The WomXn's march 2.0

Seattle crowd believed to be close to same size as last year =100,000

8,000 marched in Olympia, WA the capitol

NYC "at least 85,000"

Chicago exceed last year's number at 300,000

LA between 400,000 and 500,000

Oakland 40 to 50,000

San Francisco 80,000

You get the idea!

People marching in Seattle

Signs: " It is no longer about whether Trump has any decency but about whether we do.

"2017-2018 the year men discover consequences."

Spank Trump with a rolled up copy of the constitution .

11/6/2018 we take it back

You are not entitled to your own facts

so bad even introverts are here

Ugh, where do I even start

If I make my uterus a corporation will you stop regulating it?

Elect a clown, expect a circus

You can't comb over sexism.

A dialogue with Martin Luther King, Jr. on Climate Change

Have you ever seen a quote and it spoke to your condition?  As regular readers of this blog know I am a climate activist.  I recently read over a long list of Martin Luther King quotes and many of them spoke to me and related in my mind to the current Climate Crisis.  I share with you today, on his birthday a sort of dialogue I made up of my questions or comments as answered by a real quote from Dr. King offered in the 1960s.

Doctor King, I want to call you that in acknowledgement that to receive the higher education to get a PhD has not been an easy path for African Americans whose path was blocked in many ways.  So I want to honor and not ignore your accomplishments.

Dr King, I have been an activist all my life and your legacy has shaped my activism.  I now work on climate change an issue which at the time of your death was only just becoming known to oil companies which kept this secret from the public.   So you did not address this issue during your life, but your words speak to me because of the eternal nature of many of the things you said.  They speak to our current struggle to try to protect our planet and life for our children and their children.

What would you advise us as we look at the issue of climate change?

We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

What would you advise this group of people who have gathered here today of all different faiths, races and classes, to honor your name, about this issue of climate change:

“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional, our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation: and this means we must develop a world perspective. 

Dr. King, Naomi Klein has said that climate change cannot be solved unless we take on the web of interlocking injustices that face us at this time.  What would you say?

”Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”                       

And what would you say to her point that capitalism is the heart of the climate problem?

“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”

What would you say to the corporations, such as DAPL and Kinder Morgan, who speak for their right to profit over the concerns of the public?

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being.  It is part of the earth man walks on it is not man.”

Documents now show that they have waged campaigns of disinformation and withheld the science that shows us the danger we are in.

A lie cannot live.

People of color stand to be much more profoundly effected by climate change, should that divide us in the struggle to stop climate change?

We may have all come on different ships but we’re in the same boat now.

Dr. King as we in this room face the crisis of betrayal by corporations, politicians at all levels of society and even our own friends and family caught in the web of habit what should we do?

“If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”

I have been working hard at this Dr. King, for years now, but it is hard sometimes to speak up when I see my friends casually engaging in carbon burning, earth destroying habits or to confront public officials.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.

Most of us must work for a living so it is hard to find time to fight this battle on top or the normal demands of life.

We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

But Dr. King, there are children to drive to things, there are holiday preparations to tend to, there are church responsibilies, and overtime at work, and sometimes the sun shines in Seattle

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

I wish everyone felt that way, we need more help, we are such a small number against well financed and powerful corporations.

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

What would you say Dr. King, to those among us who know that Climate Change is a threat, but do not make the time to act on this?  To those who feel there is nothing they can do about climate change because we are dependent upon fossil fuels and the politicians won’t act?

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.  He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with evil.

Sometimes Dr King, I am angry.  I am just so angry about the way our planet is being destroyed and our childrens future being curtailed.  What should be do Dr King?

"History has taught...it is not enough for people to be angry--the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force."

We have been organizing, but we have also encountered some huge defeats and set backs with the election of the climate denying, profit loving Mr. Trump.

I believe that the unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.  This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

It is so disappointing at times

We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.

Some of us in this room have family members who do not believe that climate change is real or view our actions and beliefs as crazy.

“But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love…Was not Amos an extremist for justice…Was not Martin Luther an extremist…So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.  Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”   

Dr. King how can I have courage in the face of all of this?

“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

We are organizing people to do nonviolent direct action against the fossil fuel companies, but for some of us to break the law is a big leap.

“One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly …and with a willingness to accept the penalty.  I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.” 

Others don’t always see it that way. Forinstance, the people of ND saw the DAPL protestors as trouble makers and law breakers.
“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”

Dr. King where is God as we face this struggle for survival?

