Good Evening. It is with a great deal of appreciation and joy that I join you today, here at my first General Assembly. Your very warm welcome has meant so much to me during my first months at UUSC as the fifth executive director - and as a torchbearer for Unitartian Universalist principles and values. I am so proud to be here and build upon our legacy of making a difference in the world, to work with you to fulfill the promise of justice.

All of us are now celebrating the 60th anniversary of UUSC. When you looked in your program, it said this was a lecture, but it really is a party, our sixtieth birthday party. When Waitstill and Martha Sharp -- the founders of what is now the Service Committee - began their journey to Nazi-occupied Europe in 1939, they didn't know exactly what awaited them. But their faith impelled them to action on behalf of those struggling for human rights, for their very existence, for OUR existence as a civilized and just society and world. The Sharps and other Unitarian Universalists came together with a distinct mission of social action and a clear message of tolerance, respect for diversity, and the inherent worth and dignity of every individual.

Since that time, UUSC has grown and flourished because of you and the many visionary friends who have come before us. For six decades, you, through the Service Committee, have worked on the front line to advance justice here at home and in far away lands.

Let's look at what our UUSC forebears have done over six decades. In the 1940s, we assisted refugee resettlement and provided medical care, clothing and other services.

In the '50s, we pioneered medical missions overseas, education for Navajo children, teacher education in Cambodia, and desegregated recreational activities in Washington, D.C. In the '60s, we added new desegregation projects in the South and family planning in Haiti. In the '70s in cutting edge fashion, we called for a moratorium on prison construction, organized fact-finding trips and provided testimony before the U.S. Congress. In the '80s, we provided famine relief in Ethiopia, health care in rural Nicaragua, and Promise the Children began. In the '90s, we hosted international forums on leadership, created Just Works workcamps and took delegations to Mexico to investigate human rights abuse

All of these victories of the past decades are not simply given to us and sustained without any action on our part. Indeed, each generation has to recommit and recovenant in ways appropriate to its own time and space. A generation of young activists must be ever prepared to fulfill the promise of justice, to reinvent democracy, to move constructively toward our ideals and the legacies of Waitstill and Martha Sharp. Each one of us from every nation and every generation must be ready to accept the challenge that Horace Mann left us: "Be ashamed to die until you've won some victory for humanity." Every generation - fulfilling the promise.

I know that we at UUSC accept this challenge and affirm it now on the occasion of our 60th anniversary. We are so happy that we see the of realizing "e pluribus unum" (one nation out of many) right here in the United States. We celebrate our role as living witnesses to the vision that is inherent in the Bill of Rights. We recall our participation in powerful resistance movements that have led to undeniable and profound change for people of color, for women, for children, for the protection of our earth.

Wherever there are threats to human rights, we believe the words spoken by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Dr. Patrick T. O'Neill of Wilmington, Delaware, reflected on Dr. King's words in his award-winning 1999 UUSC Vision of Justice Sermon. Rev. O'Neill suggests that the great civil rights leader did not mean that justice is an inevitable outcome of our human interaction. Instead justice is often the result of a difficult, sustained, committed effort by countless people of goodwill.

You - the members and friends of the Service Committee - are those people of goodwill. And, just as we recite our past accomplishments with reverence, we also bear the responsibility to chart a course for the years ahead.

We have gathered at this General Assembly as people standing at a crossroads. We are just breaths away from the next millennium. And we are the ones making the decisions and choices today that will largely determine what tomorrow will bring in our own lives as well as the lives of our families, our clans, our communities and our nations.

This image of standing in the crossroads is very significant to me in a very personal way because to me this crossroads is about deciding again what it means to be a democracy, an inclusive democracy which builds upon the strengths and the diversity of our heritage.

In a way, this is a deja vu experience - all of us of a certain age have seen these historic crossroads before. For example, as a young girl, I attended segregated northern schools at a point in time where we as a nation decided that it would be best to try to move in another direction. That was a crossroads for me personally and for our nation. When I was in elementary school, my fifth grade teacher asked us to think about the year 2000 -- how old would we be? What would life be like? Well, at age 11 any age over 25 seemed terribly old. That was another crossroad!

Now I am the adult and the teacher standing before the children asking them to think of the years ahead. I am asking them to vision. We have to make it possible for them to move forward in a world that we adults have never known. We have to be wise and mature enough to let them move into the world free of our own prejudices. How do we prepare our young ones to fulfill the promise of liberty and justice for all? What is the world we want for young people?

