UUs for Racial Justice

August 2026 - Celebrate Transgender History Month with us, honoring the courage, resilience, and contributions of transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming communities throughout history.

California is currently the only state that recognizes Transgender History Month. Originally recognized by Mayoral Proclamation in the City of San Francisco in 2021, Transgender History Month was adopted into California legislation through HR 57 in 2023, making way for August 2024 to be the first statewide recognition of the commemorative month status throughout the state.

In August, 1966, the Compton's Cafeteria riot took place in San Francisco. It is recognized as one of the first LGBTQ+ civil rights acts of resistance in the United States. August is celebrated by many transgender advocates as a turning point in transgender civil rights history. The events that took place following the incident at Compton's Cafeteria led to community building and courageous societal changes in the San Francisco area, creating services for transgender people that eventually spread across the nation in many cases.

Click here to learn more about the Compton's Cafeteria Riot that took place in August of 1966: https://www.sfcenter.org/history/remembering-san-franciscos-comptons-cafeteria-riot/

From the activists who fought at Compton's Cafeteria and The Stonewall Inn to the trailblazers creating change today, trans people have always been leaders in the struggle for justice and liberation. This month, let's deepen our understanding, celebrate transgender joy and resistance, and recommit to standing alongside our trans siblings, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Explore a timeline of transgender figures and events throughout history:
https://www.transgenderhistorymonth.com/timeline

The Compton's Cafeteria Riot:
https://tinyurl.com/4s8x8r2a

Legislation Tracker:
https://translegislation.com

The Transgender District (San Francisco, CA):
https://transgenderdistrictsf.com

More trans history:
https://www.transgenderhistorymonth.com

Juneteenth calls us to celebrate hard-won freedom and honor those who fought that battle. It also reminds us that liberation is ongoing work.

Today we celebrate freedom's arrival. We honor the beauty of resilience, the complexity of our shared history, and the power of those who refused to stop fighting for justice.

While we rejoice in progress today, we recommit to working for justice for all, because the work is not yet finished.

This Pride, we celebrate the sacred worth and beauty of every person. Love calls us to show up, speak out, and build a world where all can thrive. Happy Pride Month from UUs for Racial Justice!

Caribbean music is testimony. Each genre is a unique archive of survival, intelligent creativity and an endless treasure trove of influence that continues to reshape the sound of the world.

“You can cage the singer but not the song.” – Harry Belafonte

Read more at: https://bridgesuu.org/week-2-the-sound-of-the-islands-june-8-14

Reflection: Is there an artist who introduced you to the the sounds of the Caribbean?

The Caribbean did not produce revolutionaries by accident. It produced them because oppression demands it from people who know that survival without agency will never be enough. Here are three Caribbean revolutionaries who have shown the world how to hold your head up and speak truth to power.

Read about this week's Revolutionaries at https://bridgesuu.org/celebrating-diversity-jun-2026-week-1-title/.

Featuring:

Toussaint Louverture
Born into slavery in Saint-Domingue - the French colony that would become Haiti - and died in a French prison in 1803, one year before the revolution he led succeeded in establishing the first Black republic in the world.

Claudia Jones
Arrived in Harlem at nine years old. After her mother's passing, Claudia contracted tuberculosis at a young age. She channeled her grief and rage into becoming one of the most dangerous women in America. Dangerous enough that the United States government imprisoned her and deported her in 1955 under the McCarran Act. Jones was a member of the Communist Party, but her actual work was labor organizing, anti-racism, and women's rights. The Communist label was really the legal mechanism the government used to silence her - the same playbook used against Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and dozens of others during the Red Scare.

Una Marson
In 1932 a twenty-six year old woman arrived in London without knowing a single person and carrying only a suitcase and a manuscript. Within a decade she had built the infrastructure that gave Caribbean literature and voices their first global platforms. She became the first Black woman employed by the BBC - at a time when the BBC was the only voice of the empire that had colonized her island.

"I was born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of a free man." - Toussaint Louverture

Reflection: What does it mean to fight for things you may not live to see? Every tablespoon of sugar carries the history of who produced it at a high cost. How does Caribbean resistance live on in the things you consume, the music you love, or the art that moves you?