“The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.”

What then should I ask of God?

Use me, God.  Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.

Thank you Dr. King for sharing your wisdom and your inspiration with us today.

To see the source for these quotes: http://www.keepinspiring.me/martin-luther-king-jr-quotes/

Why Quakers should be Vegetarians

This article appeared this month in FJ.   Here is the slightly longer unedited version.

Being a Vegetarian is a Climate Issue                                           By Lynn Fitz-Hugh

I would like to make the case for Quakers becoming vegetarian.  Quakers at one point wore black and white clothing so as not to create a market for dyed clothing because the dying process was so carcinogenic that those working in the industry died young.  Quakers also, over a process of many years came to unity on the practice of owning slaves as inhumane, unjust, and inequitable. Our testimony of simplicity has always called us to own less as a way of not being driven by material attachments or over consumption of our earth’s resources..  John Woolman called us to look to our possessions and removed the seeds of war (and I would add suffering.)  All of these ideas: caring for our ourselves, our fellow human beings, and the earth, lead me to conclude that the modern day application would be for Friends to become vegetarian. 

.

I first became a Vegetarian while attending Earlham and I have been a vegetarian, of some stripe now for 4 decades.   I became vegetarian not for health or spiritual reasons or the issue of animal welfare.  (Although after reading Charlotte’s web in childhood I never again ate pork)  I became vegetarian for political reasons. I learned at Earlham that we could end world hunger if we stopped using food to feed cattle consumed by people.

I will briefly describe my journey with vegetarianism to illustrate the point that there are many ways to flexibly hold a witness about the effects of meat production on our environment, animals and our planet.  I grew up in a meat and potatoes kind of family where every meal was meat, carbs and over-boiled veggies. I therefore could not even imagine how someone could or would eat vegetarian.  The first time I had a week of delicious vegetarian meals when I was 21 I was instantly converted.  I knew then that it was possible to eat well without meat.  Nine years later I wound up in a situation where I had to travel a stretch of road dotted with one fast food restaurant after another during dinner hour and then enter a facility for three hours that had no food! The only thing I could find to eat was bean burritos at Taco Time. That was okay for a while but after three months of bean burritos three times a week I thought I would barf if I saw another one!  I reluctantly added fish back into my diet.

For the next 15 years, I only ate meat outside of my house and then infrequently . In order to welcome my meat eating step-son into our house I began to cook chicken and fish at home. My husband at the time, who had been 100% vegetarian for nine years, was amused that I describe myself as vegetarian.  I told him that so far, he had still eaten vastly more meat in his life than I and that would be true for years. After we divorced I stopped eating meat again.   Then I developed some health issues that the doctor said was from not eating enough animal protein.  Currently I eat fish and eggs each once a week which seems to be enough to maintain good health. Apparently, sometimes what we wind up eating is a series of events created by the landscape we travel.  

In my early vegetarian years, I learned quickly that simply mentioning that I was vegetarian brought a strange guilty/defensive reaction from others.  Without my saying anything other than “I don’t eat meat”, people would start offering explanations and justifications for eating meat.  I learned not to make a big deal about my choices because I got tired of listening to people’s guilt. I had not become vegetarian to assume a position of moral superiority over others.  I mention this because some of you as you read this may notice feelings of guilt or defensiveness.  I ask you to try to wrestle with those feelings.  I suspect that Friends who were first asked to give up owning slaves also wrestled with guilt and defensiveness.  I think that each of us will have to do the best we can with the moral issues present at this point in history that involve meat production and consumption.  

As my bumpy path demonstrates I have no morally superior position to speak from.  I am not trying to tell the reader how to eat.  I am however  asking you to exam the moral issues with meat consumption in the age of climate change.  I also think that this is not a black and white no meat no dairy or everything.  Some people choose to be vegan, some vegetarian, some eat no red meat, some are pescatarian eating only fish, and some just eat less meat than they used to.  Change is not easy, but if we hold this loosely we can explore and begin to shift.

Climate Change

The first reason that I would call Friends to vegetarianism is climate change.  Friends overall are well aware of and very concerned about the threat of climate change. Friends have earlier written to FJ about why climate change touches on every one of our testimonies.  Early in my climate activism I started making a comprehensive list of what people could do to lower their carbon footprint.  What blew me away was discovering that one of the biggest reductions people could make was simply cutting out eating meat!   The fertilizer used to create animal feed, the transport of the feed, the amount of feed to produce a comparable amount of animal protein, and the transport of the animal are all very energy intensive activities.  Eating lower on the food chain and eating foods grown organically produces far less carbon.  

