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Sara Morrison Neil: Steering Committee Member
I recently joined the UU Class Conversations Steering Committee. I am currently the Church Administrator and Membership Coordinator at First Parish in Framingham UU. My career has been in nonprofit administration, starting back in 1992 at the AIDS Action Committee in Boston. I also facilitate the Diversity and Equity Exploration Team at the congregation, which grew out of years of regular discussion groups, and I felt was long overdue. The group successfully led a campaign for the congregation to adopt the 8th Principle and have struggled figuring out how to meet people where they are at and move them further in their understanding of racism and systemic oppression. We’ve led book discussions, movie discussions, article discussions and trained ourselves for a Listening Project, and became trainers for active bystanders.
I attended two UU Class Conversation workshops at First Parish in Framingham. I had already been wrestling with understanding how class functions in the country and where I fall in the class hierarchy, so I found it tremendously helpful to have a way to get a handle on it. The first workshop helped me figure out where I fell in the class hierarchy.
I started out thinking class was primarily about money but knew that wasn’t all of it. I have a master’s degree in public administration but have never had a high salary. My husband, on the other hand, did not graduate from college and earns twice what I do. I was raised with middle class values and expectations, and had privileged grandparents and great grandparents. My family background includes people in poverty, working class, middle class and even some very wealthy.
Because some family members started out their life working class and then worked their way up, I was confused as to what class they were. I was surprised to find that I have had a lot of class privileges, even though my immediate family has never been wealthy. My father’s side of the family had several generations of college graduates and professionals, my father’s mother came from what would be called the owning class. Both my parents are college graduates, and high expectation for education.
My mother’s foster family is working class and poor and were on welfare when they took my mother and I in when my parents split up. I learned what it felt like to go to the school bus stop and have people think less of you because the house you live in is not in great shape. I learned about people whose lives were suddenly upended because they were laid off. I learned about people who were focusing on enjoying the present rather than always living for the future. It was a short period of my life but it made an impression.
Later on, I got a scholarship to go to a private high school. Then I saw people with much more privilege, who laughed at me for walking to school, who dressed in ways I could never keep up with and I developed a deep sense of resentment. My stepfather’s family was in the working class, and my grandmother did not approve of him exactly because of his farm background, even though her family had modest beginnings. My husband’s family is working class. I quickly learned that at family gatherings people did not talk about their work, they talk about sports, food, hobbies and they play games. And if they talked about work, it was usually just to vent.
When I started attending First Parish in Framingham around 2010, I read that the average pledge was $1,200. That was way beyond what I expected or could afford. I interpreted that to mean I could not become a member. Eventually—actually during my job interview—I was told that you didn’t have to give that much. In my role as Membership Coordinator, I made sure never to scare anyone away because of their financial circumstances.
The Canvass Committee can get into great detail about it all, but I always say that while we expect members share their time, talent and treasure, that the amount of any those is different for different people, or at different stages of their life. As I have been learning from UU conversations in the second workshop and on the website and book, there are many other areas that congregations need to take stock of and change what is exclusionary.
When Denise asked me to join the Steering Committee, I wanted to be able to use my skills and knowledge to help make some real change in the world, beyond the small pond I am in. I offer my curiosity and empathy, along with my knowledge of a UU congregation.
A Memorial Day Lesson on Class
By Denise Moorehead
Days after it aired, I watched a rebroadcast of the National Memorial Day Concert. The event has taken place on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol for more than three decades. It is not something I would normally watch. It was always a bit too rah, rah, armed forces anthems and military colors for me.
But this year, as I channel-surfed, I saw a reenactment of a WWII vet’s story. It was inspiring. While the combat part of the story was compelling, the raw human element and life lessons imparted reeled me in. I suddenly realized that I was watching a rebroadcast of the show I had earlier pooh-pooed. This time, I stayed to watch more. As the hosts requested, I even clapped when I heard the anthem for the service with which I was affiliated. My dad served in the Air Force for more than 20 years.
I cheered for my Dad and all of the service members who gave so much of their lives – some who gave their life – to preserve democracy. They thought it would always be threatened from foreign adversaries. Now, many worry about the threat from within.
The National Memorial Day Concert did not pretend that the United States was ever a perfect union. While the words used were “pretty” enough to satisfy current leaders who want to literally whitewash history, the photos and videos of combat and stories of real service members gave a truer picture. The armed services have become more diverse and reflective of America over the centuries.
Diverse and Inclusive
The military services are, in fact, the most diverse workplaces in the country. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, more than 30% of service members identify as people of color and nearly 18% identify as female. The services do not maintain data on the percentage of lgbtq+ members.
So why am I writing about this on a blog about social class? All social classes are represented in every branch of the U.S. military.
However, those with limited class advantage benefit most from recent boosts to military salaries, free health care, and education and housing support. But centuries of biases codified into military policies and practices, have left many of these recruits overrepresented in the lower ranks.
The military made great strides in building a workforce that was the most diverse in the world and was moving beyond that to make it more inclusive. But, the Trump administration claimed that the highest-ranking military leaders of color and female leaders were not competent. Along with the far-from-competent Secretary of Defense, the president fired these experienced and war-tested heroes and gutted policies that were finally opening doors for racial, ethnic, gender and class minorities. The backlash against trans people serving has been deliberately cruel.
