fake. 

Social Security Administration <Information@update.ssa.gov>

Last year, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Working Families Tax Cuts, which included a historic tax cut for America’s seniors. That law also created Trump Accounts, individual investment accounts for America’s children designed to grow with the U.S. economy and build long-term savings.

Today, nearly 70 million Trump Accounts are open for all American children. Parents and legal guardians simply need to claim their child’s Trump Account through the official Trump Accounts app, available to download for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Once activated, the account can receive funds from family, friends, and employers, as well as gifts from generous donors. Tens of millions of accounts already have money contributed by donors in them, just waiting to be claimed.

At Social Security, we are informing families about how they can activate their child’s Trump Account—many accounts with money already in them. We are also communicating with parents of newborns about the one-time $1,000 contribution from the U.S. Treasury, available to children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.

Trump Accounts are one of the most significant investments in the next generation of Americans in our nation’s history, by giving every American child a stake in our country’s success and a strong financial foundation for the future.

To learn more about Trump Accounts, visit TrumpAccounts.gov.

Download the App Last year, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Working Families Tax Cuts, which included a historic tax cut for America’s seniors. That law also created Trump Accounts, individual investment accounts for America’s children designed to grow with the U.S. economy and build long-term savings. Today, nearly 70 million Trump Accounts are open for all American children. Parents and legal guardians simply need to claim their child’s Trump Account through the official Trump Accounts app, available to download for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play. Once activated, the account can receive funds from family, friends, and employers, as well as gifts from generous donors. Tens of millions of accounts already have money contributed by donors in them, just waiting to be claimed. At Social Security, we are informing families about how they can activate their child’s Trump Account—many accounts with money already in them. We are also communicating with parents of newborns about the one-time $1,000 contribution from the U.S. Treasury, available to children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. Trump Accounts are one of the most significant investments in the next generation of Americans in our nation’s history, by giving every American child a stake in our country’s success and a strong financial foundation for the future. To learn more about Trump Accounts, visit TrumpAccounts.gov. Download the App   Go Digital! Join the millions and discover your benefits. Create a personal my Social Security account Manage Subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe All  |  Help