There’s yet another drawback to eating animals such as cows and sheep.   Their manure, burping and flatulence deposits large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, and methane is 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon.  I know that sounds like a joke, but it is true.

I have seen various charts showing how much carbon per day/per year a person would save if they didn’t eat meat.  The data doesn’t agree exactly, but they all show HUGE savings.  By one estimation if you cut out eating meat one day a week for a year, you save 700 pounds of carbon, cut it out two days a week  you save 1400 pounds of carbon a year and cut out all meat and you save a whopping 4,900 pounds of carbon a year. By point of comparison switching out one 60-watt bulb saves 100 pounds a year.  

A more conservative chart showed the savings from giving up all meat to be equivalent to giving up driving a Prius. (Some of this depends upon how much meat you were eating to begin with.)  The UN list meat production as 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) production.   What would happen to climate change if we all cut out that 18% of GHS emissions in the next year? This is the point at which I went back to not eating any meat.  The newly released book Drawdown by Paul Hawken’s lists 200 ways for humans to reduce or sequester carbon.  The fourth solution is eating a plant based (non-meat) diet.

Again, if one holds flexibly the goal of eating less meat to achieve more social justice, it is helpful to know the following.  The production of lamb is by far the highest carbon footprint, two times that of beef which is also terrible.   After beef, cheese has a little less than half the footprint of beef (but still high because of how cows are raised in the US), then comes pork, salmon, turkey, tuna…with tuna being half the footprint of pork, and eggs just a bit less than tuna.    Yogurt or tofu has one third the footprint of tuna.  Inexplicably cow milk is lower than even vegetables. (See www.ewg.org       For chart) 

A vegetarian who did not eat cheese, but did eat eggs, yogurt, tofu and milk could get enough protein and produce relatively low GHG emissions. Forty percent of all energy used for industrial agriculture is for fertilizers and pesticides.  Thus organic food systems use 30 to 50% less energy and the soil sequesters about 28% more carbon than industrial-farmed soil.

Clearly being vegan would have the best carbon footprint, but there are significant health issues surrounding eating vegan.  (Hats off to those of you who put in the effort to do it safely.)  There are also vegans who feel that it is indeed perfectly safe and there are conflicting studies about this.  Like all the choices mentioned here eating vegan may work for some though not all.  Each of us needs to find our right choice.   

Peace Testimony

Not killing animals speaks to our testimony of non-violence. Even if you are comfortable with the idea that in the cycle of life some animals eat other animals, I would suggest that if you take even a cursory look at Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), you would be horrified.  The animals are raised and killed in inhumane, crowded and violent ways.   This, at a minimum, is reason to look to pasture raised animals.

Climate change is creating drought and resulting food shortages.  The argument has been made, I feel convincingly, that the war in Syria really began over food shortages.   So the issue of using food to feed production livestock rather than export it to other countries so more people can eat is a peace issue.

Social Justice, Equality and Simplicity

As explained above meat is an energy intensive way of producing protein. Seventy nine percent of farmland is for livestock feed and pastures.  Rich countries have higher levels of meat consumption (and resultingly higher obesity levels).  We could feed 2.9 billion more people if meat were not produced.  One acre of grain produces five times more protein than one acre used to produce meat, and feeds 25 people as opposed to one carnivore.  Meat production is also a much more water intensive way to produce food, and as water becomes more scarce it will also be increasingly more of a resource issue.  Both equity and simplicity testimonies always have been about not living in ways that deprive others of their quality of life.  The idea of “live simply, so others can simply live” is embodied here.

Earth Stewardship

Quite aside from all of the climate change issues mentioned above, CAFO’s (where most meat in the US is produced) are one the greatest contributors to the pollution of local creeks, ponds, rivers and aquifers due to the runoff from animal waste into these water sources.  The way mass crops are produced (most of which in the US are for animal feed) under agribusiness strip the soil of nutrients and do not sequester carbon like organic farming methods do.

So Friends I invite you to take up the challenge of reducing or eliminating your meat consumption!  I would like to see that for our Quarterly, Yearly and annual gatherings like FGC that we try working with our food providers to provide only vegetarian meals.   This would be a great way for Friends to experience delicious and healthy eating, and to support those who are working on such changes.  I invite you to this witness for peace, equality, stewardship and justice.

