UPCOMING LAST SUNDAY GATHERING:
Wednesday, March 19, 7:30 p.m. at St. Andrew's Presbyterian
14311 Wells Port Drive, west of I-35 off Wells Branch Parkway.
Follow this link for details: "The U.S. in Iraq: Five Years of War and Two Decades of Aggression," a Last Sunday gathering

Last Sunday was an attempt to contribute to community building that grew out of discussions between singer/songwriter Eliza Gilkyson, St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church pastor Jim Rigby, and University of Texas professor Robert Jensen. The goal was to combine interests in progressive politics, spirituality, and arts and culture by creating a space for people to come together that wouldn't feel like a traditional political meeting, church, or concert.

The Last Sunday name played off the successful "First Thursday" event in Austin, with perhaps a hint of the Last Supper in the background. We booked Saengerrunde Hall in downtown Austin for November 2006 through April 2007 and began to sketch out a plan for the gatherings. As we kicked around ideas for programs, we had no idea who would show up or, indeed, whether anyone would show up for an event that didn't fit into existing categories. The turnout for the first Last Sunday, right after Thanksgiving, took everyone by surprise -- more than 500 people overflowed the hall. By the end of the run in April, there were about 300 people at each event.

A variety of people were part of the planning process (thanks to the core group of Bob Dailey, Nancy Gilkyson, Lesley Ramsey, and Pat Youngblood); many others helped with logistics and food (among the stalwarts were Paul Reevesman, Heidi Gibbons, Margaret Hughes and Danna Byrom); and we had great sound courtesy of Andy Becker and Will Blackmon.

From the start, the plan was to present the six programs and then take a break over the summer to assess the experiment. That process is ongoing; if you are interested in the future of the project, please contact Robert at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

in solidarity, the Last Sunday gang,

Eliza Gilkyson
elizagilkyson.com

Jim Rigby
staopen.com

Robert Jensen
uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen

- Last Sunday programs and guests (below).

- "The Last Last Sunday? Austin organizing project contemplating its future," Austin Chronicle, June 21, 2007, by Robert Jensen (external link).

- "Launching Last Sunday," November 2006, by Eliza Gilkyson and Jim Rigby (below).

- News release announcing Last Sunday, November 2006 (below).

- Last Sunday talks by Robert Jensen (external link).

[Note: Because of scheduling conflicts, not all Last Sunday events were on the actual last Sunday of the month.]

Sunday, November 26, 2006
Topic: Introducing Last Sunday
with Gilkyson, Jensen and Rigby

Friday, December 29, 2006
Topic: Harsh Realities and Hope
with Gilkyson, Jensen and Rigby
Guests:
Naomi Shihab Nye, San Antonio-based poet and author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East.
Jim Hightower, author, activist and columnist (the Hightower Lowdown).

Sunday, January 28, 2007
Topic: Confronting White Supremacy
with Jensen and Rigby
Guests:
Sharon Bridgforth, Austin author of the bull-jean stories and love conjure/blues, known for her jazz-blues prayer/poems/performance stories.
Florinda Bryant, an inter-disciplinary performance artist working with the Austin Project.
Musical guest:
Slaid Cleaves, Yankee-born Texan, whose most recent CD is the 2006 "Unsung."

Sunday, February 18, 2007
Topic: Empire: War and Global Justice
with Gilkyson, Jensen and Rigby
Guests:
Jim Hightower, author, activist, and columnist (the Hightower Lowdown).
Ana-Maurine Lara, Austin-based organizer, author of the novel Erzulie's Skirt, and publisher of bustingbinaries.com.
Musical guest:
Butch Hancock, a founding member of The Flatlanders, who in 2006 released the CD "War and Peace."

Sunday, March 25, 2007
Topic: Environment: Ecological Crises, Global and Local
with Rigby and Lesley Ramsey
Guests:
James Galbraith, University of Texas economist and expert on economic inequality.
Erika González, co-director of the Austin group People Organized in the Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER).
Musical guest:
Tish Hinojosa, distinctive cross-cultural music in the contemporary Latin and folk worlds, whose most recent studio record was the 2005 "A Heart Wide Open."

Sunday, April 29, 2007
Topic: Economics: Labor and Immigration
with Gilkyson, Jensen and Rigby
Guests:
Cristina Tzintzún, project director of the Workers Defense Project/Proyecto Defensa Laboral, along with staff and clients of the project.
Louis Malfaro, president of the local teacher's union Education Austin and the AFL-CIO's Central Labor Council.

We live in the most affluent and powerful nation in the history of the world, yet more and more people are beginning to fear that all our money and guns are little protection against the crises that loom ahead.

