The Green Team met on Tuesday, Sept. 1, for our monthly meeting, the theme of the meeting was how we can make sure our neighbors and community members are voting. Do you have a plan for voting? Have you talked to your friends and family, especially friends and families in other states who might be voting by mail for the first time, about their plans for voting? We discussed the various scenarios that could prevent people's mail-in ballots from reaching their county election boards, between the efforts to slow down the US Postal Service and rules which might prevent ballots from being counted. We also worried together about the weeks after Election Day, while the ballots are being counted and the anxiety this uncertainty will create. We committed to talking with as many people as we can between now and Election Day to help people come up with their voting plans, and we'll be talking to Keystone folks as well to make sure your plans are in place!
We also talked about the Sierra Club's upcoming workshops on commenting at the upcoming hearings on the Kalama methanol refinery (see Take 5 for Advocacy article above), and the need to stay on top of strategies of disinformation that big polluters put out about plants like these.
Finally, we continued our discussion into Jim Antel's book Climate Church, Climate World, chapter 4, which centered on the action that churches can do to be a partner in the fight for climate justice. We recognize the need for lifting up in prayer the harm that human beings have done to the earth, and how those of us currently living today are leaving an unjust world for the generations who follow us. We decided to start working on connecting our efforts as a UCC Creation Justice church and a Green Team with other Creation Justice churches and Green Teams in the Pacific Northwest Conference and across the US. How can we support one another, and how can we learn from one another in the work we're doing for climate justice? And how can we join our voices and power to others so we can make real change in this work? That's what The Keystone Green Team is committed to this month.
The next Green Team meeting will be Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 6:30 p.m. on Keystone's Zoom. We'll discuss Climate Church, Climate World Chapter 5, report back on our work to help our neighbors with their voting plans, and other issues.
~ reported by Pastor Yuki