Alzheimer's: Speaking in Tongues and Listening in Tongues

Yesterday I went to a memorial service at my Meeting for someone who died of Alzheimer’s.  He is not the first or the last person with dementia my Meeting has said goodbye to or that other Meeting’s I have belonged to have bid farewell to.  It is not uncommon that people with dementia can repeat themselves quite a bit as their disease progresses – both forgetting that they have already said it and also sometimes being hyper focused on certain things.

This friend had three messages that he repeated many times – but in my reflection if one viewed this as a message given in Tongues and we learn to listen in Tongues (or through Spirits eyes) then the messages were of relevance and remained so.   One message he gave a number of times was about his experience volunteering on the local Church Council, and how he delighted in the fact that people came from all different faith’s but cared about the same things.   To me it was an enduring message about ecumenicalism and also taking joy in the volunteer work you do.   He also gave a message explaining why he was called by his middle name not his first name which included some humor about his family of origin.  To me this was a message about knowing who you are and valuing the connection to family.  His final repeat message to us was to count the number of men and women in the room.   He would often point out that he was one of only a few men in the room.  This to me is a very real problem with our aging Society of Friends and was a call to action.   It was interesting to me that even as his cognitive vigor lapsed his sense of belonging to a community and wanting to share with that community did not.

It is important how we hear messages.   Someone could have heard these as an annoying and repetitive message or even as a irrelevant and “demented” message.   But if you listen to it as a message from Spirit than God can use even a demented vessel to deliver a true message.

In a previous Meeting I belonged to a woman rose once a Meeting (and towards the very end sometimes 2x a meeting) and sang Amazing Grace.  It’s a good song, and she was a good singer.  I was never sorry to hear it.  I was glad that she wanted to share with us.

Another man with dementia several times in response to the children entering the room for the last 15 minutes, often loudly and joyfully but disruptively – made the same beautiful comment.   He quoted the Bible where it says we shall enter the Kingdom of God like small children.   It was a powerful and consistent ministry to those in the room who were impatient or annoyed by the children’s noise.  It was reminder that they were God’s children and that God had asked us to be more like them.   Some see the progression into dementia as being one into a “childlike state”….so I took some comfort that as he entered that state that he knew it to be one that enters the Kingdom.

And what about us.  Can we learn to treasure that child like state?  Can we learn to listen for the spirit behind even garbled messages?  Can we learn to see the soul that shines even through a mind that fails?

Black and White Justice (and color of all kind)

What is your personal experience with the criminal justice system?

This was the worship sharing question.  My Meeting is small and there were not a lot of us there.  Everyone sitting in the circle was white. I knew that of the people in the room that I had by far the most personal experience with the criminal justice system.

My experience has many levels and spans 4 states: as a volunteer, as a visitor, an observer of post prison inmate experience, and my own experience as an activist with arrest, detention and courts.  I started at age 20 in college going into the local prison as a volunteer...why?  Because my peer group were all being required to register for the draft for the first time in 11 years and they were taking a stand and saying no, the result of which was that some of them were going to go to prison (and did).  I wanted therefore to understand what prison is. 

Volunteering to be inside:

I was an Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator over a 10 year period of time. 

After my experience as a volunteer in the IN prisons, in Missouri I learned AVP which I did for a year before moving to WA and starting the WA state AVP.  At points I was going in once a month for 3 days straight.  I would spend beautiful summer, spring and fall days in windowless rooms.   I knew men guilty of all variety of crimes and I learned the culture of prison.   I spent hours and hours listening to men describe their experience inside, both beautiful and horrible.  I never asked anybody why they were locked up because it is considered impolite, but often they would tell me, sometimes in great detail.  I knew people doing "short" sentences of a few years, and men doing "life" anything over 13, and I still know men inside who are doing life without the possibility of parole. Vastly disproportionately the men doing life without were Black men.   I listened to men talk about how they did time, how they coped.  I listened to men describe lifestyles so hard on the outside that they said they were grateful they had come to prison because it had saved their life.   And I listened to men hate the place they lived and everyone they could never, never get away from.  I challenged myself to find that of God in each of them and I did.  I made friends and I loved men I knew inside those walls.

Long before there was a book called No New Jim Crow I understood that prisons were a way to both separate men of color from the rest of culture and also permanently bar them from equal opportunities.  It took only one look around any prison room to see that.   In the very white state of WA when the majority of prisoners are people of color the evidence of discrimination is blatantly obvious.  I listened to many men tell me about public defenders so overloaded, incompetent or indifferent that their lawyers seemed unaware of basic facts of their case or in some case even of their names.

