“We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love and unity; it is our desire that others’ feet may walk in the same, and do deny and bear our testimony against all strife, and wars, and contentions … Treason, treachery, and false dealing we do utterly deny; false dealing, surmising, or plotting against any creature upon the face of the earth, and speak the truth in plainness, and singleness of heart.” ~Margaret Fell, June 1660
Putney Friends Meeting is deeply distraught by the criminal invasion of our capital building on January 6, 2021.
We denounce the violence to our democracy, the loss of life and the threat to the lives of our legislators. We endeavor to model the testimonies of truth and integrity as we struggle to understand and to actively respond during this dark time in our country.
Minute 2021:01:01: Denouncement of political violence approved by Putney Monthly Meeting 1-17-21
As Friends are no stranger to process, its worthwhile to share the recent Black Lives Matter Street mural in Putney started months ago.The Town Equity and Inclusion Committee, invited a collaboration with the WIndham County NAACP, who proposed the project to the Putney Selectboard.That started many meetings and months to get to last Sunday, when about 50 locals met, starting at 7am on First Day, 9-27.
Among them were a dozen Friends from Putney Meeting, who were encouraged to come and offer Peacekeeping Services. Concerns arose from when a similar event in Bennington Vt was visited by opponents of the project who disrupted th proceedings and led to 4 people being arrested.
As far as I know, No problems arose , and I don’t think it was the intimidating presence of all these Quaker Pacifists, sitting and milling about. There was a general aura of community, gathered in a common purpose. To use art to state our town support for Black Lives Matter and adressing systemic racism. The mural was completed, and the real work addressing Systemic racism continues.
To the community of Putney, our Town, State and Federal elected officials and other Towns taking up the work of understanding systemic racism.
In Jan 2016, the Putney Friends Meeting (Quakers) agreed to hang a Black Lives Matter sign in front of the Meetinghouse. We also agreed that we wanted to become a body that is actively involved to make our Quaker Meeting and our community as a whole, active participants in the change that needs to happen to become more anti-racist.
Part of that understanding is that white people in our congregation and community need to learn the history and impact of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, continuing disparites in opportunities for housing and education and mass incarceration of african americans, as a result of white american denial and indifference. We need to understand how the resultant white privilege is not simply a matter of individual acts of blatant violence, but in fact the truth that unwittingly all white people have inherited systemic racism. It shows up for all white people, and it is our responsibility to work on intimate understanding of how that system of racism plays out all the time in our interactions with people of color.
On September 2, Steffen Gillom, President of the Windham County NAACP, attended a Select Board meeting in Putney. That meeting, like all public meetings, was recorded and broadcast by Brattleboro Community Television (BCTV). Watching this meeting is a great example of a person of color speaking up about systemic racist activity that he had experienced. It took great courage for him to address a room of white people about behavior that white people find difficult to acknowledge, because of the enormous discomfort it provokes in themselves.
The outcomes of that meeting for Putney were profound. White participants were able to:
Admit their own moments of unintended racism.
Invite one another into conversation and study about systemic racism, at a time when talking openly about race is still almost impossible for white people to do.
Challenge one another to step up our game, to examine closely how people of color are treated in our Town, and how to begin to recognize how micro-agressions are currently and actively experienced here.
We see it as helpful and educational as white people, to invite feedback from people of color to point out racist comments, acts etc, such as Steffen gave us all at our Select Board meeting.
Members of Putney Friends Meeting continue to be troubled by, and wrestle with, white supremacy. Our congregation has undertaken reading racial healing
material (anti-racism) material, sharing with other Friends Meetings taking up this work, and participating in local groups working for justice and addressing systemic racism.
Putney Friends Meeting will do the following:
We will join in the community with continual work on systemic racism by supporting conversations and action that do just that.
We will participate in Town wide book groups.
We will support the Equity and Inclusion Committee.
We encourage the Select Board to take up active anti racism training as a model of getting educated about how systemic racism works in Vermont.
We will encourage our membership to join the September 27 Black Lives Matter street painting in Putney.
We appreciate that mistakes are essential to learning, and the real question is how we are creating a trusting enough Town, where honest feedback from people of color can be heard, believed and responded to by our largely white community. This is for all of us.
After successful fundraising campaign, CASP to support two new asylum seekers
BELLOWS FALLS—In spite of the restrictions imposed on its fundraising efforts by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Community Asylum Seekers Project (CASP) was able to raise more than $11,000 from its sup- porters all over the country.
