September 2025 in Advocacy: Part I
Starling Carter, Director of Communications and Advocacy
It’s been just over a month since I officially became the Communications and Advocacy Director here at Community Church, and there is much to share about my first few weeks in this role. I want to share some reflections on what I’ve been up to and how my thinking about this position and what it means to the church is developing day-to-day. There’s really too much from September to go into in one post, so I’m going to split my reflections up into two sections. This first part will focus on the UU Service Committee’s Stewardship Circle meeting, and the second part will be about events (including both meetings and protests) during the United Nations General Assembly.
September kicked off with a short trip to Seattle, where I was invited to take part in the UU Service Committee’s Stewardship Circle meeting. This meeting is intended for stewardship-level donors to UUSC to connect more deeply with one another and with the work that they are supporting throughout the world, and the team at UUSC was kind enough to invite me along to learn more about what they’re up to (and, hopefully, how we at Community Church can plug in).This year’s meeting highlighted US-based partners who are doing amazing grassroots work on issues related to immigration and gender justice - I would love to tell you more about them and their work, but it is, by necessity, under the radar.
UUSC is an unconventional organization in the international nonprofit space. They let their partners on the ground lead the way in determining what needs to be done in their communities and helping connect them to resources (financial, human, legal, and other) that will help them do it. It was incredibly inspiring to hear about the ways people across the country and the world are mobilizing in the face of conflict, emergencies, and authoritarianism, and about the commitment of UUSC to centering affected communities.
This model feels to me like a powerful way to live out our values and work toward true transformation. While there is always a place for charity that gets essential goods and services to those who need them, there is a real power and humility in knowing that we don’t have the solutions to the crises facing the world and using our resources to uplift and equip those who are already doing the work of protecting and nurturing their communities.
As part of the programming for the weekend, author and journalist Masha Gessen was present to receive an award for their human rights work over a special dinner. In conversation with UUSC President and CEO Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, Gessen gave powerful and insightful remarks about the rise of fascism in our country and around the world, as well as some of the ways we can undermine and resist authoritarianism.
I’ve thought a lot about an anecdote they shared about a group of people in Poland who have been organizing to meet the needs (clothing, food, water, etc.) of refugees arriving across the border with Belarus for the past four years. The group shared with Masha that throughout these years of action they haven’t known exactly where the food that they were distributing came from - only that when their shared fridge ran empty, they put out a call, and more food would appear. I think this is such a striking and clear example of the fact that we all have our roles to play in the work of resistance and community care. Not all of us are able to set out on foot into the dark woods with a backpack full of supplies to aid a fleeing family, risking detention or bodily harm in the process. But, maybe we can be the ones to make the soup.