I met guards who seemed far more cruel and heartless than the "criminals" they were watching and I also met guards well liked by the prisoners who managed to be kind to everyone.  Mainly I saw the incredible boredom of the guards and understood why the prisoners would say "they are doing time too without doing the crime."  It also became clear to me how the power tripping and cruelty were simply how some of them entertained themselves or felt important in the very small pond that was their world.  Not dissimilar to the power struggles that went on among the prisoners.

As the administrator of our program, I also spent a lot of time talking to the prison administration and dealing with rules and attempts to get reasonable accommodations for the program.  I eventually lobbied the legislature to try to change some of the most egregious things about the prison system.  I learned to not try to meet the rules of the prison with logic because they were not based upon logic but upon layers of history, egos, and power tripping - they were arbitrary and inconsistent and sanity was only to be had when you could accept that.

Visiting injustice

I eventually stopped being a volunteer and became a visitor and then endured the even more disrespectful ways the friends and family of prisoners would be treated. Metal detectors and pat searches and time wasted waiting because they had not even called the person you went to visit.  The covert message always being there must be something very wrong with you and worthy only of contempt if you cared about someone in prison.  The truth frequently being communicated that they had all the power and you had none and don't forget it.

The Post Prison “set up”

I also watched many, many men I knew come out...and 90% of the time fail.   They failed because they were set up.   The ones who had done the longest had been deprived for so long of the ability to make even the simplest of choices: what they would eat, or when they would sleep, or what products they would want to use....that having to decide all these things on the outside was overwhelming.  Street culture is so different than prison culture that they were lost.  In addition, after years of being penalized if they objected or asserted themselves, they struggled in society to have a voice, to set boundaries or to ask for things.   Those who came out without family were really sunk - released with only some clothes, no job, and money in a check form (but no id and thus no easy way to cash their check) they were easily ready to become homeless or steal something.   After years of not having consistent access to drugs and alcohol and now maximally stressed, many would very quickly be back to addictions within weeks or months.

Activism and arrest and trial

And all of the above...this does not begin to address my own receiving end of the criminal justice system.  As a political activist I have twice committed civil disobedience, so I have twice gotten arrested, been handcuffed and taken down to the station and on one occasion stayed refusing to give my name in solidarity with others in my group not giving their name.   So I have spent time both before and after sentencing in jail.   I have been to court for both arraignment, trial and sentencing.  Having spent so much time with people who desperately tried not to get arrested I am painfully aware of the privilege involved in choosing to risk arrest.  I also am supremely annoyed by activists who spend some hours or days in jail (jail being completely different from prison) and then think they know about incarceration.  I would like to say clearly that what I know about imprisonment is lightly impressed by my personal experience and heavily influenced by the sharing of literally hundreds of inmates.   And listening to something is not the same as living something.

Courts and the criminal injustice system 

I have been in more courtrooms than I can now count for trials of fellow activists - some of whom were facing decade long sentences for Plowshares actions ("We shall beat our swords into plowshares" the inspiration for personal acts of disarmament against nuclear weapons in the 80's)  and more recently for trials of activists acting against our fossil fuel system.   

In these disgraceful experiences I have learned that in some ritual of authority all must rise for the judge or risk contempt charges or being barred from the room.  I have learned that the judge can limit what evidence and lines of defense people are allowed to offer to the point of preventing their defense.  I learned that jury instructions can be given in such a way that the jury is virtually told they must ignore their conscience and only interpret the law as the judge interprets the law to them - essentially saying that they must find them guilty.   I have watched juries come to quick decisions so they can home that night.  I have watched jurors be selected and dismissed on the basis of their believing anything that might bring actual justice to bare.  (ie anyone who does not believe in the death penalty is dismissed from capitol cases.)  In short I have learned that there is not much justice in our criminal "justice system."

The Color Gap

So my experience is with jails, with prisons, with courtrooms, with arrests, with police who were arresting people around me, with guards, with prison administrators, prison rules, parole boards, etc.  I want to be very, very clear.  That is a lot of experience for a white person – but it is only a glimpse of what people of color go through.  I chose my experience which is in itself an act of privilege.  I don’t have to fear that for a broken tail light I will have an interface with the criminal justice system that could become deadly.  I observed people of color being treated differently by cops and guards, but I did not have that experience.   And the only reason why my story is worth telling is for what I next have to say.