“We ran an online StartSomeGood campaign in July that reached 83 folks all over the country, with roughly 30 percent of our donations coming from out of this area,” Dempster Leech, the campaign’s chief bandleader, said in a news release. “It’s a testament to peer-to-peer fundraising and our supporters’ understanding of how this pandemic is affecting our work that we actually raised more than last year.”
As a result of this year’s suc- cess, Leech says CASP has com- mitted to taking on two new asylum seekers.
A nonprofit founded in 2016, CASP provides material and moral support to those seeking asylum from violence and pov- erty in their home countries by finding host families for them, helping with food and other daily needs, assisting them in navigat- ing the asylum claim process, and helping them achieve even- tual independence as they pro- ceed through the process.
CASP supports 14 individu- als from Mexico, Cuba, and Honduras in the Windham County area.
CASP supporters Dale Kondracki and Alan Fowler created a three-minute video for the project that ran on the StartSomeGood website and fea- tured CASP founder and former executive director Steve Crofter and its new executive director, Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, discuss- ing CASP’s mission and vision for the future.
As part of the campaign, a raffle of donated gift certifi- cates was held. Winners were Leda Schientaub, $50 from Woodzels by Wetzels; Francie Marbury, $100 from Village Square Booksellers; and John Bohannon, $200 from Chris Sherwin of Sherwin Art Glass.
Further information about CASP and its work can be founded at caspvt.org.
Thursday, Aug 6 and Sunday, Aug 9, 2020 mark the 75 year anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan . Hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives as a result of these bombings, which were not necessary to end World War ll because the Japanese government was attempting to surrender. However, the U.S. went ahead anyway with the bombings to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union in the newly emerging Cold War.
There will be a vigil on both days at the Wells Fountain (adjacent to the library) in Brattleboro, Vermont – to call attention to these atrocities. All are welcome to attend. Please bring your own sign if possible. We will be wearing masks and social distancing. Vigil times are:
Thursday, Aug 6 and Sunday, Aug 9 from 4:30-6:30pm
We are a group of community members working to coordinate neighbor-to-neighbor support in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
We help match needs and offerings for things like essential rides, food, grocery pickups, caring for loved ones, organizing neighborhood groups, meals, masks, donations and more.
DO YOU NEED HELP?CAN YOU OFFER HELP?
Please go to our CONFIDENTIAL Needs and Offerings Form. A small team of Mutual Aid volunteers will receive your requests and offers and match you behind the scenes. Please know that this team is committed to your privacy and your name will not be shared other than with the volunteer(s) and community organizations who will be supporting you.
DO YOU WANT INFORMATION ABOUT PUTNEY AND VERMONT-SPECIFIC RESOURCES?
DO YOU NEED INFORMATION ON STAYING SAFE WHILE HELPING NEIGHBORS?
To reduce transmission of COVID-19, the State of Vermont has asked us to stay at home and keep social distance of 6 feet. If we go out of the house, we are asked to wear a mask, maintain distance, avoid going into anyone’s home, and wash our hands before and after. Volunteers are being asked to follow Neighborly Best Practices for Helping During COVID-19 to keep everyone safe and healthy.
DO YOU HAVE AN EMERGENCY OR VERY URGENT CONCERN?
Please call Tom Goddard, the Putney Emergency Director. You can reach him through the fire station hotline – 802-387-4372. If you can’t get through, please call 911.
Foodshelf open hours, resources related to food insecurity
FIND OUT ABOUT PUTNEY COMMUNITY CARES RESOURCES HERE
Meals on Wheels, essential rides, small grants, help with applications and more
PUTNEY MUTUAL AID TEAM(and growing – join us!)
Volunteer Team
Ruby McAdoo, Jaime Contois, Cor Trowbridge
Support and Advisory Team
Ellen Strong and Hannah Pick (Putney Foodshelf), Kathleen Duich, Sarah Armour-Jones, Abd Rababah, Kate Kelly (Putney Community Cares), Laura Chapman (Putney Selectboard), Mike Mrowicki and Nader Hashim (State Representatives)
Neighborhood Point Person Team
Chris Ellis, Elizabeth Christie, Elizabeth Bissell, Maria and Ward Ogden, Nancy Shepherd, Amber Paris, Michael Hornsby, Amanda Perez, Jorika Stockwell, Gerrit Bollin, Ruby McAdoo, Jaime Contois, Betsy Hallett , Maggie Smith, Alison Mott, Sheila Garrett, Dierdre Kelley and growing
• • •
This is a grassroots effort, organized around a value for self-organizing community systems. Please feel empowered to take part.
