SLO church raises new ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner

For the third and — the church hopes — last time, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Luis Obispo County has hung a “Black Lives Matter” banner on the side of its building, visible from the corner of Broad and South streets.

“It was secured with many bolts,” the Rev. Rod Richards said Monday. “We’re thinking just possibly putting it out of easy reach and securing it in such a way that it’s not easy for someone to tear it down may be enough.”

The banner was raised Wednesday, larger and placed higher than the previous two banners the congregation had installed at 2201 Lawton Ave. The first was cut from its moorings and left folded in the churchyard last summer; the second was apparently ripped down and stolen in mid-February.

After the second banner was stolen, church leaders said they remained committed to raising a third banner and continuing to encourage conversations about race and diversity. The congregation discussed the issue last month and decided to install a new banner, with the only outstanding questions being how large it would be and how high to mount it, Richards said.

The banner now hangs above another church banner proclaiming, “Standing On the Side of Love.”

A public dedication of the Black Lives Matter banner is set for 12:30 p.m. May 1 at the church.

Richards said he’ll give a summary during the dedication of what inspired the congregation to put up a Black Lives Matter banner in the first place: “It’s not intended to be divisive but the contrary, to unify us as a community and to recognize some of the disparities in how we experience the society we live in.

“What I see and what I experience is not the whole story,” he said, “and how others, in this case African-Americans, can experience things in quite different ways that we need to listen to and address as best we know how.”

Like many people of faith, Unitarian Universalists are called to act for justice, and the congregation wondered about its place in the Black Lives Matter movement, Richards and then-board president Andrea Pease wrote in an August letter to the editor to The Tribune.

“The banner is a manifestation of debate that’s gone on here,” Jim Woolf, president of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s Board of Trustees, said after the second banner disappeared. “I think the most valuable thing for us is really talking about it — talking about, do we have some inherent racism in us that we haven’t wanted to deal with, is there racism in our community, and what might we do with it and how do we respond to it.”

A photo and statement about the new banner garnered about a dozen comments on the UU Fellowship’s Facebook page, mostly supporting the church’s action. One person suggested installing security cameras (Richards said this has been discussed), while two people suggested that “all lives matter.”

A statement posted on the church’s website has a response to the latter comment: “To say that ‘Black Lives Matter’ doesn’t mean that black lives are more important than other lives, or that all lives don’t matter. The systemic devaluing of black lives calls us to bear witness, even as we acknowledge that oppression takes many intersecting forms.”

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 2:42 PM with the headline "SLO church raises new ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner."