Bring a Workshop to Your Congregation, Organization or Region
UU Class Conversations offers several types of webinars and workshops – from 90-minute online trainings to half-day and full-day in-person sessions. Contact us to learn more about pricing and logistics at uuclassbridges@gmail.com
Virtual 2-Hour Workshop
From Social Class Ally to Accomplice and Partner
Learn how to move from an ally in the struggle for justice to become a true partner with communities seeking class and racial justice in this fast-paced, interactive Zoominar. Be part of the social change you seek by first discovering how social class and classism have shaped our lives, our beloved faith community, and the organizations we are part of and support.
You will:
- Examine your own class background.
- Gain an understanding of how that background gifts you with strengths.
- Learn how being unaware of your class background can limit what we bring to congregational life and justice work
Through the lens of Unitarian Universalism, we will also examine the ways that oppressions like classism and white supremacy intersect to exacerbate inequality.
With this knowledge, we will learn how individually and collectively – as class allies, accomplices and partners – we can eliminate barriers to a just, equitable society. And as we look outward, we will also discover together how to become a more class-inclusive faith community.
“This program is an excellent introduction to issues of class and classism, as well as some remedies, done in an efficient and well-used time.” — Joy M, N.C.
Full-Day Workshop
Organizing to Address Classism in Your Faith Community
This interactive, full-day workshop begins with an exploration of the many ways that class and classism shape our early lives and lifetime worldview. The workshop then moves beyond the individual to the impact that class differences and classism have on our UU congregations and organizations. Ultimately, you will create a detailed organizational plan of action to:
- Explore the implications of class and classism.
- Connect classism to growing inequality and other oppressions.
- Begin the organizing process to become less classist and more class inclusive.
Participants share class stories in order to better understand their own class backgrounds and current class status. Strengths and challenges of each class are identified, and participants develop language and concepts to bridge class differences. Together, we explore what classism looks like in congregational life and social justice work. Your team will complete the day with a detailed outline to shift your full faith community toward greater awareness of class as you devise clear strategies to confront classism in your UU circles and wider community.
Part 2 – We offer an hour consultation following the workshop to help you continue to create an organizing action plan for your efforts to address classism.
Half-Day Workshops
Facing Class and Classism
This half-day workshop will help participants become familiar with the concepts of class and classism and better understand their own class backgrounds. Strengths and challenges of each class background will be identified and participants helped to develop language, concepts, and strategies to bridge class differences. We will illuminate the intersection between class and race and other issues of diversity and explore the role of classism in escalating inequality.
Create Justice – Not Walls: Class and Race in UU and US Settings
This half-day workshop will help participants become familiar with how racial and social class biases have been part of the American experience since before the country’s founding. But, bias damages not only the target of prejudice but also the perpetrators and affected communities.
The past few years have seen a marked increase in racially- and ethnically-motivated hate crimes, the rise of white nationalist groups, scapegoating of the white working-class, and hateful, biased hateful rhetoric coming from our highest political offices.
This workshop examines the intersection of class and race and how both separately and together shape the experiences of different members of our UU movement and society-at-large. Based on our seven UU Principles, this interactive workshop also gives participants the chance to address:
- How class and classism and race and racism affect the life of a congregation/organization, and its spiritual and social justice work.
- Ways to make changes toward becoming more inclusive.
- Ideas for expanding our welcome tent and increasing congregational membership.
