Friend,

The new year is off to a full start, full of many pressing needs and new hopes, too. One pressing need you can act on right now is voting rights. Check out UU the Vote for details and to take action.

We will need one another for support and inspiration this year! This is why we are so excited to join you and other social justice leaders at our first statewide Social Justice Leaders Meetup on Tuesday, Feb 22, 2022 from 7 to 8:30 PM ET via Zoom. 

Register Here for the Zoom meeting 

This gathering will provide a much-needed opportunity to connect with UUs, share ideas, and discover how to form an issue cluster (or support one) to focus our energies statewide. We want to learn from you about all your social justice hopes and needs. So please register if you can and help build the foundation of the South Carolina UU Justice Alliance. We look forward to greeting you there! 

- Pippin & Jean, South Carolina UU Justice Alliance 

This project is funded in part by the Fund for Unitarian Universalist Social Responsibility

Connie Quirk (full bio)

SCUUJA Board Member and Co-chair Social Action Committee at UU Congregation of Columbia

Profile of a UU Social Justice Leader

How do you tell your UU story? In 2001, about a year after becoming guardians of two nephews, my husband and I realized they needed a youth group to help extend their social horizons We discovered the UU Congregation of Gwinnett, GA and have been UUs ever since. My husband and I joined UUCC shortly after moving to Columbia in 2016. We now co-chair the Social Action Committee. 

What is at the heart of your social justice passion? 

As a child of a military family, I traveled the world, witnessing great discrepancies between those who have and those who have not.  As a special education teacher, the children's realities made injustices obvious and real. One of my young students, a US citizen with a non-citizen father being held in detention, died of medical complications. Our system refused to allow the father to join his family to mourn, despite the fact that he had been accused of no crime other than being undocumented.  It was a travesty.  I have been working for change in our immigrations policies ever since.

What excites you about the new SC UU Justice Alliance? Having been a member of two Social Justice committees and now co-chair of the UUCC SAC, I’ve seen us accomplish good works within our community.  Working together as 10 UU congregations and many partners, we have the potential to speak louder on behalf of greater equity and justice.

Clayton Memorial UU Church is a Sanctuary Congregation

Did you know that Clayton Memorial UU Church recently became a sanctuary church? They did!

When they announced their decision at a public meeting at the end of 2018, their pastor at the time, Rev. Michelle Robinson, shared the following statement: 

“For decades now, under the leadership of both parties, our country has conducted incoherent and often unjust immigration policy. In order to fulfill a principal of our faith, which affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and to carry out its call to challenge injustice with courage, we are today announcing Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church is a sanctuary church. Our intention is to offer sanctuary to a few carefully selected individuals from the immigrant community who have been ordered deported, and we feel have not received the full benefit of due process of the law.”

The congregation has already offered sanctuary to at least one family, although they chose another option. Clayton Memorial UU is the only UU sanctuary congregation in the state.