Rising Together
a day of renewal, learning, and connection for justice-seekers and community builders
Rising Together 2026: Investing in Liberation
Saturday, January 24th, 2026
9:00 am – 3:00 pm at Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Are you rethinking your understanding of what freedom and safety mean in our world today? Are you wondering how to imagine a liberated future where we invest in each other rather than policing, prisons, and immigration enforcement? Are you curious about how abolition movements are grounded in spiritual work? Join us for Rising Together 2026: Investing in Liberation!
Hosted by the Fox Valley UU Fellowship, along with co-conspirators from First Congregational UCC Appleton, the Green Bay Area UU Fellowship, ESTHER, JOSHUA, and the Wisconsin UU State Action Network, Rising Together gives local advocates, activists, justice-makers, and community-builders the opportunity to get centered on what matters most and feel grounded in a nurturing community.
The event is free, open to the community, and includes light breakfast, snacks, lunch, and childcare. We are also hoping to offer home hospitality connections for anyone who is traveling from out of state. Please register by January 8th if you’d like to buy a t-shirt, or at least by January 20th to help us plan for food and other logistics!
If you have questions, please email hannah@fvuuf.org!
Schedule for Saturday, January 24th
| 8:30-9:00 am | Light Breakfast & Check In |
| 9:00-9:30 am | Spiritual Grounding |
| 9:30-10:30 am | Panel and Q&A |
| 10:30-10:45 am | Break |
| 10:45-11:45 am | Breakout 1 |
| 11:45 am-12:30 pm | Lunch |
| 12:30-1:30 pm | Breakout 2 |
| 1:30-1:45 pm | Break |
| 1:45-2:45 pm | Breakout 3 |
| 2:45-3:00 pm | Closing |
Breakout Session Descriptions
| Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline | From School Resource Officers to the criminalization of truancy to surveilling students, there are many ways that policing shows up in our public schools. Come to learn about the harm caused by the school-to-prison pipeline and talk about how to be engaged locally on these issues! |
| Alternatives to Calling the Police 101 | This is where the rubber meets the road! How can we work with our neighbors and other local resources to resolve conflict and promote safety without involving law enforcement? Come ready to practice how to put it into action! |
| Spiritual Practices for Tolerating Your Discomfort | As we do the work of dismantling harmful systems in our communities, many of our assumptions and even core beliefs can be challenged. How can we increase our tolerance for our own discomfort so that we can respond with nimble (rather than NIMBY) thinking? Come to practice together! |
| What Exactly Are We Abolishing? | If you’re new to the concepts of police or prison abolition work, this session is a great place to start! We’ll explore the historical and contemporary relationship between policing and race, learn about the realities of incarceration in our communities, and the ways these harms shape our communities. |
| Homelessness Shouldn’t Be a Crime | From increasing fines for camping to ticketing people for handing out food, municipalities across the country are finding ways to make being unhoused a crime. How can we support these neighbors without relying on criminalization? |
| Advocating for Liberation in Municipal Budgets | Much of the spending on policing and incarcerating our communities happens at the local level — and there are many ways we can invest in people power at the local level, too! Come ready to learn about how to engage on these issues at the city, village, and county level wherever you live! |