With all of the experience I have listed imagine the jolt to my system to hear my fellow Friends around the circle say, sometimes apologetically, that their only experience with the criminal justice system was with being stopped (treated respectfully and then let go) by a police officer.  These are all Friends who I love and have good, good hearts....and suddenly in one shattering moment I understood how really wide the divide actually is between white people and people of color in this country.   For all the things I have written about above...are the common experience of people of color.   It is hard because of the discriminatory arrest, prosecution and imprisonment practices in the US for there to be a person of color who does not have a family member, friend or self who has not had the experiences I describe above.   The fact that white people on the other hand can live their whole lives without having experiences with the criminal justice system and generally not know anyone either who has had a personal experience...that is a cavernous gap which separates us.

I am still trying to wrap my head around how that gap can be bridged.  It is not going to be tours of jail ...that just does not begin to be three dimensional.   Frankly, it takes time genuinely spent, and sadly I don't think most white people I know would see the benefit of spending that time.  And so, we sit in camps with life experiences so different that we don't even begin to comprehend how different the experiences actually are.

Benjamin Lay and Quaker Corporate Witness

I often hear Friends lament that we do not have a corporate witness currently, or try to figure out in consternation how to marshal other Friends to unify around one of the many critical and compelling issues of our time.  I think that Friends fail to understand the actual chapters of Quaker's historic witness.  For example, Friends proudly speak of the standard of Quakers "not owning slaves".   They sweep past the over 100 years it took our Yearly Meetings to reach consensus that Friends were not to own slavery (or that even after that some Friends did).   This ignores the great price of unpopularity and even expulsion that the early abolitionist experienced in their own Meetings.   It also ignores that this later standard was achieved by "reading Friends out of Meeting".  (Meaning that Slave owners were stripped of membership.)  Given that Friends have now rejected the idea of reading anyone out of membership, it would literally be impossible for modern Friends to achieve this level of conformity to any position we might take on any issue.

Take for example the biography of Benjamin Lay:  The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Redikar released this past month.  Redikar reports on the tactics of Benjamin, a small man known as a hunchback because of his 4 foot height and curvature of the upper back.   In 1738 he became the last of a very few Quakers expelled for their abolitionism.  In fact Redikar tells us Lay was expelled from two British Friends Meetings as well as Abington Friends meeting in the US. Below he describes the incident that led to Lay's expulsion: 

"On September 19, 1738, a man named Benjamin Lay strode into a Quaker meetinghouse in Burlington, New Jersey, for the biggest event of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He wore a great coat, which hid a military uniform and a sword. Beneath his coat Lay carried a hollowed-out book with a secret compartment, into which he had tucked a tied-off animal bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice. Because Quakers had no formal minister or church ceremony, people spoke as the spirit moved them. Lay, a Quaker himself, waited his turn.

He finally rose to address this gathering of 'weighty Quakers.' Many Friends in Pennsylvania and New Jersey had grown rich on Atlantic commerce, and many bought human property. To them Lay announced in a booming voice that God Almighty respects all peoples equally, rich and poor, men and women, white and black alike. He said that slave keeping was the greatest sin in the world and asked, How can a people who profess the golden rule keep slaves? He then threw off his great coat, revealing the military garb, the book and the blade.

A murmur filled the hall as the prophet thundered his judgment: “Thus shall God shed the blood of those persons who enslave their fellow creatures.” He pulled out the sword, raised the book above his head, and plunged the sword through it. People gasped as the red liquid gushed down his arm; women swooned. To the shock of all, he spattered “blood” on the slave keepers. He prophesied a dark, violent future: Quakers who failed to heed the prophet’s call must expect physical, moral and spiritual death.

The room exploded into chaos, but Lay stood quiet and still, 'like a statue,' a witness remarked. Several Quakers quickly surrounded the armed soldier of God and carried him from the building. He did not resist. He had made his point.  This spectacular performance was one moment of guerrilla theater among many in Lay’s life."

