Advocacy Program

Make Your Voice Heard at the Federal, State & Local Levels:

Join the AUUC Advocacy Team!!

At the Federal level, we work with Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ) which aids UU’s to get their views heard in our nation’s capital in four ways:

  1. Maintaining study groups on the priority issues–currently Immigration, Environmental Justice (including Climate Change), Defending Our Democracy, and Economic Justice. Anyone can join a study group.
  2. Selecting issues and making it easy for UU’s to write letters on those issues to Congress through the Write Here! Write Now program.
  3. Arranging virtual meetings with Congressional staff so UU’s can express our values.
  4. Publicizing Action Alerts, where individual UU’s can sign a letter or petition to their Congressional representatives advocating for a solution to a particular injustice.

At the state level, the Virginia General Assembly runs January through March each year, and we support many partners (e.g., Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), ARC of NoVA, Equality VA, Justice Forward VA, Social Action Linking Together (SALT) who work with legislators to craft legislation supporting our UU values.  Of these our closet partnership is with VICPP, which is the largest statewide advocacy voice for the faith community in Virginia with over 25,000 members, which includes 750 faith communities, 1,000 clergy of all faiths, ten chapters and many partner/affiliate organizations. VICPP is non-partisan and focuses primarily on issues of racial, social, and economic justice.  Our support includes sending emails, making phone calls to state legislators, and even meeting in-person with our legislators to advocate for policy positions and legislation.

Locally, we actively support Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE), which is a non-partisan coalition of almost 50 faith communities and civic organizations in Northern Virginia working together to build power in middle and low-income communities. VOICE acts on key issues in our community including affordable housing, access to physical and mental health and dental care, and immigrant rights. VOICE has deepened our relationships with faith communities across the region.

Accotink is known by our partners as a congregation who punches above its weight.   If you would like to have your voice heard, join the AUUC Advocacy Team so you can get information on advocacy opportunities…..then you can make an informed decision on what you want to do: call, email, attend a meeting…. or nothing at all.

To become part of the AUUC Advocacy Team or to learn more about it, contact John P or Ed K. Get in touch through justice@accotinkuu.org.