Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Mass Incarceration

Continuing Revolution 2023: Nurturing Experiments in Spiritually Grounded Abolition

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June 2-6, 2023: on campus and online via Zoom

  • On-campus resident  (June 2-6): $100
  • Commuter daily attendance: $15/day
  • Online: $20
  • Significant financial assistance is available!

Continuing Revolution, Pendle Hill’s annual conference for young adults (ages 18-35), is a space of collective exploration and learning for the spiritually curious who are striving to live in ways that reflect their values. We welcome those who are seeking to examine the connections between their spiritual, political, and interpersonal lives. 

Join young adult Friends and seekers (ages 18-35) gathering both online and at Pendle Hill to build community with others exploring abolition of police and policing. Building on themes and feedback from Continuing Revolution 2022: Experiments in Spiritually Grounded Abolition, we will focus this year on the relationship between individual and structural transformation. We will explore together definitions and practices of structural change, building skills for positioning ourselves in that work in our respective communities.

We will continue to draw on Mariame Kaba’s understanding of abolition as “a vision of a restructured society where we have everything that we need to live dignified lives.” Kaba notes that “abolition” is not a static or singular thing; the word is used by people of various political persuasions and imaginations, who “want to eliminate prisons, policing, and surveillance, and . . . want to create true safety, health, and well-being instead.” We will learn collectively from the tools, strategies, and processes that contemporary groups are using in local, national, and interpersonal communities, with an emphasis on the interaction between personal and structural work.

Come to Continuing Revolution 2023 to support and be supported in learning to make decisions that reflect your values and hopes for the building of abolitionist futures. Enjoy opportunities for reflection, sharing, worship, and skill-building with other young adults from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences in the nurturing environment of Pendle Hill, either online or in person.

Imagining Philadelphia without Cash Bail

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Friends from Chestnut Hill and Frankford Meetings, along with many others, joined Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (CPMM) on Wednesday 10/24 for an evening at Friends Center on Imagining Philadelphia without Cash Bail, co-sponsored by CPMM and POWER.  About 50 people gathered to hear from Public Defender Keir Bradford-Grey, an organizer for the Philly Community Bail Fund, and a woman who had personal experience with the cash bail system, about the costs and injustices of the current system (even as it is being improved) and the possibilities for ending cash bail altogether. Few of us knew that a court case is moving from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the South toward the Supreme Court, on the basis that cash bail is an unconstitutional violation of equal rights under the law. All of us left under the weight of grave injustice, yet hopeful that change is possible in Philadelphia and that we can be part of it.

This event was one way of acting on a minute that CPMM passed in June of 2017, saying that if we want to refer with pride to our Quaker history of support for ending slavery, we must speak up in the present against mass incarceration.

If you are interested in hosting a similar town hall meeting, or in participating in bail watch hearings, please contact Dana Reinhold at dreinhold99@comcast.net or Terry Roberts at terryroberts1998@gmail.com.

Pamela Haines

215-349-9428

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