The mission of the Social Justice Coordinating Team (SJCT) is to provide a place for members, friends, and supporters of the UUCM to act on our shared UU principles, locally and globally, to implement initiatives that further work to bring an end to systemic inequalities. The SJCT extends the important work of direct service for individuals, communities, and ecosystems victimized by unequal power relations to recognize and rely on social change strategies aimed at restructuring those unequal power relations themselves.  Those systemic change strategies include community organizing, advocacy, and activism that galvanizes congregational energies so that individuals and families can do the work of justice.

In particular, the process by which the SJCT endeavors to put our UU faith in action is by building and leveraging the UUCM’s institutional power by serving as “the team that organizes the teams” of social justice committees within the congregation. Currently, the SJCT coordinating team includes representatives from the UUCM Undoing Racism Committee, Rainbow UU, Green Sanctuary, UU Senior Youth, UU FaithAction NJ, as well as members of our congregation active in the Montclair Interfaith (Sanctuary) Alliance, and Montclair Emergency Services for the Homeless (MESH), among others. Together, the coordinating team works to identify 1-2 major social justice issues each year to present to the UUCM Board and congregation for ratification as our “annual social justice focus campaigns.”  These congregational-level focus campaigns do not preclude members and friends from working on a wider range of issues, but rather serve to unify our energies and raise the volume on a UU voice for change.

Most importantly, the SJCT collaborates with our interfaith and community partners to increase the political strength of all people seeking love, equity, justice and compassion, and actively affirms and invites such seekers to the UUCM as a welcoming spiritual home.