The Caribbean is a rich and complex world with dozens of islands, hundreds of languages, and five centuries of colonial impact.

Caribbean American Heritage Month is a celebration of what survived across the Middle Passage in https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0032, the resistance and revolution held in the hearts and minds of enslaved people, and how their stories and spirits are reclaimed through ongoing resistance, invention, cultural expression, and institution-building across generations.

June is also Black Music Month, poetic timing since the genius of the African diaspora and Caribbean expression are inseparable in their influence on American music. To trace either is to arrive at the same place: enslaved people who were taught their culture had no value but survived to give the world some of its most enduring art.

See the full post at https://bridgesuu.org/caribbean-currents-voices-of-vision-art-and-liberation/.

Week 1: Roots and Revolutionaries
Week 2: The Sound of the Islands
Week 3: Word, Story, and Image
Week 4: Builders and Bridge-Makers
Week 5: Rising Voices

Multiple sclerosis touches millions of lives, reminding us that bodies are sacred, struggles are real, and no one should face them alone.

As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including those living with chronic illness, their caregivers, and all who love them. Today, we stand in solidarity, advocate for accessible healthcare, and commit to building a world where everyone is seen, supported, and valued.

To find out more about MS, visit the MSIF website at www.msif.org.

🧡

Remembering Malcolm X | May 19

On what would have been Malcolm X's 101st birthday, we honor a man whose journey embodied radical transformation.

Born Malcolm Little, he evolved through pain, incarceration, and spiritual awakening into a fierce advocate for Black dignity and self-determination.

What many don't know: near the end of his life, Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca shifted his worldview toward a more universal vision of human liberation — one that resonates with our UU commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Following his April 1964 pilgrimage, Malcolm X, then known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, significantly shifted his ideology towards global human rights and universal brotherhood. His post-Mecca speeches and letters, including the "Letter from Mecca," emphasize his renunciation of racial, particularly anti-white, indictments in favor of human dignity and equality.

His life challenges us to ask: Are we willing to keep growing, even when it costs us everything?

Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," striking down school segregation and marking a pivotal moment in the fight for racial justice.

Seventy-two years later, we recognize both the courage of those who fought for this victory and the reality that the work is far from finished.

School segregation persists through housing patterns, funding inequities, and systemic barriers that continue to deny equal opportunity to Black and Brown students.

As Unitarian Universalists committed to the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we are called to more than remembrance—we are called to action.

What can we do?
- Advocate for equitable school funding in your community
- Support organizations working to dismantle educational inequity
- Examine how segregation shows up in your own neighborhood schools
- Listen to and amplify the voices of those most impacted

The promise of Brown v.Board demands our continued commitment.

Week 3: Creativity, Innovation, and Cultural Expression (May 15 to 21)

Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander artists have long created from inside the tension that creativity is inseparable from the communities, histories, and urgencies that shaped them.

This week we honor an architect who redefines what it means to hold a moment, a poet who builds bridges across the Arab American experience one ordinary image at a time, and a Marshallese poet-diplomat who read their verses at the United Nations as her homeland is being swallowed by a rising sea.

Maya Lin was 21 years old and a Yale undergraduate when she was commissioned to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. The polished black granite wall, cut into the earth to enshrine the names of 58,000 dead, not alphabetically, not heroically, but chronologically in the order they died. This testament to the cost of war has become the most visited monument in Washington.... read more at: https://bit.ly/42XhIKF.

The prolific Poet, Author, Editor, and Songwriter, Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis to a Palestinian father and an American mother, and grew up between Jerusalem and San Antonio. For more than forty years she has been what she calls a wandering poet - crossing borders on the strength of language alone, leading workshops ... read more at: https://bit.ly/42XhIKF.

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a Marshallese poet, performance artist, and Climate Envoy for the Republic of the Marshall Islands. In 2014 she stood before the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Summit and performed "Dear Matafele Peinam," a poem written to her infant daughter. The powerful piece is a promise of “home” made to a child whose home may not survive.... read more at: https://bit.ly/42XhIKF.

"We are the ones who will live with the consequences of your decisions." - Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, UN Climate Summit

Reflection: When has art changed the way you understood a political or moral crisis? What would it mean to you if the work of these artists was not just as inspiration, but as an invitation to engage with the worlds they are inheriting?