universalist

Dr. Lawrence Matsuda was born during World War II in the Internment Camp at Minidoka, Idaho, where his family was incarcerated after forced removal from the West Coast.  He grew up to attend the University of Washington, earning his Ph. D. while serving in the Army Reserves.  He devoted 27 years to education as a junior high school language arts teacher and Seattle School District principal and administrator, creating the first Asian American history course in Washington state. An award-winning poet and writer, he memorialized the Japanese Internment experience in many of his works, including the poems in A Cold Wind from Idaho.  He co-edited the textbook, Community and Difference: Teaching, Pluralism and Social Justice, which won the 2006 National Association of Multicultural Education Phillip Chinn Award.  His passion for social justice extends beyond his writing to his work in securing the apology and reparations for World War II incarceration and his involvement with the Asian Coalition for Equality and the Japanese American Citizens League.

AP article about Lava Ridge wind farm - https://apnews.com/article/minidoka-idaho-pilgrimage-japanese-americans-incarcerated-wind-505960bd4f634633ef373e1bde447570

The video used by Dr, Matsuda in his presentation  can be found here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ckdtjfj616mq6za/Minidoka%202%281080p%29.mp4?dl=0

Terrence Kelly, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alaska Anchorage, a member of the Alaska Ethics Center, and author of Professional Ethics: A Trust Based Approach.  He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy at St. Louis University. He has published and presented on various professional ethics and social justice topics and teaches biomedical and professional ethics courses. He conducts ethics training sessions for professional organizations as well as governmental entities and is a long-serving member of the Anchorage Municipal Board of Ethics.  Terry lives with his wife, son, and three dogs in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Slides - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s58do6k2feaok15vyee04/TrustworthyProfessional.pdf?rlkey=5xeobbkuuw9afnkvdphcnkh36&dl=0

Fresh out of law school, Meg took a job in Anchorage, sight unseen, representing Alaskans experiencing disabilities. This job brought her to Alaska, let her travel throughout the state, and gave her valuable experience working on systemic issues.
 
As an elected member of the Anchorage Assembly, Meg has been instrumental in expanding the Municipality's work around behavioral health and homelessness, including improving overall public health and safety and the well-being of vulnerable people. Meg has joined the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness to apply her experience and expertise. Meg enjoys spending her free time with her husband Zach, their daughter Zelda, three dogs, a cat, and four chickens.

Anchorage Assembly PoV on Homelessness

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0x28fcl8qbbjfq6624ugn/Unitarian-Housing-Presentation-MZ-AnchAssemblyPOV.pdf?rlkey=fmgwn3i1qmg3cuy78bj62zhpi&dl=0

An Overview of Homelessness in Anchorage and Alaska

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/w198plx24q0lths9d0piw/Community-Presentation-2023-MZ-_-ACEH.pdf?rlkey=yt9zadeta0jnj2zcikz1i9b12&dl=0

Housing Action Week Events  (October 30-Nov. 4)

https://www.anchoragehousingaction.org/events

Housing Action Summit  (Friday, Nov. 3)

https://www.anchoragehousingaction.org/    

https://www.anchoragehousingaction.org/events/haw-summit

Doug Baily was the Attorney General of Alaska from 1989 to 1990 under Gov. Steve Cowper. Before that, he served as administrative assistant to Governor Jay Hammond and as a trustee of the Alaska Permanent Fund.  Before becoming a lawyer in 1965, Doug engaged in oil exploration in Alaska. From 1968 to 1971, he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Alaska and was responsible for designing and conducting the state's legal case against the Rebecca and her captain in 1968. The Exxon Valdez oil spill on March 24, 1989, occurred during his tenure as AG.  After the spill, Attorney General Baily filed multiple court cases against Exxon Corporation and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. Doug now lives in Homer with his wife, Landa, after moving back to Alaska from Oakland, Oregon, where they maintained the Old Baily Heritage Farm, raising rare breeds of American Livestock, including Myotonic Goats, Dexter Cattle, and American Guinea Hogs.

Tankers Full of Trouble, the Perilous Journey of Alaska Crude -https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/tankers-full-of-trouble-the-perilous-journey-of-alaskan-crude_eric-nalder/1111321/#edition=410297&idiq=90105 (may also be available at Title Wave)

Clark and Dawe - The Front Fell Off (comedy sketch) -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

Doug's slides - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nbko1zqoayb076q819uro/Baily-TheTankerRebeccaIncident.pdf?rlkey=osxq0lnp1ntghpl5njxmftdzn&dl=0

Andrew Halcro currently hosts a blog on politics, life, and entertainment called With All Due Respect.  He served two terms as a Republican member of the Alaska House of Representatives from 1998 to 2002 and was a candidate for governor and mayor. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Avis Rent a Car of Alaska, one of the state's oldest and most successful family-owned businesses. He became president of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce in 2012 and served as executive director of the Anchorage Community Development Authority from 2015 until 2021. 

