Pennsauken, NJ, native Calvin Bell graduated from Moorestown Friends School in 2020 with an impressive roster of accolades, including a Yale Award for Community Engagement, the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, a White House visit as a video game innovator (for an app that enables residents to report environmental hazards, in English or Spanish, to local government), and a lead role in ‘The Drowsy Chaperone.’ At MFS, Calvin served on the Diversity Committee; today he’s a junior at Morehouse College, an historically Black college. He’ll join Moorestown Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee to talk about his experiences at MFS, at Morehouse, and through many richly varied experiences of a young life. You are welcome to join us on Zoom, at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81587816369 or meeting ID 815 8781 6369.
Anti-Racism
Let’s Talk…
Join F/friends from Moorestown Meeting and beyond for a free-ranging conversation about race and racism. Share stories, experiences new and old, questions, concerns, recommendations, testimony – whatever comes up is welcome. We meet on Zoom at 7:30pm EST, https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81587816369, meeting ID 815 8781 6369.
Let’s Talk About One White Man’s Witness
In 2020, traditional country music artist Tyler Childers released an album of Appalachian fiddle tunes and one original song supporting those protesting the deaths of George Floyd and others. Join Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee, watch a couple of short videos together, and discuss what they suggest about whether and how “white” equals “normal” in America today. To preview the videos, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_I3Rp1CQak and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ3_AJ5Ysx0.
Let’s Talk About Whiteness
Thirty years ago, Toni Morrison told a newspaper interviewer, “In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” For most of us, whiteness is still the default, the norm, in our communities – and that makes identifying and eradicating racism more difficult. Our Friend Prof. Janet Gray, currently editing a book of feminist writings on whiteness, joins us online to discuss the idea of whiteness, and how it affects us as individuals and in community. We all have much of value to contribute to the conversation – so Let’s Talk. All are welcome at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81587816369 on Thursday 15 December at 7:30pm for this conversation sponsored by Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee.
Exploring a Quaker Commitment to Reparative Justice
An online weekend collaboration with Pendle Hill and Woodbrooke Study Centre
Saturday at 9:30am Eastern Time through Sunday at 4pm. Optional pre- and post-workshop sessions.
Reparative justice is an essential part of living out Quaker faith. This workshop explores the spiritual imperative and deep need for Quakers to commit to repairing harms done by Quakers and others through their involvement in slavery and its afterlives.
As an approach, a goal, an ideal, and an ethos, reparations provides a promising path towards healing, repair, and transformational social change. It addresses the dimensions of Spirit, relationship, and resources. As such, it offers a tool for Quakers and Quaker communities to understand our complicity in causing harm, and to explore our options for contributing to the repair of the harms of slavery and its afterlives, the penitentiary system, and settler colonialism, past and ongoing.
This workshop will share an actionable framework for understanding reparations, and the basic concepts and skills required for successful reparative action. Participants will learn about experiments of others, discuss your own thoughts, actions, and plans, and practice applying the framework.
We will examine the patterns of behavior in Quaker meetings that may emerge around anti-racism initiatives, the beliefs that underly these behaviors, and what stops us from taking collective action.
Through resources and an online discussion forum we will explore the issue of reparative justice and relational and financial reparations.
We will gather for four live zoom sessions over a weekend, to witness where other Friends are in the process of making reparations, to learn from each other’s struggles and learnings, and to support each other in discerning our next steps in individual and corporate reparative justice.
It Takes a Village: Raising Antiracist Children… together!
Join the Greene Street Friends School for this special evening with authors Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul, author of Stamped (for Kids), and Britt Hawthorne, author of Raising Anti-Racist Children, as we talk about what it means to raise antiracist children, together in community.
As parents/caregivers, teachers, and all of us who work in schools and make up our neighborhoods, we play important roles in supporting our children’s growth and raising their social consciousness in the pursuit of justice. It is challenging and necessary work — and work that takes a village!
This author talk will be moderated by Tricia Ebarvia, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Greene Street Friends School.
This special evening will also mark the opening of the Armat Learning Commons! Come early for an Open House from 6 to 7pm as we welcome our friends and community into this new space!
Christian Slavery (In-Person Talk) with Christ Church
Katharine Gerbner will examine the historical links between churches in Philadelphia and the Caribbean during the early colonial period.
While Pennsylvania was founded as a Quaker colony, slavery was foundational to its early success, and there were many links between Philadelphia and Barbados. Gerbner will look at the tensions around slavery in early America, when many Quakers and Anglicans were trying to reconcile their Christian beliefs with slavery, rather than trying to end human bondage. Gerbner will also show how the history of Christian Slavery helps us understand the emergence of race and White Supremacy. She will show why it’s essential to remember this uncomfortable history, and ask what we can learn from it today.
Program presented in partnership with Christ Church Preservation Trust.
Beyond Diversity 101
An on-campus intensive with Niyonu Spann and Lisa Graustein
(Sunday at 4:30pm through Thursday at 1:00pm)
Beyond Diversity 101 intends healing transformation. We provide frameworks, offer practices, and hold a space for growing skills to de-structure systems of oppression and raise up liberation. Participants are offered pathways to move beyond the guilt-blame cycle toward radical truth-telling, co-responsibility, and activating joy & justice!
Participants will:
- Recognize and remove blocks that hold you back as a facilitator, artist, leader, healer, teacher, or organizer;
- Articulate and break patterns of domination/power-over/oppression;
- Practice being a courageous and heart-centered transformer;
- Increase the ability to discern, speak, and activate a vision of liberation;
- Recognize how our spiritual lives relate to our social justice work;
- Develop applications for continuing work at home.
Against the Grain: Talking to White People about Racism in a Time of Polarization
An online First Monday lecture with Drick Boyd
In 2021, two weeks after the January 6th attempted takeover of the U.S. Capitol Building by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Drick Boyd released his latest book, Disrupting Whiteness: Talking With White People about Racism. In the book, Drick proposes a particular dialogical approach to talking with white people in their personal, familial, and professional networks about issues of race and racism. However, Drick did not anticipate the gross and continued distortions of the facts of the 2020 presidential election and the attack on the Capitol. In this presentation, Drick will build on his discussion of dialogue about race and pose possible ways we can and must continue to engage white people on the important issues of race and racism, despite the growing polarities.
Providence Young Friends Host Immigration Vigil At Delaware County Courthouse
Providence Meeting’s Middle School Friends led a highly successful vigil for immigrant rights at the Delaware County Courthouse on October 3, 2020. The event was to focus attention on the treatment of immigrants on the U.S. border and a call for action to address this issue. Supporting our middle school Friends were a large contingent from the Movement of Immigrant Leaders of Pennsylvania (MILPA) and local elected officials. [Read more…] about Providence Young Friends Host Immigration Vigil At Delaware County Courthouse