Across New England, people are talking about “re-opening”. After much anticipation in the media, today the State of Massachusetts released guidelines (here) for houses of worship as some public health restrictions are being lifted.
While other states in our region are moving on their own timelines, events seem to be unfolding quickly in many of the places New England Quakers call home.
The Massachusetts safety standards, informed by what is now known about the coronavirus, mean that in-person worship will look quite different, will be limited in numbers of people permitted to gather, and will require extensive and frequent sanitation.
In response to the announcement, the Massachusetts Council of Churches (of which New England Yearly Meeting is a member) issued a public statement (here) reminding church leaders that:
“Churches are designed to be places of healing, not sources of sickness. We receive these new minimum safety standards from the state with much concern for those people most at risk in our churches and our communities….just because congregations may return to their buildings does not mean they should.”
It’s clear from these unfolding events that although many people are understandably eager to gather in person again, there will be no going back to the way things were. We can only move forward on the path before us now; we can only respond to the invitation before us.
Fresh Pond (Cambridge, MA) Friend Kristina Keefe-Perry shares her sense of how we might move into the future together:
To go back to “normal” means to accept structures that are built on exploitation and inequity. And so we keep on walking forward. That doesn’t mean that we can’t mourn the loss of a world we’ve known…while we do it, we have to look towards building a world that’s reflective, truly reflective, of God’s kingdom.
As we look forward toward what’s ahead in our lives and the lives of our Meetings over the coming months, what helps you to listen? What is the Inner Guide saying? What does looking toward a world more aligned with God’s dream for us mean for you, in this moment?
Regardless of where we live, we are moving into this unknown future together. And the choices we make—alone and as communities—matter more than ever.
Read on for updates.
New Resources for Friends Serving Their Meetings
In response to requests for support with decision-making as some restrictions are lifted, which we heard on our Tuesday evening check-ins with local Meeting leaders, we have created this new page on our website with nuts-and-bolts resources and tools for reflection.
We hope this will be helpful to Friends across New England and beyond as we consider the challenging decisions of this moment.
An Update on Annual Sessions: From your suggestions, extended dates announced First, thank you to the many Friends who have reached out to the Summer 2020 Programming team via this digital suggestion box with hopes, ideas, and questions related to re-envisioning Annual Sessions for this summer.
We want you to know that we are reviewing with care and prayerful attention all of the insights that you are sharing with us. Many of your contributions align with the creative discussions our small group is already engaged in, while others are great new suggestions we had not thought about. So thank you for all that you offer!While we are still mourning the loss of the in-person aspect of our annual gathering, we are deeply encouraged by the enthusiasm and clarity we’ve heard from Friends.
From your many responses and reflections in the suggestion box, we want to reflect a number of themes: A desire to connect emotionally and spiritually with the wider body of Friends across New EnglandThat Friends hope this will be an opportunity to make Sessions more accessible to those who need to work, or have caregiving responsibilitiesAcknowledgment that not all Friends have access to web- or internet-based contentKeen awareness that “Zoom fatigue” is real, and that Friends do not want to spend long stretches of time at their computersThe central importance of opportunities for small group connection That Friends yearn to connect “beyond the screen”–though postal mail, over the phone, via simultaneous prayer, or, if possible given the public health situation, in small physically-distant localized groupsThe need to hold over non-essential decision making until Friends are able to be with each other in personThe desire to allow space for grieving, and also for joy, celebration, and fellowshipThe yearning for “peer” spaces for mutual support among those with shared experiences and needs in this time, especially for youth, young adults, and parents Supported by your feedback, we have become clear to extend the dates of Annual Sessions 2020.
We’re excited to announce that programming will begin on Saturday, August 1, and will conclude on Sunday, August 9.
This means that this year Sessions will include two weekends—and the week in between. A Wednesday Sabbath day, without programming, will offer further time for prayer, exercise, and refreshment. We hope this extended schedule will allow for a more spacious experience, with breaks between digital activities, an alternation of youth and adult programming, and plenty of offerings on evenings and weekends for Friends who will be working during this time.
Please continue to submit hopes, ideas, and questions related to Sessions in the digital suggestion box here.
In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a more formal invitation to Sessions, an announcement of registration, and more schedule specifics about how Friends can participate in the re-envisioned, physically-distant Sessions experience this summer. As we all move forward in preparation, we want to especially emphasize our appreciation for the loving, faithful work that so many of you have offered in helping our annual gatherings to be possible in years past.
