MUUSAN 2019-2020 Issue Group Co-Chairs
Maine UU State Advocacy Network focuses our legislative ministry on four primary issues: 1) Democracy in Action, 2) Health Care for All, 3) Climate Change, and 4) Racial, Native, and Immigrant Justice, each of which has an Issue Group of volunteers. 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.
Please meet our Issue Group Co-Chairs for 2019-2020. 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!
Brief in-person Issue Group meetings for updates and strategizing happen at most MUUSAN Network meetings (2nd Saturday of alternate months in Augusta). Other, more detailed Issue Group meetings rely on ZOOM videoconferencing and telephone to include UUs across Maine's vast geography.
Please meet our Issue Group Co-Chairs for 2019-2020. 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!
Brief in-person Issue Group meetings for updates and strategizing happen at most MUUSAN Network meetings (2nd Saturday of alternate months in Augusta). Other, more detailed Issue Group meetings rely on ZOOM videoconferencing and telephone to include UUs across Maine's vast geography.
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
Peter Lehman (he/him/his) is a member of the First Universalist Church in Rockland, has been involved with MUUSAN since its beginning and is now the chair of the Democracy In Action issue group. A former sociology and criminology professor, Peter also works with the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition on social and criminal justice issues and does presentations on Mass Incarceration. This is part of his prison ministry: at the statehouse, inside correctional facilities, and elsewhere. Beginning in the fall of 2019, he will participate in a Roots and Wings lay ministry training led by Revs. Sillari and Johnsen.
HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
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Rev. Margaret Beckman was a founder of MUUSAN and MUUSAN's first treasurer. She was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania. Margaret attended McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and in 1983 completed a Master of Arts in Theological Studies with an emphasis in ethics and Old Testament. In 1989 she and her partner moved to Maine. For the next eighteen years she worked for a small not-for-profit job training and career development company doing work primarily for the U.S. Department of Labor. Margaret joined the Unitarian Universalist church in Bangor and found the faith tradition that became her spiritual home.
Career changes opened the way for new opportunities, so Margaret returned to seminary where she earned a Master of Divinity degree in 2003 from Bangor Theological Seminary. Ordained by the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor in May of 2003 and receiving UUA fellowship the same month, Margaret began ministry as a UU minister. She has completed 14 years as a hospice chaplain and 12 years as the Part Time minister of the First Universalist Church of Pittsfield before being called to serve the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Castine. Margaret and her partner live in Dedham where they enjoy life together at Green Lake. When not working they are usually found in the sanctuary of the great outdoors. |
Deborah Crump is a member of the First Universalist Church of Norway, Unitarian Universalist. She is a member of the Social Justice committee at her church and has participated in many activities over the years in support of LGBTQ and women’s rights, environmental, racial, and economic justice. She has been a home hospice nurse for over 30 years and lives with her life partner in the home they built off the grid in the woods of western Maine. She enjoys gardening, playing the ukulele, writing, her 2 cats, her almost three year old grandchild and her connections to the land
CLIMATE CHANGE
Corliss Davis is a retired librarian and grandmother of four who has been a member of UU churches for 51 years in four states. She helped to lead her Ohio congregation to its application for Green Sanctuary status and has continued as co-chair of the Green Sanctuary Committee at the UU Church of Belfast for 10 years. She is a member of several state and national environmental organizations and a Master Gardener active in the Belfast Garden Club. Since 2012, Corliss has been the local coordinator in Belfast for Window Dressers – a non-profit that uses volunteers to produce interior window inserts to keep Mainers more comfortable, save money on fuel, reduce carbon emissions, and build community by working together.
Jill Linzee is a member of Midcoast UU Fellowship of Damariscotta.
RACIAL, NATIVE, AND IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
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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. |
