20250819 STAND Newsletter – Building beloved community
Traducción (Spanish)
What’s new with STAND
Amazing job at Sound Science Saves Lives . Thanks, Everyone. Your willingness to show up on Saturday will make our path easier in ways that will become clear soon.
STAND at a pub coming up soon at Marlay House – see you there on August 20th.
Our August general meeting will be replaced by a documentary viewing on September 6th. Take a look at the flyer.
Action NOW!
Take a moment to relax. When was the last time you sat for 15 minutes for yourself? There’s been a lot of action lately, so sit and re-center. There will be plenty to do soon, and remember that making sure you’re healthy enough to continue is activism.
Dear Friends,
On the good advice from one of our leadership members a while back, we were challenged to come up with a mission statement that would help guide and center our actions going forward. After some discussion, this is what came out:
Building Beloved Community to assert and defend the dignity of all people.
In Martin Luther King’s vision, Beloved Community was what was left when division was cast aside in favor of equity and justice. It was a coming together of the people without qualification in pursuit of a better world for us all. STAND shares that vision.
And so, we have set out to build that community. One thing I’ve learned in the past 6 months is how many different forms that effort can, and must take. It sometimes looks like sharing a meal with your neighbors, and I’d invite you to a meal on the 6th where we will watch a documentary on what the pursuit of peace in the midst of chaos really looks like. Sometimes it looks like meeting friends at a pub. Sometimes it looks like STANDing with those that need our support in a time of crisis and demanding better. We STAND with each other and for each other – that’s how the Beloved Community gets built.
And it doesn’t stop at the membership of STAND. It doesn’t stop at the edge of our communities. It doesn’t stop at the edge of Decatur. It requires us to continuously look outward for those that have been pushed to the margin. It’s our job to pull them in and give them a voice, making peace not through the suppression of conflict but through the inclusion of the many. So, as STAND looks forward to the International Day of Peace, we will work towards peace in our community by celebrating the voices that must be heard to make that peace a reality. On September 20th, we will show you what that looks like. Or rather, you will show us what that looks like. Mark your calendars.
STANDing with you,
Matt
