MUUSAN Issue Group Chairs
Maine UU State Advocacy Network focuses our legislative ministry on four primary issues: Democracy in Action, Health Care for All, Climate Change, and Racial, Native, and Immigrant Justice, each of which has an Issue Group of volunteers. Chairs and co-chairs lead each Issue Group to gather and mobilize Maine UUs who are especially interested in helping to create progress on the target issue. Not only do they bring strong experience in the Maine State Legislature and expertise on their chosen issue, they are passionate UU social justice leaders in Maine. We thank them for their leadership for our UU Principles in action!
In order to better understand the role of Issue Group Chairs, click here.
In order to better understand the role of Issue Group Chairs, click here.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Jill Linzee is a member of Midcoast UU Fellowship of Damariscotta. Her professional work has been in public folklore and ethnomusicology in both state and federal government (American Folklife Center, Smithsonian and the National Endowment for the Arts), and for non-profits. She’s worked for statewide programs in Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Washington state, where her political advocacy efforts were more focused in the cultural arena. In 2016 she moved with her husband to Maine, and joined MUUSAN shortly thereafter, becoming Co-Chair of the Climate Change group in 2018. She enjoys playing and listening to music, hiking, birding, sailing, reading, traveling, and the company of friends and animals.
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
Betsy Williams is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick, where she is an active member of their Working for Justice Steering Group. A life-long UU with a long and varied career in UU religious education, Betsy brings her passion for making connections between UU values and our everyday lives to social justice work. A former literacy and special education tutor, she works with Midcoast Literacy and Midcoast New Mainers Support Group as an ELL tutor and family support team member. This is Betsy’s first full year as a member of MUUSAN, which she sees as a vehicle for UUs to bend public policy toward valuing human dignity, protecting our democracy, and saving our planet. A nature-lover at heart, Betsy and her husband Glenn are winter condo-dwellers in Brunswick, where she enjoys skiing out her back door, and summer cottage-dwellers on Bailey Island where she enjoys sailing her wooden Turnabout and island hopping in Casco Bay.
HEALTH CARE
Lynn Ellis is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick and is a member of that church's Working for Justice Steering Group where she is involved with issues such as gun violence prevention and education. In addition to being Health Care co-chair, she is MUUSAN’s liaison to the Maine Council of Churches Public Policy Committee and faith liaison with Moms Demand Action - Maine chapter. Lynn serves on the board of directors of Maine Gun Safety Coalition and is a non legislative member of the new Maine Gun Safety Caucus. No stranger to electoral and legislative issues, Lynn volunteered for many years as a state coordinator for The Peace Alliance (a campaign to develop a cabinet level Department of Peace). She also helped launch MUUSANs attendance at the Common Ground Fair. She is a retired social worker spending 20+ years in mental health services and 10 years as a hospice social worker. In her spare time she reads, watches Doctor Who, and plays with her new cat Amelia, at her apartment in Brunswick.
RACIAL, NATIVE, AND IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
Meret Bainbridge has been a UU since 2001, and attends First Parish UU Church in Portland where she serves as co-chair of the Wabanaki Ally Team. She is a native of Germany, immigrant and dual citizen, lifelong pacifist, feminist, LGBT advocate, pagan, mom of four adult children and bonus children, and passionate gardener. She loves her work as an acupuncturist and the independence of running her own business. Meret lives and works in Saco with her cat, Rose, and - during semester break - her youngest daughter. She is the MUUSAN liaison to the Wabanaki Alliance Coalition and believes that re-wilding our environment and re-learning kinship from Native communities is our only way to save the human species on this planet.
Jane Makela is a member of First Universalist Church in Yarmouth, whose involvement with immigrant justice work was inspired by the UUA’s suggestion more than a decade ago that its member congregations study immigration as a moral issue. She joined the MUUSAN steering committee in early 2018 and became co-chair of MUUSAN’s Racial, Native and Immigrant Justice issue group later that year. Jane is a somewhat retired lawyer whose legal work is now entirely pro bono, advising nonprofits and helping asylum-seekers and other immigrants. She volunteers regularly at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP), helps steer the Supporting Immigrant Tenants program of ProsperityMaine, and serves as Board Legal Adviser to Furniture Friends. Now that her two daughters have left the nest, Jane lives in Falmouth with her retired pediatrician husband, John Vogt, and Murphy, her cat.