As we pivot to a new format for this year’s gathering, we are building on a strong foundation thanks to the many, many gifts that you have offered, your time and talents, to help make New England Yearly Meeting Sessions a vibrant and Spirit-filled experience.With love and care, and in faith, The Ad Hoc Working Group on Summer Programming 2020Elizabeth Hacala, Events Coordinator Rebecca Leuchak, Sessions Committee Clerk Bruce Neumann, Presiding Clerk Nia Thomas, Quaker Practice & Leadership Facilitator Noah Merrill, Yearly Meeting SecretaryUpcoming Opportunities for Sustenance and
Connection *for newcomers*: Quaker Sampler Workshop, May 23 Quaker retreat center Powell House offers this one-day series designed for new Quakers and the Quaker-curious to learn more about Quakerism. Learn more here. *for young adults*: Continuing Revolution Online, June 5-9
Pendle Hill’s annual conference for Friends ages 18-35, this year offered online with a focus on conflict transformation. More information here.
*new*: Experience Playing in the Light Workshop, June 10 at 7pm Come learn about Godly Play and Faith & Play, an experiential, Montessori-inspired approach to religious education designed for children ages 3–12. Facilitated by Faith & Play co-creator Melinda Wenner-Bradley. Learn more and register here.
*ongoing*: Weekly Check-in for Meeting Leaders, Tuesdays at 7pm Connect with other New England Friends serving in leadership roles in their local meeting as we respond to the needs of Friends in this pandemic together. More information here.
*ongoing*: Weekly Parents Tea-and-Chat, Thursdays at 8pm Join Youth Retreat Coordinator Gretchen Baker-Smith and Quaker Parenting Initiative Founder Harriet Heath for weekly drop-in conversations about parenting in these times. More information here.
*for lamentation and prayer for our world*: Day of Mourning, May 25, sunset vigil Join Friends in Chicago and across the world to mourn the losses of all of Earth’s children in this time. At sunset wherever you are, light a candle and, if it is safe for you, step outside to be seen by your neighbors in a witness of prayer for the world. Learn more here.
To see a full list of events for Friends in New England, visit our events calendar In the promise of what’s possible, and until we meet again,
Nia Thomas, Quaker Practice and Leadership Facilitator Noah Merrill, Yearly Meeting Secretary
Groundworks needs your help now more than ever. Groundworks staff is working around the clock to provide the best protection and support for the people they serve. This creates an unprecedented financial challenge for Groundworks to house and feed their clients and keep them safe.
The Seasonal Overflow Shelter was closed and everyone was moved into motel rooms to allow for isolation. This effort was very successful, resulting in only one known homeless person in Brattleboro, and this person did not want to move into one of the motels. Foodworks, the food shelf and part of Groundworks, has moved to a delivery model, mobilizing volunteers and working to source enough food to deliver to anyone with need in our community. Since the start of the pandemic, the demand for food has doubled.
Foodworks is accepting in kind donations, in particular of items listed on the website. However, monetary donations have the largest impact. For each $25 raised, Foodworks can provide a family of five with items for two weeks due to being able to take advantage of wholesale prices.
Please consider making a donation to Groundworks. Currently, all gifts up to a total of $5,000 are matched by a generous donor.
Well and weary. Ruffled and stabilizing. Disconnected and connected. More settled and more scared. Strained and joyful. Grieving and expectant.
When we asked Friends on our Tuesday night check-in how their local Meeting community was doing this week, their answers reflected the varied and sometimes contradictory experiences of this time.
During this week, so many worldwide are finding ways to celebrate the promise and liberation of the ancient Easter and Passover stories, even in this unprecedented moment. Friends are striving to make room for new possibility amidst unfamiliar conditions and devastating loss.
Whatever great or small hardships we and those around us have endured this week, let’s remember that there is no wrong way to feel right now; there is no condition that is inaccessible to Divine Presence.
In this season of not knowing, may we find ways to honor the emerging spring. May we allow ourselves to be opened to a Love wide enough to respond to all that we experience—acknowledging that even in this time of isolation and woundedness, we are held in a sacred embrace.
Once again, we’re writing with an invitation and some resources to help us live and share our faith together. Read on below for more.
Continuing Connection and Support for Meetings
We remain grateful for the rich sharing and relationship being fostered through our weekly calls with meeting leaders and via the New England Quakers discussion forum on Slack (contact us to join).
