Media roundup: Service Committee reports on conditions in detention centers

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee released a report on immigrant experiences inside detention centers in the United States. The report details the traumatic experiences that migrants have in the centers and the mental and emotional damage detention leaves on individuals and families. (ThinkProgress – 10.22.15)

Thank you cards inspire a Hiroshima documentary

After Hiroshima, Japan, was devastated by an American atomic bomb in 1945, members of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., sent survivors at Honkawa Elementary School a shipment of gifts. The children expressed their gratitude in beautifully rendered thank you cards sent to the congregation. Inspired by these cards decades later, Hiroshima native Shizumi Manale interviewed many of the child survivors. A documentary of those interviews is being screened at High Plains Unitarian Universalist Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (The Gazette – 10.21.15)

Opposing incarceration of the mentally ill

Bill Scown represented the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois, at a recent assembly to bring attention to the plight of the mentally ill incarcerated in the Kane County, Illinois, adult correctional center. Scown was joined by interfaith leaders from across the community to tell the stories of the mentally ill in the community and find humane solutions to the problems they face. (Chicago Tribune – 10.22.15)

A reflection on racism

Marcus Harrison Green of Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Seattle, Washington, shares his experience of internalized racism as a black man in a predominantly white  community. He acknowledges that having a public conversation about racism is difficult, but urges people to work through that difficulty if we as a society are ever to eliminate the need to say that “Black Lives Matter.” (Yes! Magazine – 10.16.15)

Conference raises visibility of LGBTQ religious people

Over 200 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) advocates and religious leaders met in Salt Lake City for the annual Faith & Family LGBTQ Power Summit. One of the purposes of the summit, noted attendee the Rev. Mykal Slack of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh, North Carolina, is to make the stories of LGBTQ religious people known in the wider world. (Salt Lake Tribune – 10.20.15)