General Assembly needs to be in Arizona in 2012.

The answer to change is not the boycott of an entire state to the tune of $615,000 - how much it'll cost to cancel contracts and move GA somewhere else.

Boycotts do work when they're targeted and used correctly. To try to do that to an entire state won't do much good. In the civil rights movement in the 60's certain companies were boycotted but not the political system that allowed oppression of blacks to continue. The system must always be changed from within, and that's why we need to be there.


As Cody Jefferson puts it:

"Besides the blog comments proving Sarah Palin and the anti-elitists right–"the only business in [Arizona] is brewing meth and building Taco Bell McMansion kits (to brew meth in)"–I'm especially troubled by the calls to boycott the state. From the New York Times to Raúl Grijalva, a Democratic congressman from Tucson, it seems that every liberal with a slight platform (and Shakira) is asking Americans to stop buying Arizonan goods, and to not travel there. The assumption is that what worked for MLK Day will work now.

But a boycott is exactly the opposite of what Arizona needs, at least in the long-term.

I've tried hard, to no avail, to think of any time in which calling a destitute population stupid and making it even poorer has effectively engendered in its people new ways of thinking. Indeed, a boycott might force Arizona legislators to overturn their new law–which 70 percent of voters supported, by the way–but I think it's likelier to just frustrate and further impoverish a whole lot of people who are already frustrated, broke, mad, jealous and increasingly worried that the East Coast is out to tell them how to live their lives. I'm not saying I have the key to unlock the Arizona of my dreams, but I can't believe the answer is calling its citizens unwashed meth-heads, canceling your reservations at its resorts (which employ illegal immigrants), or sapping even more money from its public schools (which educate illegal immigrants)."


Jesus didn't take his group of followers and attempt to start a utopia in the desert, using his healing powers on chosen few. Nor did he set up shop in his home town as a biblical doctor and profit off his clients. And he didn't go to the top of the power structure and attempt reform. He went to where the power should be: the people. And he told them they had all that they needed to be as miraculous as God intended.

Don't look at the above for its literal meaning; you'll be missing the point. We need to be in Arizona and help the people there. When something this atrocious gets passed it isn't the will of the people. They need allies there, our churches there need the support and visibility that GA can bring. We can't break off from the real world and expect it to fix itself. It gives Unitarian Universalists a noble goal: get the law off the books before 2012. Boycotting Arizona ensures that our tradition by and large ignores it and keep the status quo of leaving the problem to the congregations there.

I've always been troubled by Unitarian Universalists' habit of boycotting or creating a walled garden in our tradition as a response to injustice. Oh, you become vegan, and you stop watching television and you send one letter about Stupak and you listen to NPR and you drink fair trade coffee and you, you, you become something so far removed from reality that it's far too easy for Garrison Kieller to use you as a punchline. And then you wonder why our religion is in decline and viewed as fairly bizarre to the average person. We put ourselves out of touch by our own virtue.

It is time for a change in social action tactics. If it is not a change from within, it won't work. We need to change our ways, from within, to participate and help those needing change. We need to stop thinking that our unilateral actions - even if we do it as an entire tradition does much good without allies from within the system to change.

I am enamored with the standing on the side of love campaign. Real love means being with someone even when they're wrong. Not enabling, mind you, but really loving them. Gandhi and MLK were effective because they loved their oppressors. They understood them as people part of the same world as them. Boycotting Arizona puts us in the same trap as the legislators who passed this bill: believing that there are some people who have no inherent worth and dignity. They think it's immigrants. We think it's them.