In response to recent requests from Friends, we’ve expanded the content on our website in a few places:
Hearing that First Day Schools and youth groups are moving to virtual platforms, we’ve added insights on spiritual nurture for youth in these times, as well as information about child safety in virtual gatherings, here.
Knowing many meetings and individuals are grappling with financial challenges, we’ve begun a page collecting COVID-19 related financial resources and information for both meetings and individuals here.
Learning from monthly meeting clerks who have now clerked their first business meeting online, we’ve added more nuts and bolts tips to our page on virtual clerking and discernment.
In addition, we’ve been listening for and lifting up virtual opportunities for “meeting” and connection, including various forms of worship and workshops that may be of particular interest to Friends in New England, and have been posting them on our events calendar.
In the next few days, we’ll share further resources for meetings responding to loss.
Please reach out—just reply to this email—if there are other ways we can be of help to you or your meeting in the coming week.
Opportunities for Advocacy, Preparing for Service
Even as we practice physical distancing, we urge Friends to consider how we can live our faith through advocacy in support of those who are especially vulnerable, and service to those in need.
Going forward, we’re highlighting issues of particular urgent concern, accompanied by actions Friends can take and links to learn more. Click the button below to see what’s been posted.
We’re also sharing here a video from Quaker healer John Calvi (Putney, VT, Friends Meeting) speaking this week at the invitation of Pendle Hill Quaker Center on “Love in a Time of Coronavirus”.
In this tender, accessible, roughly 45-minute talk, John offers suggestions for preparing ourselves and responding in service—with understanding, self-awareness, mercy, and reverence—to the work before us. You can watch the video on Pendle Hill’s YouTube channel here.
John also participated in a previous conversation, facilitated by New England Yearly Meeting, on how Friends meetings can prepare for pastoral care during the pandemic. You can watch a video of that conversation on NEYM’s YouTube channel here.
Aware of other ways New England Friends can support those most vulnerable? Email Noah. We’ll gather and regularly review these opportunities to support Quakers in witness during the pandemic.
Reminder: Invitation to Share “A Week in the Life”
The Living Faith planning team invites you to participate in a New England-wide project, called A Week in the Life, to celebrate and lift up the ways New England Quakers are living our faith in these times.
By this Easter Sunday night, we invite you to take a photo of yourself living your faith right now. This could be a photo of anything you are doing—or an artistic representation of it—to deepen and express your practice and leading as a Quaker: daily prayer, caring for someone else, doing necessary work, sheltering in place, etc.
To contribute to the project, please send your photo and a short caption (including photo credit) to us at LFsharing@neym.org by the end of Easter Sunday, April 12th.
Please note, these photos will be public, so share only images and words you are comfortable being public to anyone, and that you have permission to share from everyone pictured.
We’ll be back in touch
Next week, we’ll share the collected content from A Week in the Life on the Yearly Meeting’s website at neym.org, in this update, and via social media. In this way, we hope to lift up some of the many ways Friends are living—and acting on—our faith in this moment.
We hope that this shared effort strengthens our sense of connection during a time of physical separation, deepens our ability to witness to the power of the Spirit in our lives, and helps us to hold one another and this beloved world in the Light.
with Love,
Sarah Cushman (Portland, ME, Friends Meeting)
Clerk, for the Living Faith Planning Team
In New England’s natural landscapes, April is a time of renewed tenderness, and of breaking open.
This year, amid the new buds and birdsong, many Friends are seeking ways to slow down and stay open—and to be made tender—to new Life within and among us, even while meetinghouses and public gathering places are closed, even in the midst of turmoil, suffering, and grief.
For many of us, this is also a time of action and urgency, as plans are disrupted, lives are upended, and we do what we need to do to make it through today. We’re adapting to new and uncertain circumstances.
Whatever is going on for each of us individually, let’s remember that we’re all in this together. This is both a foundational truth, and something we have to make real in this time with our choices and our care. May our hearts break open to embrace an ever-wider sense of who is part of our “we”.
This week, we’re writing with invitations for ways we can live and act on our faith—one focused on nurturing connections among Friends,and one focused on witness in support of some of those most vulnerable.
Please read on below for more.
Living Faith Reimagined: An Invitation
A message from the Living Faith Planning Team…
Dear Ones,
As we listen for how we are called to serve in this season, we return to our vision for the spring Living Faith event, originally planned to take place today: Saturday, April 4.
