Our full SideWithLove social justice team meets regularly to build community and energy across our individual teams. Our individual teams meet to focus on their continuing projects.

The work that we do together to build a world in which all of us are free and thriving is interrelated. Our teams are very porous. When we ground our spirits, grow our skills, and act strategically for justice in deep relationship with each other and our movements, we choose to Side With Love.

Our full SWL meeting is a place where we unite in work towards a world where we all thrive. Together we take action, Side With Love, and make deep impacts in this critical moment.

We invite you to our next Side With Love social justice meeting on January 10, 2026. This Saturday, we will discuss the proposals for group organization surrounding topics such as recurring meetings, the general structure of meetings, and our vision for continued engagement in the community with the aim of creating and sustaining a better community for all of us.

Our conversation will be centered on a group culture that is safe, welcoming and where people of marginalized identities will feel empowered in their activism.

At our last SWL meeting, our large group (in person and online), we shared a rich list of issues that are bubbling up for each of us. And we broke into smaller circles or working groups to invite more conversation on three large issues:

1. Immigration and local concerns
2. Voting Rights
3. Boycotts

These working groups are identifying their leads to help each group become educated and take next steps.

Back in our larger group, we focused on building coalitions with other vibrant local groups. We asked “Who are we locking arms with in solidarity?”

SIDE WITH LOVE is the organizational strategy team of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

We harness the power of love to confront and transform systems of oppression and build a world where all people can thrive. Through organizing, education, and mobilization, we equip Unitarian Universalists and aligned communities to take spiritually grounded, justice-oriented action. Subscribe to get updates.

The work that we do together to build a world in which all of us are free and thriving is interrelated. When we ground our spirits, grow our skills, and act strategically for justice in deep relationship with each other and our Movements, we choose to Side With Love.

Our Social Justice Teams

Our congregation is a partner congregation of the Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ). We voluntarily joined the national network of UUSJ partner congregations, who live out their faith through engagement, education, and advocacy to advance equitable national policies and actions, aligned with UU values. Many of us in the congregation are also individual members of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC).

We are living in a time of escalating injustice, but also one of powerful resistance. Those in power seek to divide us, weaken our movements, and strip away fundamental rights—but we know that justice is only possible when we build solidarity together. Our faith in human dignity, our belief in collective liberation, and our commitment to justice call us to act.

As a congregation, we are also members of the Interfaith Council of Plattsburgh and Clinton County. We volunteer at many levels for the Plattsburgh Interfaith Food Shelf, whose mission is to provide emergency food to all residents of Clinton County. And we partner with Plattsburgh Cares on their emergency food bag assembly project (see Immigration Team below).

We are dedicated to focusing on action when it comes to social justice issues, whether it involves speaking out on reproductive justice, democracy, fighting for our LGBTQ+ siblings, climate justice, immigration justice or building solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. ​

Read more about UUSJ and the group of strong partners–national organizations that include Women’s March, ACLU, League of Women Voters, Poor People’s Campaign, Indivisible, and many others. Read more about UUSC.

Democracy Team

Our Democracy/UU the Vote Team and our BLM team (below) are building coalitions with local organizations and allied groups that support the momentum of state and national movements around democracy and social justice issues.

We hope to advance equitable national policies and actions through witness, education, and advocacy. We envision a just, compassionate, and sustainable world community.

UPDATE: JANUARY, 2026

We are partnering with the League of Women Voters of the North Country and with Indivisible Plattsburgh to form a coalition around voting rights.

Last year our postcards were very effective in helping black voters who have felt unseen, unheard, and overlooked to see themselves as a critical part of democracy. In 2026 we want our Reclaim Our Vote postcards to reach over 7 million black voters across key states.

For the General Election, we will campaign in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and possibly Texas. We will start around May 1 . . . but stay tuned. Contact us, if you’re not already on our mailing list for ROV postcarding! love@uuplattsburgh.org

BACKGROUND:

Since 2020, we have partnered with Center for Common Ground and its Reclaim Our Vote (ROV) postcarding campaign.

Primary voting promotes consistent voting habits, and greatly increases the likelihood of voting in the fall. Our postcards inform voters of where and when to vote, and key issues at stake. In spring, 2024, we worked with Reclaim Our Vote and Center for Common Ground for the Georgia Primary (general/non-partisan), the Virginia Primary and Team Unity NC.

For the general election 2024, we’ve teamed with the Team Unity GA coalition. We sent 3900 postcards to registered Black voters in Georgia, where basic civil rights are threatened, to emphasize that their vote is consequential.

For the 2025 Virginia General Election, we wrote to registered Black voters, urging them to vote in the November election for Governor, Lt. Governor, and the House of Delegates.

Since 2018, Center for Common Ground postcards have made a huge difference to rural voters of color who had no other contact opportunities. Our message asking them to check their voter registration, pledge to vote, and how to get information on when and where they could vote empowers these forgotten communities.

Thank you for supporting the freedom to vote and for your outreach to communities of color voters.

Join us in this good work! Here’s what we do

Or contact love@uuplattsburgh.org

Black Lives Matter Team

Most fundamental to us as a congregation is our spiritual growth. We work to create spaces for us to dig deep and listen — learn — grow. If you’re interested in making a difference and expanding your knowledge of the BLM movement, consider joining our regularly meeting group. Learn more here. ​

Our work also intersects with the Democracy/UU the Vote squad (above), which partners with Center for Common Ground. Join us in our postcarding campaigns! Please see other upcoming BLM-related events here. 

Immigration Team

Our Sponsorship of a Refugee Newcomer Family

(Update January 28, 2025) It is with great sadness that the UUFP treasurer and Immigration Squad lead, Ursula Jones, made the following report to the congregation at its Jan. 26 Budget Meeting.