Dermot Cole has been a newspaper reporter, columnist, and author in Alaska for over 40 years. For two decades, he wrote a daily column for the Fairbanks Daily News Miner while penning several history books. More recently, he served as a political reporter and columnist at the Alaska Dispatch News. Since the paper was sold, he's continued working as a journalist through his political blog, Reporting from Alaska, where he's broken several exclusive and important stories regarding the Dunleavy administration.

Jared Huffman is a member of the United States Congress, representing California's 2nd Congressional District, which stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. First elected in 2012, he serves on the Natural Resources and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committees. Jared founded the Congressional Freethought Caucus to promote sound public policy based on reason, science, and moral values while protecting the secular character of government and championing the value of freedom of thought worldwide. Before serving in Congress, Jared represented the
North Bay for six years in the California Assembly. Before that, he worked as a Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) after a successful stint as a public interest attorney.  Jared graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Santa Barbara, where he was a three-time NCAA All-American volleyball player. He played for the USA Volleyball Team, ranked #1 in the world, before graduating cum laude from Boston College Law School. Jared lives in San Rafael with his wife, Susan, a teacher, and their two children, Abby and Nathan.

For more, see - https://huffman.house.gov/meet-Jared

Washington Post article = https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/11/09/this-lawmaker-is-skeptical-that-god-exists-now-hes-finally-decided-to-tell-people/

Erin Baldwin Day is an innovator and rabble-rouser living on Denaina lands in Midtown. She and her family embrace the practice of radical hospitality as the key to a more just and compassionate world, and believe that a bigger table is always preferable to a taller fence. She pastors progressive, inclusive communities of faith that may or may not look like church, and is convinced that a Jesus-shaped life means an unwavering commitment to social justice and solidarity among the marginalized. She is an organizer of MANAMutual Aid Network of Anchorageand former pastor of the United Methodist Church of Palmer. She is currently working on legislation to end predatory lending practices of payday loans.

Mutual Aid Network of Alaska Website - weareMANA.org

Slides - https://www.dropbox.com/s/twswhk4vhs3atke/UUF%20Presentation%20Slides.pdf?dl=0

Dr. Steven Haycox is a distinguished professor of history emeritus, a respected author of numerous books and essays, and a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News. In 2003, he was named the Alaska Historical Society's Historian of the Year and received the Alaska Governor's Humanities Award. Before his retirement, Prof. Haycox taught history for over 40 years at the University of Alaska, where he was named a distinguished professor and was awarded the Edith R. Bullock Prize for Excellence. Steve earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1970. His books include Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics, and Environment in Alaska, Battleground Alaska: Fighting Federal Power in America's Last Wilderness, and the recently revised Alaska: An American Colony, which has been called by far the finest history of Alaska yet produced. He was born in the Upper Midwest and went to high school in a suburb of New York. He was a musician in the Navy and served in the Pacific.

Neal Fried is an economist with the Alaska Department of Labor, where his primary duty is to produce economic data and analysis on a variety of economic issues facing the state. Neal is a primary author of articles appearing in the monthly magazine Alaska Economic Trends, published by the Department of Labor and distributed to over 5,000 subscribers. He has performed economic analysis and written articles on annual economic forecasts, the cost of living, the military, the health care industry, transportation, oil industry issues, rural economic trends, economic impact of the Prince William Sound oil spill, the Mat-Su Valley's economy, Covid and many other issues. He has served on the Alaska Public Media Board, the King Career Centers Business Industries Advisory Committee, UAAs Advisory board as well as the Pacific Northwest Economic Conference board. Neal is a  recipient of the Governors Denali Peak Performance award. He earned his economics degree from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1978, and in 2019 was recognized as Alumnus of the Year by UAF.

Slides - https://www.dropbox.com/s/dcby0shb563cyvb/unitarians2023.pdf?dl=0

Mary Sattler Peltola is the Representative for All of Alaska.  She was elected in August to fill the remainder of the late Representative Don Young’s term, becoming the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman from Alaska to serve in the U.S. House. In November, she was elected to a full two-year term in Congress. Rep. Peltola is Yup’ik, born in Alaska and raised on the Kuskokwim River.  She began fishing commercially with her father when she was six and worked as a herring and salmon technician for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game during college. At age 24, she was elected to the Alaska Legislature, where she served in the House for ten years.  A Democrat, she helped to rebuild the Bush Caucus, which passed legislation and influenced budgets that improved lives in rural Alaska under her tenure as Chair. After leaving the legislature, she worked as Manager of Community Development and Sustainability for the Donlin gold mine project and as Executive Director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. She served on the Orutsararmiut Native Council Tribal Court and the Bethel City Council, and the boards of the Nature Conservancy, Alaska Humanities Forum, Alaska Children’s Trust, and Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska.  Mary is married to Gene “Buzzy” Peltola and has seven children.