Now if you consider this carefully my guess is these are not tactics you could see yourself doing in your Friends Meeting or for that matter any Friends Meeting.   Yet there are many recorded incidents of him doing guerrilla theater among Friends, as well as "calling out" Friends (from the bench during business meeting) in a way that could only be described honestly as self-righteous heckling.  So maybe you say: "well no wonder he was expelled - poor social skills, really very rude....other polite Friends could have gotten the same job done."   Yet both John Woolman and Lucretia Mott made themselves very unpopular among many Friends for their calls to conscience. Lucretia Mott was almost written out of her Meeting several times, probably only spared this because of the wealth and status of her husband.  George Fox for that matter in the beginning of Quakerism entered other people's churches, stood up on the benches and disrupted the service and called the minister hypocritics, among other things.  So playing nice was not in the original Quaker play book.  Speaking the truth bluntly was.  As Quakers have through education and the protection of the right to freedom of religion become more middle class have we also learned the middle class pattern of playing it safe?

I believe if we honestly appraise our history we will see that a few Friends with vision and courage put out a call to Friends to stand for social justice.  There calls were not immediately heeded or was unity quickly or easily reached.  Most spent their lifetimes both inside and outside of the Society of Friends agitating for a vision of justice that was often many decades ahead of their time and took great flack in both arenas for their "eccentric position".  They often did not see the fruits of their labor before their death.  In fact Redikar tells us Lay was living in a cave towards the end of his life in poor health and a Friend came to tell him that the Yearly Meeting had just passed a minute to discipline and disown Quaker slave owners and he jumped up saying: "I can now die in peace."

It does apparently take a certain personality type to be dedicated to the truth above popularity or even security.   That kind of personality is it seems at times flamboyant or "rude" or aggressive and self-righteous in making its point.  As Redikar says about Lay: "His confrontational methods made people talk: about him, his ideas, the nature of Quakerism and Christianity, and, most of all, slavery."   One has to think that Lay, Woolman and Mott did not have the idea that speaking to that of God in another person means to speak gently so as to not offend.  Perhaps the confrontation with oppression will always offend the ways in which oppression has dressed itself up and justified itself.  We have also been taught that minority voices in business meeting are to be listened to because they may in fact carry a piece of the truth not visible to the rest of us.  Can we believe this even when a Friend's voice makes us uncomfortable and challenges our own choices?  Are we willing to have a called Meeting for Business to respond to a crisis rather than send all our concerns off to a lengthy many month process before action can be taken?

Thus for us to wish in the present that we would all be in unity around social concerns is to ignore the actual history of how we have come to be in unity.  There were always Friends dragging the rest of us forward.  Even once we came to unity in consensus,  the work was always done by a small minority of the Meeting.   It is not insignificant that we have a value set that asks people to listen to God's voice, that teaches the rest of us to validate and support those among us who are so led.  It did make a difference that activist Friends were (usually) eventually supported by their Meetings.   But it is a great myth to say Friends acted as one body or in one mind for these great social causes.   It is true that heeding God's call we were out front ahead of much of the rest of the population.

This leads me to ask:  Who is a Friendly nuisance in your Meeting?   How well are you listening and heeding that person's words?   What truth do you care about so deeply that you would stand on a public bench making a spectacle of yourself?  What are you not willing to risk and why?  Are you willing to offend the oppressive?  Are you willing to upset and offend others by unequivocally stating a truth that challenges the very basis of who they are and how they live?

For more on Benjamin Lay see: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/quaker-comet-greatest-abolitionist-never-heard-180964401/
or: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/youll-never-be-as-radical-as-this-18th-century-quaker-dwarf.html

A portrait of Benjamin Lay

Taking Down Racism

Amidst Nazi's openly marching in the USA in 2017 there has also been a record number of Confederate statues coming down this past month.   All kinds of opinions have been expressed about this.  Some people say "what's the fuss?  It's just our history.  Leave them because we cannot deny our history".   Others have called for the removal of even more statues as symbols of racism and hatred. Various people have focused with intensity upon the fact that most were not put up immediately after the war, but much later as a way to glorify white supremacy.   People have pointed out that Robert E. Lee himself said he wanted no statues of himself and thought we should not have Confederate statutes as it would impede the healing of the nation.  Others have written articles calling Lee a traitor.   In this beautifully written piece by African American writer Lisa Richardson, she points out that for many African Americans these white confederate soldiers are their ancestors as well...and suggests the statues be moved to museums.

This national dialogue about the statues, has been accompanied by a certain amount of not very skillful rehashing of the civil war.   Some declare it was a war fought to end slavery (and that confederate soldiers fought to defend slavery.)  Others argue it was a war over states rights, or over  regional domination.   I cringed at the article that called Robert E Lee a traitor for this is exactly the problem with this whole approach.  Generally speaking many white southerners have ancestors that fought in the war, and as Lisa Richardson above points out, so too do many African American southerners. People don't want to think of their ancestors as bad people doing evil things.  So it is exactly this kind of attitude that then drives people to defend the statues.

