Responsibilities for #BLUUMicro30 Regional Team Leads

Goals: Build many BLUU Communities that are actively learning and growing skills to organize ourselves and our people toward our collective liberation through intentional, purposeful and connected events and actions. And doing this organizing grounded in BLUU’s 7 principles. 

Please familiarize yourself thoroughly with the BLUU Creating Connections tool kit as well as checking out the webinar to get a sense of a previous campaign.

We want people in the BLUUMicro30 Communities to feel connected, warm, and welcomed into our larger BLUU community - which is global. We want people to feel empowered to do projects that feed their spirit and hearts that are also connected to a larger movement for Black lives. Ongoing support for team organizers will come from the OC through the website and staff as needed. There is a balance to strike between people having the freedom to execute contextually relevant events that are also connected to the larger #BLUUMicro30 community and connected to the Movement for Black Lives while being supported with enough materials and resources in a way that isn’t rigid or overly constricting.

For folks in our community coming from traditional UU spaces, this can be counter cultural. UUs in many spaces look for a top-down approach. #BLUUMicro30 is not a top-down approach. The team organizers are not the “top” and the BLUU OC is not the “top,” rather we seek to create BLUU groups all across the country that are their own “top”. We believe in a leaderful movement. That said, there must be some structure and some way to connect together and that is where a central and decentralized model becomes useful (instead of a top-down approach).The difference may seem small to some but it’s implications are powerful. This doesn’t mean people are acting in isolation or out of sync with a national campaign or completely disconnected from others in the BLUU community. It does mean that people should feel empowered by and connected to the resources and guiding materials coming from the OC and there should be room within the loose structure for people’s own ideas, events, and actions to come into being--in a way that is in alignment with our spiritual community (the 7-principles of Black lives).

Estimated hours 5 - 10 hours each month. (But this is really up to you how much time you want to give, you could easily do more than this. With less than a five-hour commitment, you won’t really be able to create the kind of organizing community that is meaningful and connected.)

Responsibilities for Regional Team Leads

• Convening regular meetings via phone or Zoom (or other video conferencing platform) at least once a month but can be more than that too!

• Planning and executing events relevant to your local community that are connected with the BLUUMicro30 themes.

• Each gathering for newer folks there should be an orientation and going over of the BLUU Principles, brief intro to UU principles

• Each gathering folks should go over community agreements, based off of the BLUU Community Agreements that we co-created at the BLUU Convening.

• Check-in with staff and Team Sankofa (who are designing the Micro30 action for Fall/Winter 2018) about how meetings are going, asking for support where needed.

• Team organizers need to have a clear process for welcoming newcomers on a regular basis including folks who are new to UUism, the staff and OC are happy to help support in creating materials and resources in supporting a welcoming culture - it is up to the team organizers and each BLUUMicro30 Area Community to utilize them or other resources in helping grow and build out the teams!

Challenge:

Because we are mostly a virtual community so far and spread out across the country, team organizers need to be somewhat comfortable with technology and/or interested in learning how to use videoconferencing and social media in ways that bring people together. We’re building out capacity to reach out via phone and in-person (non-virtual ways), but as of right now, we rely on technology a lot. We see this as a good thing and can be a challenge at times. We need people who aren’t afraid of communicating in a variety of formats and ways.

The Reorganization and Launch in September 2018

We’ll be introducing the new area teams and team organizers gearing up for the Fall/Winter #BLUUMicro30 campaign launch. This means that the team organizers need to have capacity within the next coming weeks to be building energy. Team Organizers will also be doing outreach to folks who have expressed interest in joining #BLUUMicro30 or previously participated in #BLUUMicro30 to gather teams.  

The Fall/Winter Micro30 campaign is being developed by members of the Team Sankofa.  Team Sankofa will provide logistical support and guidance to the Community Area Leads for executing the campaign. Weekly short check-in meetings with the Team Sankofa (fka AMC cohort), the BLUU Community Organizer, and #BLUUMicro30 Regional Team Leads will take place beginning in October.  Team Sankofa and the BLUU Community Organizer will be providing Regional Team Leads with a toolkit to execute the action, resources, and technical support.

We are looking for two #BLUUMicro30 Regional Team Leads for each region:

West - Pacific: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington

West - Mountain: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming

Midwest - West North Central: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota

Midwest - East North Central: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin

Northeast - Middle Atlantic + DMV: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania,, Washington D.C., Northern Virginia

Northeast - New England: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont

South - West South Central: Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

South - East South Central:  Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee

South - South Atlantic: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Southern Virginia, West Virginia