Our Climate Justice Ministries Task Force was well represented at ACS.
A big thank you to Rev. Judith Preuss-Mellow for staffing our ACS Display Table during the Plenary breaks. For those who wanted to go paperless, all our handouts were made available on our website.
On the Digital Display page of the Conference website, we had a 6-minute Introductory Video made by Rev. Joan Pell and a video about Sacred Ground made by Rev. Laurie Bayen.
The Advocacy and Justice Friday luncheon presentation was entitled What is this BDS all about? Engaging Boycott and Divestment as faithful tools. Rev. Joan Pell was one of the speakers to talk about our fossil fuel divestment work. You can watch the discussion on the video below.
At the Plenary Session on Sunday morning, there was an Advocacy and Justice Panel speaking on the intersections of the justice work being done, including Rev. Joan Pell as one of the panelists. You can watch the recording of the discussion and view our 90-second short video that was shown at the beginning of the session.
Our Task Force submitted four pieces of legislation to this year’s Annual Conference Session (ACS). Three of them had minor modifications made to them during the legislative sections; all had over an 85% vote and were then placed on the Consent Calendar and approved by the Plenary Session. Please take the time to read the final approved wording and encourage your congregation to take the relevant actions:
- Spend 10 minutes each day in mindful connection with Creation – outdoors if possible (ideas at climate-cnumc.org/10mins)
- Create a church green team (resources at climate-cnumc.org/greenteams)
- Support our Boards and Agencies as they divest from Fossil Fuels (learn more at climate-cnumc.org/divestment)
- Boycott Chevron (climate-cnumc.org/divestment/#boycott-chevron)
Sustainable ACS
We worked with the Commission on the Annual Conference Session to ensure that ACS was sustainable as possible.
- No water bottles were handed out at OASIS or the Display Tables. ACS members were encouraged to bring their own water bottles and the refill stations were clearly signposted.
- Individuals were encouraged use public transport or car pool.
- The garbage cans at the Convention Center are already labeled by the center as trash, recycling or organic waste. We placed additional signage to indicate what items can be recycled.
- Groups with Display Tables were encouraged not to give out items that were plastic or that would be quickly thrown away.