Mary's official website is https://peltola.house.gov

Bathsheba Demuth is a writer and environmental historian specializing in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern places and cultures began when she was 18 and moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon, where she trained huskies for several years. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in how the histories of people, ideas, and ecologies intersect. In addition to her prize-winning book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, her writing has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is currently the Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University.   For more, check www.brdemuth.com

slides - https://www.dropbox.com/s/bt1a00cqe1ofnni/BeringStraitTalk.pdf?dl=0

Mr. Whitekeys moved to Alaska during the Gold Rush of 1898 and immediately began playing piano in sleazy bars. He has described his chosen profession as “mouthing off and making snotty comments,” and his writings have appeared in an Anchorage Daily News column, Alaska Bizarre—a comedy print version of The Whale Fat Follies, humorous contributions to The Alaska Almanac, a monthly column in Alaska Magazine, and weekly satirical newscast commentary on Anchorage’s KTUU-TV. Mr. Whitekeys’ Fly By Night Club was a mecca for “Spam, Booze, Rhythm and Blues” for 25 years, and The Whale Fat Follies remains the pinnacle of Alaskan vaudeville and satire. His DVD, Alaska, The First 10,000 Years, is a farcical romp through Alaska’s history, and despite its absurdity, it has been used instructionally by misguided history teachers throughout the state. In his spare time, Whitekeys is addicted to coral reef marine biology and is currently the Commander-in-Chief of the Anchorage Audubon Society, where he will continue to embarrass the entire environmental community until someone else agrees to take the job.

Mr. Whitekeys website: http://www.flybynightclub.com

Alex Cleghorn is the Senior Legal and Policy Director of the Alaska Native Justice Center. Alex is of Sugpiaq descent, a tribal citizen of Tangirnaq Native Village (Woody Island), and a shareholder of Alaska Native Corporations – Natives of Kodiak, Koniag Incorporated, and CIRI. As an attorney licensed in Alaska, California, and several tribal jurisdictions, his work has focused primarily on representing tribal interests. Alex is President of the Woody Island Tribal Council, a pro tem judge of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Alutiiq Museum, Koniag, Inc., and the Alaska Native Heritage Center.  He was a 2018-2019 Marshall Memorial Fellow and served as a Special Assistant to the Alaska Attorney General on Alaska Native legal issues, General Counsel of Southcentral Foundation, and Chief Judge of the Northern California Intertribal Court System. He is a husband and a father and lives in Anchorage with his family.

Slides - https://www.dropbox.com/s/r953v11j4gy6nud/AUUF%20Tribal%20Courts%2C%20Sovereignty%20and%20VAWA%2022.pdf?dl=0

Paul Brown has more than forty-five years of experience in management, fund-raising, marketing, and organizational development. He was a founder and producing director of Alaska Repertory Theatre, the first professional theatre in Alaska. He later transitioned from producing theatre to producing films, including documentaries about former Governor Wally Hickel and Senator Ted Stevens (research and pre-production). He chaired the commission for the design, development, and funding of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, helped establish Alaska’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and plan the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Alaska statehood. Paul has been deeply involved in national and international efforts to assist victims of depleted uranium, including American military veterans and indigenous and other local populations in combat zones. He is a member of Bridge Builders and Backbone and a board member of “You Gotta Believe,” a Brooklyn-based organization whose mission is to find permanent homes for foster children over ten. He is a parent with thirteen- and eight-year-old grandchildren.

Dr. Steven Haycox is a distinguished professor of history emeritus, a respected author of numerous books and essays, and a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News. In 2003, he was named the Alaska Historical Society's Historian of the Year and received the Alaska Governor's Humanities Award. Before his retirement, Prof. Haycox taught history for over 40 years at the University of Alaska, where he was named a distinguished professor and was awarded the Edith R. Bullock Prize for Excellence. Steve earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1970. His books include Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics and Environment in Alaska, Battleground Alaska: Fighting Federal Power in America's Last Wilderness, and the recently revised Alaska: An American Colony, which has been called “by far the finest history of Alaska yet produced.” He was born in the Upper
Midwest and went to high school in a suburb of New York. He was a musician in the Navy and served in the Pacific.

Documents -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ycadopvia84miiu/FourthAveTheatreTimeline_from_Stephen%20Hayco_20220717.pdf?dl=0

and

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2x0qv93b3wls5zi/Proposal%20to%20the%20Alaska%20Historical%20Commission%20to%20save%20%20the%20%204th%20Ave%20Theatre%E2%80%94Grant%20Callow%2C%20March%2017%202017.pdf?dl=0