Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Mass Incarceration

Let’s Talk About Incarceration, Justice and Crime

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Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee invites you to read and discuss this essay by Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet, lawyer and ex-convict whose mother survived a violent crime, and worked to put her attacker in prison. Betts brings an important, multi-layered and eloquent perspective to questions of crime, punishment and race in America today. Click here to join the conversation on Thursday, March 25 at 7:30 pm, or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting #873 3565 8140.

If the link above doesn’t work, copy this URL and paste into your internet browser to read the essay: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/magazine/kamala-harris-crime-prison.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article.

If the link for the meeting doesn’t work, copy and paste this URL to join the conversation: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87335658140.

Let’s Talk About Incarceration, Justice and Crime

Written on:

Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee welcomes you to read and discuss this essay by Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet, lawyer and ex-convict whose mother survived a violent crime, and worked to put her attacker in prison. Betts brings an important, multi-layered and eloquent perspective to questions of crime, punishment and race in America today. Click here to join the conversation, or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting #873 3565 8140.

Let’s Talk with a Local Quaker Activist

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Boaz Matlack, a criminal justice activist and former Camp Dark Waters counselor, joins Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee for a conversation about working with law enforcement, school districts, F/friends and neighbors to address racial justice issues in our communities. Click here to join the conversation on Thursday, March 11 at 7:30 pm, or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting #815 8781 6369.

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