We think that those crises - political and cultural, economic and ecological - are real and that the fear is justified. But rather than allowing this fear to divide us, which makes us easy prey for the politicians who are so crafty at manipulating our insecurities, we must come together to find honest answers rooted in justice rather than illusory "solutions" rooted in more frantic attempts at domination.

Toward that end, we have come together from very different positions as a musician (Gilkyson) and a minister (Rigby), but with common progressive political principles, to try to help create space for like-minded people to gather not as consumers in the mall but as community members in a hall.

On Nov. 26, we will sponsor the first in an ongoing series of "Last Sunday" community gatherings that will include artistic, political, and spiritual components. We extend a fiercely non-partisan and non-sectarian invitation to all those in Central Texas who are searching for a place for conversation that goes beyond cable TV news soundbites and polarized shouting matches. Because this is Austin, there will be lots of good music, of course. And Naomi Shihab Nye, the San Antonio-based poet, will be our special literary guest for the first gathering. [Note: Travel delays kept Nye from attending the inaugural Last Sunday, but she spoke at the December event.]

Though we open the doors for "Last Sunday" to all, we don't want to pretend the event has no political bent; we are progressives who believe that the existing distribution of wealth and power in the world is fundamentally unjust. Given the dominant role of the United States in that world, we also believe U.S. citizens have a moral obligation to be part of the global justice movement to counter the effects of predatory capitalism and empire-building.

Those of us on stage at the venerable Saengerrunde Hall for this evening will reflect those principles, but we won't be politicking for candidates or issues in traditional form. Electoral politics and issue-oriented campaigns are crucial, but it's just as important to create a space for people to confront those fears, explore our options, and make connections that can be useful in a wide variety of campaigns in the years to come.

We speak of these pending crises not because we have a crystal ball to predict the future, but because in our guts we feel this country is headed in a dangerous direction. More than 60 years of U.S. military domination of the world have hardly made us safe, and an unbridled capitalism has left half the world's population living on less than $2 a day. We see around us an increasingly violent society, a culture in which women and people of color still face very real dangers in a society based on domination. And perhaps most troubling of all, we see the signs of ecological collapse that quite literally threaten the capacity of the Earth to sustain human life as we know it.

It seems to us that, given those realities, being afraid of what is coming is a perfectly sensible reaction. But we can't give in to the fear and retreat. Instead, we have to think of how to act -- not simply to affect public policy in the short term but also to rethink fundamental values for the long term. That will require a level of connection and commitment to community that very few of us feel we have and which we desperately need to foster.

We hope "Last Sunday" will be a small part of that community-building process as we dig in for what one writer has called "the long emergency" that our society faces. There's no better time to start that than now, and no better place than Austin.

News Release
November 2006

"LAST SUNDAY" GATHERING TO FOCUS ON MUSIC, POLITICS, SPIRITUALITY

Austin -- Central Texans with interests in progressive politics, spirituality and the arts will gather for the first in a series of "Last Sunday" community gatherings on Sunday, Nov. 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Saengerrunde Hall, 1607 San Jacinto, in Austin.

Grammy-nominee Eliza Gilkyson, who will perform at the first gathering, said the idea for the event came out of common concerns about the direction contemporary society is heading and a desire to connect with like-minded people outside of traditional political and religious institutions.

"More and more people sense that we face deepening crises -- economic, political, cultural and ecological -- in this country and the wider world," said Gilkyson, who records on Red House. "We don't want to pretend to have all the answers but instead want to give people a chance to struggle with the questions together in a friendly space."

The Rev. Jim Rigby, who will share the stage with Gilkyson for the first gathering, said that because many people don't feel comfortable in traditional churches, it's important to create other venues for conversation about spirituality.

"There is a spiritual dimension to both politics and our everyday lives, and we always need to find ways to deepen our understanding of that aspect of life," said Rigby, who is minister at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church and author of the forthcoming The New Reformation. "Music and art are an essential part of that process, along with the discussion of ideas."

University of Texas professor Robert Jensen, author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity, will speak about contemporary politics at the event.

The special literary guest for the evening will be Naomi Shihab Nye, the San Antonio-based poet whose award-winning verse has been recognized with Guggenheim and Lannan fellowships. Her most recent collection, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award. [Note: Travel delays kept Nye from attending the inaugural Last Sunday, but she spoke at the December event.]

The event is free and open to the public, and child care will be available. For more information, contact Jensen at 471-1990 or bob@thirdcoastactivist.org. Information on the event also is available at the website of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/lastsunday.html.

"Last Sunday" gatherings are planned for Dec. 29, Jan. 28, Feb. 18, March 25, and April 29. Because of holidays and scheduling conflicts, some dates are not on the last Sunday of the month.