The Justice & Equity Group at UU Casper met on March 22. We were joined by some traveling UU’s, visiting from Syracuse, NY who offered a host of great ideas and input at our meeting.
Our visitors told us all about the upcoming virtual & in-person Building Beloved Community, Beyond the Binary conference that they have been helping to organize at their satellite location at First Unitarian in Syracuse. This will be on April 18 and the target audience is transgender individuals and allies. Allies are encouraged to attend. Our friends emphasized that the keynote speaker and the deeper keynote sessions (featuring Logan Grendel) will be something absolutely worth attending. The fee is a sliding scale. If anyone has the availability and would like to host a local watch party at UU Casper, please reply to this email!
We discussed Casper Pride Fest and the plans for the booth that comes with UU Casper’s $400 Casper Pride sponsorship. Mark your calendar for June 13 from 10 AM- 2 PM. Every year we need volunteers to help set up, stay at the booth, and to help tear down at the end. If you can help with any of these things, please reply to the email or talk to Janet De Vries, who will be helping to coordinate. We plan to offer the shaker-making activity again and are considering adding another, such as bracelet making. We will not be offering a book fair this year.
We resuscitated the idea to install a Little Free Outdoor Food & Toiletry Pantry in the front yard at UU Casper. The group decided we do want to move forward with the project. Please, please contact us if you have woodworking skills or would otherwise like to be involved with this project from initial installation to maintenance. We will need to work with the Building & Grounds Committee and the Board of Trustees in order to be certain the project goes smoothly. If you haven’t already, please join the local Facebook group, StillGood Natrona County. This group is full of wonderful, giving people in Natrona County, including a host of volunteers who help keep the existing network of outdoor food pantries in the area stocked.
The next Amoco Park Cleanup will be on April 25th. UU Casper co-adopted this park with the Friends of the Circle in 2019. The other organizational members of Friends of the Circle have been less communicative in the last year or so, but we would like to keep hosting the Earth Day kickoff cleanup. If others associated with Friends of the Circle (or interested in joining) would like to host a cleanup on another date, please email us and share on the Friends of the Circle Facebook group. We will plan the fall highway cleanup during our June meeting.
The next UU Casper Justice & Equity Group meeting will be on June 28th at noon.
Many thanks to everyone who has participated in our service projects over the years. We are looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish together in serving the Casper community through the rest of 2026!