These actions and policies are against everything I heard and saw in the Memorial Day celebration. They are why I am suddenly woke in my understanding of why the day is so meaningful.
For years, I could not wrap my head around why I, the daughter of a Black man who received stellar evaluations but could not get a promotion to the next rank, should be even a smidge patriotic. My father had been accepted into a cutting-edge tech project 10 years into his military service, but was told by the officer in charge that “all a poor, non-commissioned ni***r could do for him was get coffee.” So, why my sudden patriotic bent?
The Right to Democracy
I realize my dad knew better than I did that, despite the deprivations he faced as a Black man born into an impoverished family in the 1930s, he had a right to democracy and had to fight to improve it.
That’s why social classionistas and other social justice warriors must see themselves as true patriots in these perilous times and champion democracy. If we don’t, the rest of the military – and country – will look like the reconstituted current Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top brass. The only people in charge will be white men, some who are untested and underprepared but speak of the importance of meritocracy, a meritocracy they define as being white, male and loyal not to our country but to one man alone.
Too many people of all social classes, races, genders, etc. gave their lives for democracy. It’s my turn – our turn – now to refuse to concede patriotism to false patriots. As the Air Force motto compels us, “Aim high … fly-fight-win.”
Hurting Those with the Least Class Privilege
The U.S. House of “Representatives” has passed legislation that makes the largest cuts to healthcare in American history, including Medicaid cuts totaling $700 billion and $500 billion in Medicare cuts. These programs make the difference between good health and sickness or even death for those in the United States who have limited social class advantage.
Cruel cuts were also made, $300 billion, in food assistance. Additionally, the budget savages the U.S. transition to clean energy and will lead to unemployment for workers in the field. Many have used this work as a stepping stone to more social class advantage.
Many economists say these budget cuts will hinder U.S. competitiveness in the clean energy sector for generations to come and wipe out a class of good-paying jobs.* HR1 also repeals student loan assistance, a program that had been a boon to those with less class advantage.
As a whole, the proposed legislation, pushed through with lightening speed by the party in power, will take hard-earned benefits from low-income people, the working poor and working class – and even those in the middle and upper-middle class – to give huge, permanent tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, the most class privileged.** A cross-class coalition is needed to resist legislation that exacerbates already unjust class policies.
What are you going to do about it?
What are others doing about it, including your UU congregation or organization?
What would you like to see UUCC do next?
* $14 Billion in Clean Energy Projects, 10,000 Jobs Cancelled So Far in 2025, E2, May 29,2025
** Budget bill would add trillions to U.S. debt and increase inequality, Nobel laureate economists say, MoneyWatch, CBS News website https://www.cbsnews.com/news/big-beautiful-bill-house-tax-trump/
Please share your ideas and insights in the Comments.
Voting Is Radical
If you have not already voted – you are undecided, disillusioned, resentful or just plain tired of it all – realize that people like you who care about class justice must vote. It is an act of resistance. Why?
When the U.S. Constitution was adopted on June 21, 1788, voting was left to the states. With rare exception, only white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males, who own property and were older than 21 were allowed to vote.* So, only those with extreme class advantage were given this right, one that many of us have taken for granted for decades now.
But most of us also know that the right to vote was doled out to those of us with limited class advantage slowly and painfully. Black men were “allowed” to vote in 1870 but racist AND classist obstacles like poll taxes and literacy tests (even in states like Connecticut) kept most from doing so for generations. Of course, henchmen for the owning classes meted out violence on Black men with some class advantage who tried to vote.
It took until 1920 for women to “earn” the opportunity to vote, but Black women in many southern states were not able to vote until many years later. According to History.com:
“Native Americans—both men and women—did not gain the right to vote until the Snyder Act of 1924, four years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment and more than 50 years after the passage of the 15th Amendment. Even then, some Western states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, didn’t grant Native Americans the right to vote until the 1940s and ‘50s. It wasn’t until the Cable Act of 1922 that women were allowed to keep their citizenship – and gain the right to vote – if they were married to an immigrant (who had to be eligible to become a U.S. citizen).
In Puerto Rico, literate women won the right to vote in 1929, but it wasn’t until 1935 that all women were given that right. Realize that literacy tests were extremely difficult to pass.**
And Asian American immigrant women were denied the right to vote until 1952 when the Immigration and Nationality Act allowed them to become citizens.”
If this does not convince you that voting is radical, you know that there are those with great class privilege in the United States who are using every advantage they have right now, money, access to media and social media, connections and more, to keep the rest of us from voting. According to the Brennan Center, states have added almost 100 laws restricting voting since the Voting Rights Act was rendered nearly toothless a decade ago.
I know you share UU Class Conversations’ passion for class justice and an end to classism. So, voting is something you must do, right? Happy voting. And thank you for ensuring that this right continues with people who care about it as much as you do
* A few states allowed free Black men to vote, and New Jersey also included unmarried and widowed women who owned property.
** https://www.history.com/news/19th-amendment-voter-suppression
