New, on Quak­er­S­peak: “A Call­ing to Prison Min­istry and Antiracism Work.” Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Rebec­ca Hamilton-Levy inter­views Judy Meik­le, who was ini­tial­ly struck by the phrase that tied the modern-day prison indus­try to slav­ery — “from the plan­ta­tion to the pen­i­ten­tiary” — and start­ed vol­un­teer­ing for prison min­istry at Sing Sing. It was quite the jour­ney, as she had to con­front her own White­ness and White sav­ior complex:

I’d like to name that it’s a strug­gle for me on an ongo­ing basis to wres­tle with my own inter­nal­ized racism and when I hear myself talk­ing like I have today about what my join­ery has been like, I hear myself falling into the trap of excep­tion­al­ism, like some­how I’m the good antiracist — I’m not. I stum­ble all the time, I make mis­takes. So I just want to name that and know that I am on this jour­ney mak­ing mis­takes because I want to do bet­ter, and I hope that with the guid­ance of Spir­it oth­ers will join. There are many peo­ple in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends that are already on board with this work, and it’s just my hope that oth­ers will join.

Judy wrote about her expe­ri­ences for FJ last year in “Get Thee Behind the Walls.”