I have yet to see anyone say the war was a national tragedy that occurred because of our failure as a nation to come to grips with the deeply imbedded racism upon which are nations was founded.  When you total the number all of the causalities on both sides 750,000 Americans died in the civil war - a number that equals the deaths, of WWII,  WWI and the Vietnam war, the next 3 largest war casualties.  Literally families and neighbors fought and killed each other. During the war 420 died each day, a reality that haunted President Lincoln. And this wartime figure, which does not begin to take into account the carnage, slow maiming, suffering and humiliation of 246 years of slavery or the countless genocide of the people native to this country by white "settlers".

People have pointed out that Germany has no war statues glorifying the Nazi's that fought in WWII. Michael Moore has pointed out in his movie "The Next Place To Invade" (which is not a movie about war) that the Germans educate their children about the full truth of what happened in WWII and have made public apologies to Israel and the worldwide Jewish population for the Holocaust that took place during WWII.   We have yet to reach a point where we can have history books in our schools that tell the truth about the massive crimes against people of color upon which this country is built.   So when people say "it is our history"  I would say "yes it is, but it is our unexamined and undigested history."   Why do we have more statues of confederate soldiers than of yankee soldiers?  It does not make sense to deny the loss and suffering of the South who lost their sons and fathers, as if the similar loss of the North is all that matters.  And yet as a Nation we have yet to publicly mourn the suffering and grinding deaths of slavery.

Recently I was at an event where people talked about the important role of rituals the Jewish people practice in order to remember their losses and their suffering - keeping memories alive and maintaining a sense of joy in the face of tremendous oppression across centuries.   It made me begin to think about the importance it does play in society what we memorialize and how.  A friend of mine wrote this post about her trip to Budapest where they were figuring out how to recycle the statues that were left from the legacy of Soviet domination.  As she shares the statues were scrambled together sideways, backward, in a jumble so they no longer were reverent - they were a park to play upon, and to remember.    And as Barb adds in an after comment, they were kept behind a gate that locked at night, no flashpoint for demonstrations and counter demonstrations.  In the Ukraine a statue of Stalin was left standing but is now surrounded by new monuments commemorating his many victims.

I have also been reminded of how some veterans objected to the Vietnam War Memorial on the DC Mall. They felt its message too grimly spoke to death and not the comradeship and heroism of those who served.   So rather than the monument being torn down they added to it a statue of 3 soldiers together. Likewise many museums are having to rethink the commentary they have along side of Native American artifacts, and artifacts of slavery, etc to tell more honestly these stories.   Recently I visited the park that marks the end of the journey of Lewis and Clark.   They acknowledged by name the tribe whose land Lewis and Clark claimed.  This is a small baby step of beginning to tell the story of the dispossession of Native tribes.  

So as we contemplate what to do with these statues to me the far more important question to be asking is how do we begin to commemorate publicly the death and destruction in all directions that the institutional and unexamined racism of the US has caused?   How do we begin to mourn the losses and the destruction?   How do we begin to tell that the unresolved issues of the Civil War lead to the death and suffering of  Reconstruction, of Jim Crow, of the poverty in northern city slums and to the police violence against people of color everyday right now? How can the pieces of these statues be joined by new pieces that as a montage begin to tell the truth about racism in the US?

I, like many many white Americans, have ancestors who fought in the Confederate Army.  I have no need to try to lionize their actions of which I feel only mortified.   But I also have no need to vilify them.  I realize some of them died painfully.  I realize some fought for things they did not believe in.   I believe many fought as in any other war ever because they were conscripted, and they felt no other choice.   And I do not kid myself that some were hateful people who tortured their slaves and fought to protect their "property" rights.   And for me all of this, the whole way of life it represents, is part of the tragedy of institutional racism in many eras - that it is "normalized" to the point that people do not see its moral bankruptcy and feel called to defend it.

If we tear down these statues -as if a symbol can represent the attitudes that created them- we will still fail to do the real work of confronting racism.   I find it far more challenging and valuable to ask how can we create new monuments, in part out of the pieces of old, that will more accurately tell the story of racism in America?  What do we tell?  How do we explain it?  What would be a narrative that includes all of us?