On Saturday, April 11, the three councils that support Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—Quaker Life Council, Administrative Council, and Nominating Council—held their meeting in the joint format. In this structure, all three councils meet together as one Joint Council to worship, discern, and conduct business collaboratively. Their practice is to share the minutes in a news story with the PYM community in the weeks following the meeting.
Each month, the council selects one item from its agenda or conversation to lift up. This month, the council is lifting up the new yearly meeting collaborative, the Quakers Ending Mass Incarceration Collaborative.
In this Collaborative, Friends will seek to reduce mass incarceration, reduce its effects on people who are incarcerated and their families, and assist those recently released from incarceration in their transition back into society. The collaborative will engage in the education of Friends and community members regarding how the current carceral system operates, both systemically and at the individual level.