“. . . I report that on January 22, 2025, the Executive Order on “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program” was signed. In accordance with this order the intake of new applications for the Welcome Corps is suspended, as well as processing of all active or previously submitted applications. All travel arrangements for refugees to enter the United States has been suspended for 90 days. This order covers the Afghan family [a father and mother who have an almost-two-year-old daughter and an infant son] with whom we were matched. It is not known what will happen after the 90-day suspension has ended or what challenges are being prepared regarding this executive order. We hope that the program will become operational again. 

“Of immediate concern is another order which states that the people who have been admitted from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela for two years under a special “humanitarian parole” program will be deported prior to the end of their two-year stay with the rationale that this program is illegal. We hope that challenges to this order will be successful.

“Our immigration squad is following events closely and will disseminate actions one can take to counter these orders. 

“We have received emails from our Welcome Corps and IRIS mentors that they and all of their staff have been laid off as of Friday, Jan. 24, at 3 p.m. — effective at 5 p.m., but were allowed time on Jan. 27 to email sponsors about this change. This is a further step in dismantling refugee programs. We do note that the Welcome.US website is up and functioning. They have posted a link to assist those supportive of these programs to call their representatives in the federal government with their concerns. Here is a document that provides guidance on how to contact your federal representatives. Please consider doing so immediately!

“In the meantime, we will keep in trust all the monies, furniture and furnishings donated to the refugee project in hopes that we will be able to sponsor a refugee family. I don’t mind continuing to store things in my garage for as long as there is a reasonable expectation that the program will become operational again. We put out a new request for items needed for an infant and a toddler; if you have items you would like to donate, let us know and we can discuss storage and any other concerns.

“We will try to keep the congregation informed. If you have questions or would like to become involved in advocacy, please contact Ursula Jones at love@uuplattsburgh.org .”

BACKGROUND:

In the fiscal year 2021, the US government resettled 11,400 refugees through its traditional resettlement system and its 10 resettlement agency partners. Two years later, through the efforts of Welcome.US, efforts to engage Americans, civic institutions and the private sector have enabled our country to welcome over 400,000 people in need of refuge.

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship voted in April, 2024, to join this movement and to apply through Welcome Corps to be a Private Sponsorship Group.

As part of the application process, the Plattsburgh Refugee Organization (PRO), a group of seven core members of the fellowship’s immigration squad, has been working to assist our newcomers over their first 90 days in the US. We have raised funds to pay for essentials that include housing, utilities, phone plans, food, technology equipment, school supplies, and winter necessities.

If you have questions, please contact us at love@uplattsburgh.org.

Our Partnership with Plattsburgh Cares

Since 2017, our Immigration Squad has been partnering with Plattsburgh Cares. And as the immigration crisis in our area has evolved over these past six years, Plattsburgh Cares has responded to meet individuals’ humanitarian needs.

In Summer, 2023, the executive committee of Plattsburgh Cares created a new vision: to support our original mission by not only serving the refugee and asylum seekers in our area, but also local people or transients who are food insecure. Our focus now is to create food/emergency supply bags to be distributed by local motel owners (one bag for each family member/person) to people who are being put up by Emergency-After-Hours (Department of Social Services), Plattsburgh Cares, or (through a state grant) our partners at Catholic Charities/St. Joseph’s Community Outreach Center. 

Every month or so, Plattsburgh Cares puts out an email call for a “food bag assembly crew” to meet on a given Friday morning at St. Joseph’s Community Outreach Center in order to fill about 150 emergency food bags. The food bags are dropped off at area motels where folks are placed in emergency housing by DSS — including local citizens and noncitizens who find them themselves stranded in our county. We have been fortunate to have 15-20 volunteers each time we hold a session for food bag assembly. Usually the prepping, bagging and breaking down of boxes takes less than 90 minutes! Volunteer when you’re available. One time, a number of times.

Please reach out to us at love@uuplattsburgh.org if you would like to be on the Emergency Food Bag Assembly email list.

LGBTQ+ and Allies

Each of us has worth and dignity, and that worth includes our gender and our sexuality. As Unitarian Universalists, we not only open our doors to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, we value diversity of sexuality and gender and see it as a spiritual gift. We create inclusive religious communities and work for LGBTQ+ justice and equity as a core part of who we are. All of who you are is sacred. All of who you are is welcome. Learn more. 

Join the UPLIFT monthly gatherings for trans, nonbinary, and other not-entirely-or-at-all-cis UUs. Join us to connect with other trans/nonbinary+ UUs and co-create support and community across our faith. All you need to bring is yourself (and other trans/nonbinary friends, if you’d like)! Learn more about this space.

Please see any upcoming LGBTQ+-related events here. 

Climate Team

Food Scraps Project UPDATE

The food scraps bin from River Valley Regeneratives has come to our fellowship!! Hop on to our Climate Justice project.

One thing that separates River Valley Regeneratives from other composting bins is that any fruit, vegetable, eggshells, leaves and meat bones are accepted. There are many advantages to composting, both environmentally and economically. Composting is beneficial to soil by reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides, wood preservation and chemical fertilizers. Food scraps that enter the waste stream will decompose, release methane gas. Keeping the scraps out if this stream is a concrete way to reduce the release of greenhouse gasses.

The bin that collects the food scraps will be at the side entrance of the church at the top of the ramp. There are green buckets at the back of the sanctuary that you can pick up to use to bring your food scraps to church. Our congregation’s operating budget covers the cost for the service – so anyone can use it for free. Questions? Contact Rory Fischer or Kris Lutters at love@uuplattsburgh.org. Donations are welcome.