Living Faith gatherings have always been dynamic opportunities focused on supporting each other in living out a shared faith, both within our Quaker communities and in the wider world. While the next in-person Living Faith gathering is postponed until the fall, our commitment to lift up and support the ways we can live—and act on—our faith during this time continues.
You’re invited to share
Today we write to invite you to participate in a New England-wide project, called A Week in the Life, to celebrate and lift up the ways New England Quakers are living our faith in these times.
During this coming week—known in many churches as Holy Week—we are inviting you to take a photo of yourself living your faith right now. This could be a photo of anything you are doing to deepen and express your practice and leading as a Quaker—daily prayer, caring for someone else, doing necessary work, sheltering in place, etc.
To contribute to the project, please send your photo and a short caption (including photo credit) to us at LFsharing@neym.org by the end of Easter Sunday, April 12th.
Please note, these photos will be public, so share only images and words you are comfortable being public to anyone, and that you have permission to share from everyone pictured.
If you don’t want your face in a photo, think about taking a picture of your hands, something you have made, or creating a still life photo that represents how you are called to live your faith this week. You can be serious, you can be silly, you can do this in any way that is right for you.
We’ll be back in touch
The week following Easter, we will share the collected content from A Week in the Life on our website, in this update, and via social media. In this way, we hope to lift up some of the many ways Friends are living—and acting on—our faith in this moment.
We hope that this shared effort strengthens our sense of connection during a time of physical separation, deepens our ability to witness to the power of the Spirit in our lives, and helps us to hold one another and this beloved world in the Light.
with Love,
Sarah Cushman (Portland, ME, Friends Meeting)
Clerk, for the Living Faith Planning Team
Even as we practice physical distancing, we urge Friends to consider how we can live our faith through advocacy to support those who are especially vulnerable.
Below we’re highlighting two issues of particular urgent concern accompanied by actions Friends can take, as well as links to learn more.
Stand with the Mashpee Wampanoag
As those who are able shelter at home, our neighbors of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribeare at risk of losing what is left of their homelands due to recent decisions by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Secretary of the Interior. Also known as the People of the First Light, the Mashpee Wampanoag have occupied the same region for over 12,000 years. Sovereignty, tribal government, health, education, and emergency services are all threatened by the actions of the U.S. government. Learn more here.
Mashpee Wampanoag community leaders have shared that Friends’ advocacy at this time is welcomed, especially in support of HR 312, federal legislation that would prevent the Department of the Interior from “disestablishing” the Tribe’s reservation.
Rachel Carey-Harper, (Barnstable, MA, Preparative Meeting), a Friend with many years’ relationship with members of the Tribe, has created a call to action for Friends and a sample letterthat Friends can use to offer support through letter-writing and phone calls.
From Rachel: I respectfully ask Friends to prayerfully consider appropriate responses and support for the indigenous people in Mashpee…Let’s envision and work toward a renewed commitment to respect and healing. As this blossoms in all our hearts, it enables us to meet each other with Light and unconditional Love.
Read more from Rachel here. There is also an online petition organized through MoveOn.org that you can sign here.
Care for Those Incarcerated or Detained
Alongside many in our region and around the country, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is calling for government officials across the U.S to protect the vulnerable, especially those confined in detention centers, jails, and prisons, where physical distancing is not possible and coronavirus outbreaks are spreading.
Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) has more information on the particular vulnerability for those incarcerated and in detention, and action steps you can take, here.
“No Way to Treat a Child”, a campaign co-sponsored by the AFSC, is asking Friends to support a bill in Congress that would prohibit U.S. taxpayer funds from supporting the military detention and abuse of children, with particular emphasis on the care of Palestinian youth in Israeli detention centers, where coronavirus infections have already begun to spread.
Consistent with New England Friends’ 2017 minuted call for an end to U.S. military aid to the Middle East, we encourage you to learn more and take action here.
Looking for more legislative action updates? FCNL is maintaining a COVID-19 advocacy page here.
Aware of other ways New England Friends can support those most vulnerable? Email Noah. We’ll gather and regularly review these opportunities to support Quakers in witness during the pandemic.
This week, we’ve heard questions from Friends about online security, particularly for those of us using Zoom. In response, we’ve added a page on the topic, with tips for managing virtual risks, to our website here.
In the coming days, we’re continuing to support Friends serving in local meetings with further resources and connections related to online discernment and decision-making, as well as sharing practices and counsel for holding space for grief and mourning in these times.
Please reach out—just reply to this email—if there are other ways we can be of help in the coming week.
In tender openness, with profound care, and until we meet again,