Will we leave our children the legacy of a people who value, respect and welcome the diversity that is unmistakably who we are as a nation, as a world society? Will we address the concerns of gender and class and culture in the context of our long-term common interests of who we want to become - or merely the short-term gains? What road will we take?

We are at this crossroads now. Where will we lead the children? Will technology enable us to see and protest the exploitation of children or the abuse of workers who are continents away? Or will technology further obscure and blur our human relationships even as our interdependence becomes more obvious? Another crossroads.

At this crossroads to the new millennium, every one of us is called to fulfill the promise of justice and to recovenant with our principles because a happy ending to the human rights questions in this world is by no means certain. On your behalf, we at the Service Committee take seriously the imperative to explore the implications of the new millennium and how we can set a course toward constructive and inclusive outcomes that will benefit everyone. Rather than abandon the future to chance or the risk of negative outcomes, we owe it to ourselves and our youth people to look thoughtfully toward the future and outline a vision of how we will indeed fulfill the promise and add value to the legacy that we have inherited. How can we be what we want to see?

Again, Martin Luther King said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." We are a people of faith. There are many reasons why I am a person of faith and believe in justice. But one reason I personally believe in our strength to advance justice because I have experienced it. I've seen it happen in my own life.

When I grew up, we took very long car trips from my home in Ohio to our family home in Georgia. There car trips were without stops. They were complete with meals of fried chicken that we ate in the car because my family could not stop anywhere outside the state of Ohio since only Whites had access to public accommodations. Now, my two kids, if they can afford it, have full access to restaurants, hotels, public transportation, movie theaters, rest rooms, and water fountains - all unthinkable when I was growing up. Let's not take this for granted because we already witness in other countries that this kind of change does not occur in 40 years, even 100 years, even 200. This is the arc bending toward justice. Another crossroads.

We are a people of faith and we are also a people of hope. Despite the story I just told, I am too painfully aware of ongoing injustices and brutality - Rodney King in California, sex trafficking in Burma, driving while black in Boston.

Yet, within my own lifetime, you - all of us - have worked successfully to change the way that people think about justice issues. Within our lifetime, the majority of whites in the United States have moved away from thinking that segregation is a normal part of life in the South to being absolutely shocked that Americans and their institutions ever could have sanctioned these outrageous practices.

My daughter at seven-years-old and her friends are shocked by the stories of Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges, who as a child of their age withstood angry mobs and epithets to integrate the schools of New Orleans. When white children today hear the story of Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges they identify with Rosa and Ruby. They do not identify with the white segregationists. This is another crossroads.

Still, there needs to be a great deal of additional change to prepare ourselves as advocates to fulfill the promises in the next millennium. Just as legal segregation once seemed normal, let's take a fresh look around us to see what atrocities seem normal today. Violence and hatred toward our gay and lesbian friends? Children forced to work, compelled to be soldiers, sexually exploited? That's normal. Prisons filled with young black and Hispanic men? That's normal in today's world. These are the normal outrages of our own day. We work to fulfill the promise by shining a light on these practices and naming them for what they really are, by making an issue of the so-called normalities that no one else wants to talk about, by mapping new ground. By bringing people to new crossroads.

On your behalf, the board, the staff and many friends of the Service Committee have been working diligently to chart a new path, so that we will enter the millennium with excellence, even better prepared to advance justice in the world.

Our vision for the Service Committee revolves around three basic goals:

First, we want to better integrate our domestic and international programs and we want to be preeminent in specific program areas, so that we can become a respected voice and a moral force for human rights. A secret society of UUs is not going to take us where we need to go. (I'm in the family now, so I can talk about it.) We will target and focus our partnerships to extend our impact in the world as well as to strengthen our capacity to serve others.

We will spend more time evaluating what we do, investigating human rights abuse, and reporting what we've learned in the media and in public policy circles.

Our second goal is to build an even larger, active and involved constituency of UUSC supporters. This is closely tied to the goal of being an influential key player with policy-makers and the media. We want to better show the strengths of UUs and our friends and find ways to better engage you in action, whether by participating in workcamps, policy activities or training that we might sponsor. We especially want to engage the next generation and build skills for emerging social activists.

We want to have at least 50,000 members, and we want to double the number of congregations that are actively involved with us.

Our third goal is closely tied to being a key player and building our membership and that is we must strengthen and expand our financial base. Yes, our financial base is solid, and we have effective governance in place. Still, we must endow the struggle for justice. We are currently engaged in the public phase of our $6 million campaign. A healthy endowment and strong financial base will ensure that we can provide our partners with the support that they need, that we can face unpopular issues, especially in times of slow or stagnant economic growth. It also means that our advocacy and education projects can be sustained to increase their impact.

