My intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal, regard­ing the light­ning fast deci­sion to file a Quak­er law­suit about immigration:

I think Quak­er busi­ness meet­ings have anoth­er pur­pose: they give us prac­tice in deci­sion mak­ing, and we build trust in one anoth­er. When some­thing extra­or­di­nary comes up that has to be dealt with imme­di­ate­ly, we kick into action using the mus­cle mem­o­ry from all of those Sun­day after­noons spent talk­ing about the finances. Because we’re a reli­gious body that has tak­en the time to know one anoth­er, we can antic­i­pate con­cerns and move sur­pris­ing­ly quickly.

Every­thing is mov­ing crazy fast in the polit­i­cal world these days. That’s the plan, of course: to over­whelm us with the speed at which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is being dis­man­tled. But we are prac­ticed; we too can respond with stead­fast love and solidarity.

A reminder that you can fol­low my link shares much more quick­ly via my Bluesky account. If you’re there you should def­i­nite­ly fol­low my Quak­ers list for every­thing that Friends are talk­ing about.

I also rec­om­mend Jason Kot­tke’s blog, long one of my favorites, who is turn­ing it over to links and cov­er­age about the coup in progress. Mike Mas­nick has been writ­ing impor­tant stuff about the insan­i­ty of Musk’s twenty-something crew tak­ing over and rewrit­ing pay­ment sys­tems across var­i­ous agen­cies (see, for exam­ple, “A 25-Year-Old Is Writ­ing Back­doors Into The Treasury’s $6 Tril­lion Pay­ment Sys­tem. What Could Pos­si­bly Go Wrong?”)

Pre­pared for This 

How do Quak­ers make swift, faith­ful deci­sions in times of cri­sis? Mar­tin Kel­ley explains the role of trust,…

Friends Journal