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.
Social Justice
Standing for Equality & Justice in Southampton: An Update
On May 25, 2020, police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds causing George’s death. The country responded with outrage and protests. On Sunday, June 7th, Southampton Friends held their first Vigil for Social Justice and Equality. They haven’t missed a Sunday since. [Read more…] about Standing for Equality & Justice in Southampton: An Update
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.
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.
AFSC Seeks Corporation/Board Clerk – Call for Nominations!
The American Friends Service Committee is seeking a new presiding clerk of the Corporation and the Board of Directors to begin service in April 2023 on approval of the AFSC Corporation. We are asking everyone in the Quaker and AFSC communities to help identify potential nominees who can serve in this important leadership role in AFSC during a challenging and exciting period in the organization’s history.
[Read more…] about AFSC Seeks Corporation/Board Clerk – Call for Nominations!
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
Providence Meeting Unites on Racial Justice and Anti-Racism Statement
Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This fall Providence Meeting united around the following statement on Racial Justice and Anti-Racism.
Consistent with our mission, Providence Friends Meeting seeks to involve members and attenders as partners in the ongoing work of racial justice, advancing equity, and undoing the effects of racism. This work requires us to examine and transform our own individual beliefs and actions, the beliefs, actions and policies of our meeting as a corporate body, and to challenge the effects of racism in the larger society. These include, among others, disparities in healthcare, economics, housing, voting access, climate justice, the workplace, criminal justice, and education.
Goals
- As Providence Friends Meeting acknowledges and honors the fundamental value and dignity of all individuals, we strive to be a culturally safe space where all individuals and groups are treated with respect in regard to their unique cultural needs and differences.
- We strive to build a pluralist, anti-racist community that encourages participation and leadership among all Friends, and supports and elevates partners and community members most affected by racism and bias.
Providence Friends Meeting resolves to use these queries to further these goals.
Corporate Queries
- How does our meeting support, model and encourage active and ongoing anti-racism work? How do we move all members forward on their journey to being their best selves?
- How are we working to change the ways that our meeting benefits from privilege and systemic inequality?
- How do we create “space at the table” for all individuals and groups?
- How do we actively consider the effects of our decisions on those who have been harmed by racism?
- How do we use Spirit-led decision making to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion rather than support structures that reinforce inequities?
- How do we carry this work into our worship and committee work?
Individual Queries
- How do I regularly examine myself for attitudes and behaviors that indicate any hidden prejudice?
- If someone suggests that something I have said or done is racist or discriminatory, do I listen and consider their point of view?
● How do my lifestyle choices affect the causes of justice and injustice in our nation and the world?
● How do I seek ways to make my local community, state and nation more just and equitable?
● How do I challenge statements, practices, behaviors, and interactions that diminish, demean, disempower, or otherwise harm others and their identities?
How do I do this with loving kindness that honors that of God in each person?