To summarize, we come to this crossroads of the new millennium with a vision to become a key player and moral force with a stronger membership base and solid funding. We realize that these qualities are essential in our work to advance justice, to fulfill the promise. So, our strategy "to enter the millennium with excellence" sets forth a program of action that is deeply rooted in our history yet clearly positioned to address the injustices masquerading as normal today.

Our course of action focuses on a few strategic initiatives that I want to share with you very briefly. In our initiatives, we will be empowering women, protecting children, supporting justice for indigenous people and ethnic minority groups, and responding strategically to disasters.

First, we will continue to empower low-income women and their families - women like Lorna, the widowed mother of four children, one of whom is severely disabled. She lost all welfare benefits before an advocate stepped in thanks to our welfare and human rights monitoring project. We have documented more than 1,000 cases in six states of human rights violations that have occurred because of welfare reform.

UUSC is advocating on a national basis to end inflexible time limits as well as policies that force recipients to give up training and systems with conflicting regulations. We are advocating for education programs that lead to living-wage employment and adequate child care. We are working to fulfill the promise to help those most in need.

Second of all, we protect and support children - children like Lalita. Married to a man 16 years her senior when she was only 11-years-old. She was abandoned by him when she refused to become intimate, so she took work as a maid in Calcutta. When her employer needed some extra money, he sold her to a brothel where she was beaten and starved until she agreed to "work off" her purchase price. Thanks to a UUSC partner group in Calcutta, Lalita, who was once too shy to speak except when spoken to or to be seen without her face covered, is an advocate for others like herself. We are fulfilling the promise to help people like Lalita who, in turn, is helping countless other young women overcome oppression.

Third, we are supporting the struggles of indigenous peoples and members of ethnic/racial groups.

Our current international program priorities include support for program partners that are working to establish democracy in Burma, to promote indigenous rights in Mexico, and to protect human rights and encourage peace and reconciliation in the Central African nations of Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have also been supporting the struggle to build democracy and human rights in Haiti, India and Guatemala and to support nongovernmental organizations in Cuba. We encourage you to write your congressperson so that you might influence the vote that will be taken as soon as Tuesday on opening the door to food and medicine relief in Cuba. This is the way that we need you to act, and the way we can act together to ensure human rights.

Fourth, we respond strategically to disasters, especially where human rights are threatened.

More than 1,200 Unitarian Universalists allowed us to provide funding for humanitarian relief for Kosovar refugees by Motrat Qiriazi, an organization on the ground in the affected region. Motrat's flame for justice had almost been extinguished by the violence and terror that became Kosovo. When our staff member spoke with the organization's executive director, she told us that more than 30 staff and volunteers were missing, either trapped in Kosovo or dead; they did not know which. The agency was being brought to its knees just when the refugees needed it most.

Your donations to the UUSC and UUA appeal rekindled their ability to serve Kosovar women and children too afraid to trust any "outside" groups. So, just as Waitsill and Martha Sharp believed, we do also that the first step in achieving peace with justice is sufficient food, clothing and shelter. We must fulfill the promise to help people in the way they most need our help.

By supporting women, protecting children, empowering indigenous people and responding strategically to disasters, we are building on the legacy of the courageous, committed Unitarian Universalist women and men who have made UUSC a respected international organization. All around the world and here at home UUs have rekindled the spark of justice. There are so many examples and stories I could share. I encourage you to talk with the many dedicated board members and dynamic staff that are here.

I really want you to see and meet the people who are working on your behalf. These are people who know and understand our mission as we come to this crossroads. We are a team. Ask them about our programs. Ask them how you can get involved. And, if you're not a member, ask them how you can join this struggle - and help us to advance justice.

As your staff, we consider the opportunities to serve you to be a great privilege and an honored trust. Thank you for your confidence in us and your steadfast loyalty to the calls to support justice and human rights.

Let justice be done to all mankind, said Marcus Garvey. If the strong oppress the weak, confusion and discontent will ever mark the humanity of people, but with love, faith and charity toward all, the reign of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world - generations shall be called blessed.

On this, our 60th birthday the future looks so bright for UUSC. We are confident that because of your support for our work and our commitment to service, we will be able to grow and to have an even stronger impact on the world. We are planning to ensure the future, and to make the right choices in time of crossroads and we bear public witness that yes, Dr. King, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice!

And, that, dear friends, is how we will all work to fulfill the promise in the next millennium. My deepest prayer is that my work and my service for you will be a reflection of the appreciation for the privilege to serve you and to work toward our common vision of justice and peace for everybody.

Thank you very much.

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