Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Social Change

New Years: Open Heart, Peaceful Mind with Valerie Brown

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A Retreat for Rest and Reflection

Registration 4-6pm in the Barn, December 28, first session after dinner. Concludes with lunch January 1st.

This is an especially meaningful time for our community to come back together. Our lives have changed through the challenges of global pandemic, climate crisis, political polarization, and racial and social injustice. These societal challenges have also created space for new experiences, deeper looking, and renewed aspirations. Join us as we return in-person to our Beloved Pendle Hill and our 15th Annual Open Heart, Peaceful Mind Retreat for rest and reflection.

For more information, to register, or to apply for financial assistance, please visit:
https://pendlehill.org/events/new-years-open-heart-peaceful-mind-3/

Saving Our Stories – Training in Oral History

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This online training will focus on the basics of doing oral history interviews including planning, releases, concerns, Zoom and other audio-visual tips, and publication/posting.

This program is offered free, as a service from SouthJerseyQuakers.  We welcome multiple participants from Meetings and other groups.

We encourage Friends to focus on how a Meeting or individual Friends made South Jersey (and other communities) a better place to live.  Additional topics, such as how our faith and practices have guided – and enhanced – Friends’ lives are important to record as well.

Melissa Ziobro, Specialist Professor of Public History, Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University, and President of Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region, will lead this training.  She is also the editor for New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, a joint venture of the NJ Historical Commission, Rutgers University Libraries, and Monmouth University.

Let’s Talk About Faith-based Reparations

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A world that is accountable for past harms including slavery, colonialism, genocide, and other material and moral abuses will be a world better for everyone. The Grassroots Reparations Campaign sponsors a course to examine the history, spiritual, conceptual (ethical and moral) and practical dimensions of reparations as a global movement. Centered on the approach to reparation from the United Nations, the twelve-hour course explores the perspectives that justify and help many ground the case for faith-based reparations. The spiritual journey to uproot white supremacy externally and internally co-exists with working toward full reparations and abolition-democracy. Barb Kreider will offer some insights from this course. Click here or call 646-558-8656 and enter meeting ID 873 3565 8140 to be part of the conversation.

A Gathering of Prayer for the City of Philadelphia

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A gathering to Pray for our city about the violence and increasing murder rate. To date there are 407 murders up 18% from last as recent a young mother lost her life leaving two young children without her. This is also a call families of victims, youth who are fearful, community/faith leaders to join us!

Let’s Talk About Ellen Foster

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Book club! Moorestown Meeting attender Elizabeth will facilitate discussion of Kaye Gibbons’s award-winning short novel Ellen Foster. This story of a strong, smart girl and her challenging childhood is widely available in libraries and from booksellers. Click here or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting ID 815 8781 6369 to join the conversation with our Anti-Racism Committee.

Let’s Talk About Ellen Foster

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Book club! Gather with us for a discussion of Kaye Gibbons’s award-winning short novel Ellen Foster. This story of a strong, smart girl and her challenging childhood is widely available in libraries and from booksellers. Click here or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting ID 815 8781 6369 to join the conversation.

Let’s Talk About the Baldwin-Buckley Debate

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Ben will facilitate a discussion of Fringe Art’s production of ‘Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge’, a recreation of a famed 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., on the question, “Has the American Dream Been Achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?” If you have a chance, see the performance Sept 9, 10 or 11 at the FringeArts Theater on the Philadelphia waterfront. You can also watch the original debate online, and find many related commentaries and analyses. Click here or call 646-558-8656 and enter meeting ID 873 3565 8140 to join the conversation.

Let’s Talk About Ellen Foster

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Join Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee as our attender Elizabeth facilitates a discussion of Kaye Gibbons’s beautifully human, short novel Ellen Foster. The award-winning book about a strong, smart girl navigating an unusually challenging childhood is widely available in libraries and from booksellers. Enjoy a book club and help support the important work Friends are doing in witness to our testament of equality; click here or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting ID 873 3565 8140.

Let’s Talk About ‘How Can We Win?’

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Author and activist Kimberly Jones went viral with a YouTube interview in which she asks, “How can we win?” Moorestown Friends Meeting’s Anti-Racism Committee recommends the interview highly; we’ll host a discussion of Jones’s perspective on race, protest, violence and economics for this Let’s Talk session on Thursday 22 July. Watch Jones’s seven-minute interview on YouTube – and maybe her 12-minute appearance on The Daily Show – then join us to discuss Jones’s ideas and our own perspectives; click here or phone 646-558-8656 and use meeting ID 815 8781 6369.

Green Street Meeting provides school supplies to children at EMIR Healing Center

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Green Street Meeting’s EMIR Ministry Support Group says a heartfelt “Thank you!” to everyone at Green Street, the meetings in Philadelphia Quarter, and beyond who supported our school supplies drive in summer 2018.

The drive benefited 103 children whose families had lost a loved one to homicide, and who received services and support from the EMIR Healing Center. The center was founded by our member Victoria Greene, and named in memory of her son Emir, who was murdered. The name also makes the statement “Every Murder Is Real.” No matter who the victim was, or how much or little attention the crime received, that person’s loved ones are mourning their loss for years afterwards.

Still going strong in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, after 19 years, the EMIR Healing Center continues to help families survive and eventually heal from the pain of losing a loved one to homicide.

Friends from Green Street Meeting formed the EMIR Ministry Support Group in early 2018. We use the Quaker Social Change Ministry model, developed by American Friends Service Committee (especially Green Street member Lucy Duncan). In this model, a group of Quakers partner with a local organization led by people most impacted by a particular issue. The Quaker group follows their lead in deciding what to work on. The model also makes time for spiritual sharing, connection, and reflection, leading to deeper relationship, followership, and grounding of action.

Victoria asked our group at Green Street to organize a drive to provide backpacks with school supplies to the children EMIR serves. When a parent is mourning a murdered family member, whether it be a brother, sister, parent, or child, it can be very hard for them to keep things together for the rest of the family. They may be depressed and overwhelmed, and not as able to track things like school start dates and supply lists. They may lose income or even their job.

Our ministry support group got organized in the spring, asked the Meeting to take us under their care, and then spent the summer campaigning and publicizing the drive. An online buying service was set up so supporters could buy things and have them shipped directly to EMIR. (See this PYM news story from May 2018.)

With a couple of weeks to go before our deadline, we had 51 backpacks, toward our goal of 85. And then we found out there were 103 kids served by EMIR! With God’s abundance, people came through. We had enough to serve every child. We raised about $1,750 in donations, which enabled us to fill gaps in what was bought online or contributed in person.

The week before school started, we gave away 103 backpacks with school supplies in them at the EMIR office. The little children in particular were overjoyed. There were even a few backpacks left over, in case other children have a need.

Victoria said it was a great success and thanked our support group for doing the project and everyone who contributed supplies, funds, or time.

To everyone who purchased supplies online, dropped off supplies directly at the Meetinghouse or at the EMIR office, or made a donation, THANK YOU!

– Chris Mohr, support group convenor

Photo: Victoria Greene, member of Green Street Meeting and founder of EMIR Healing Center, with a box used to collect school supplies. Learn more about EMIR at emirphilly.org.