MUUSJA, the Minnesota UU Social Justice Alliance, connects our 27 UU congregations, with state and national partners, as a trusted guide for statewide social justice and environmental action. Today’s service highlights Minnesota UU’s work in 2024 to preserve the razor-thin progressive majority in our state legislature in order to protect reproductive rights and gender-affirming healthcare for our residents, and as a refuge for the upper Midwest.

After serving 4 years as Executive Director of the Minnesota UU Social Justice Alliance, MUUSJA [pronounced “moose-jaw”], Karen currently donates her time as MUUSJA’s Democracy Strategist to coordinate “UU the Vote” for Minnesota. Karen is a lifelong UU and community organizer, who has managed campaign teams, led phone-banks, published Op-Ed letters, testified at city council and state legislative hearings, and led rallies in the Capitol rotunda, but one of her fondest memories was brewing coffee and cooking porridge on a camp stove in the north woods, for 50 water protectors walking from Itasca to Saint Paul as we tried to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. The lesson of the Treaty People was the lesson of every movement where people are praying with their feet, hearts, and minds: It’s about showing up, again and again, for the long haul, whether or not we win every time. We are interdependent and always connected, with one another, with all the creatures, with the Earth and water. We keep each other safe. We show up. We persist. It’s never about one issue, one movement, one action, or one election.