Choose Democracy project getting more press

October 24, 2020
· Martin Kelley

George Lakey’s cam­paign to pre­pare non­vi­o­lent activists for a pos­si­ble coup attempt has made New York­er and Buz­zfeed.

In August, Lakey helped form a group called Choose Democ­ra­cy that has been cir­cu­lat­ing a pledge com­mit­ting peo­ple to “non­vi­o­lent­ly take to the streets if a coup is attempt­ed,” which has more than thir­ty thou­sand signatures. 

Lizzie Wid­di­combe’s descrip­tion of George in the New York­er inspired a spit-take from me:

Lakey, who has white hair and bushy white eye­brows, is a Quak­er, and brings a cheer­ful, Sunday-school-style deliv­ery to lessons about over­throw­ing author­i­tar­i­an regimes. 

To get a taste of that deliv­ery, here’s a Quak­er­S­peak inter­view from last year:

I wrote about the Choose Democ­ra­cy project a few weeks ago. Check out their web­site at choosedemoc​ra​cy​.us

Update: The Boston Globe.

Modern-day apocalypticism

October 21, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son on modern-day echos of bib­li­cal apoc­a­lyp­tic move­ments:

Yet, times like this pro­vide unusu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty. The ancient Israelites were in fact returned to their home­land, though the redemp­tion was incom­plete and came with a cost. The Mac­cabees won their revolt and threw the Seleu­cids out, though the sys­tem they set up was itself cor­rupt and they were con­quered again a cen­tu­ry lat­er by the Romans. The Chris­tians sur­vived Dio­clet­ian only to betray Jesus’ gospel by estab­lish­ing an impe­r­i­al church. The apoc­a­lyp­tic dream is nev­er ful­ly defeat­ed and nev­er ful­ly real­ized. We lurch for­ward, fall back, lurch for­ward again.

I recent­ly read a book review by Jodi Eichler-Levine on a sim­i­lar sub­ject, Why Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists think Trump is heaven-sent.  The reviewed book’s author, Kather­ine Stew­art, has inter­est­ing obser­va­tions about the psy­cho­log­i­cal world­view of today’s polit­i­cal Evangelicals.

Some of the peo­ple I know who fall into this cat­e­go­ry are very nice, well-meaning peo­ple. Char­i­ta­ble, kind. They’re just try­ing to be good peo­ple. They want to like God, they want to like life. They’re just not con­nect­ing the dots to see how they’re being used to pro­mote an agen­da that’s not at all God­ly. The most inter­est­ing part of the review (and pre­sum­ably Stewart’s book) was the obser­va­tion that the Bible has a very monar­chist world­view that con­tributes to cur­rent Evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics. The con­cept of the Old Tes­ta­ment “imper­fect ves­sel” sto­ries lets vot­ers write off atro­cious per­son­al behav­iors (Trump, Brett Kavanaugh).

Union win at Brooklyn Friends

October 8, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Brook­lyn Paper and Gothamist has the news that Brook­lyn Friends School lead­er­ship is with­draw­ing its peti­tion to decer­ti­fy the teacher/staff union.

When reached by phone Wednes­day night, UAW 2110 Pres­i­dent Mai­da Rosen­stein said work­ers had won a hard-fought vic­to­ry and that Thursday’s strike will not take place. “Strike is over, it’s a total vic­to­ry,” said Rosen­stein. “It’s real­ly great that they’re going to with­draw the peti­tion, peo­ple are very hap­py to be able to go back to their jobs… We’re hop­ing for a new begin­ning here.”

At some lev­el we could shrug and say “who cares?” Like many elite East Coast Friends schools, very few of the stu­dents, teach­ers, staff, or admin­is­tra­tion at BFS are Quak­er. The school stopped being under the for­mal care of a Friends body back in 2010. It gives reports to New York Friends and par­tic­i­pates in Friends Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion but these are rel­a­tive­ly weak ties.

But Brook­lyn Friends School’s admin­is­tra­tion brought reli­gious free­dom into its bat­tle against the union. Trump’s Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board has latched on to “reli­gious free­dom” as a union-busting strat­e­gy1, recent­ly over­turn­ing an Obama-era rul­ing that gave reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed insti­tu­tions the right to orga­nize. The BFS lead­er­ship and its board lift­ed up their under­stand­ing of Quak­er val­ues and used it to argue their case with the NLRB. For the non-Quaker head of a nom­i­nal­ly Quak­er school to file a reli­gious lib­er­ties legal argu­ment on behalf of Quak­er reli­gious free­dom is quite a reach.

If the BFS head and board had first approached its his­toric Quak­er body — New York Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing — to for­mal­ly minute agree­ment with the BFS under­stand­ing of Quak­er val­ues, then the fil­ing with the NLRB would have had some legit­i­mate mer­it. A hundred-some years ago, Friends were an almost-exclusively White and owning-class body who lim­it­ed the num­ber of African Amer­i­can, Jews, south­ern Euro­peans2, etc., in their schools 3and they would have had lit­tle trou­ble back­ing up BFS’s claim that unions aren’t com­pat­i­ble with Quak­er val­ues. There are cer­tain­ly Friends who con­tin­ue to voice con­cerns about the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Quak­er process and orga­nized labor (includ­ing some on the BFS board4) and I don’t want to min­i­mize their voice. But Friends are a far-more diverse body now and there’s lit­tle chance that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of New York Friends today would have come to con­sen­sus on an anti-union minute. With today’s news, we’re spared see­ing the Friend­s’s name caught up in a reli­gious free­dom cul­ture war fight not of our choosing.

Pre­vi­ous­ly: Brook­lyn Friends School strike, Union Bust­ing and Quak­erism Col­lide at Brook­lyn Friends

Who gets to play the Quaker card?

October 5, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Guill­ford Col­lege archivist Gwen Gos­ney Erick­son has writ­ten a guest post on C Wess Daniel’s Remix­ing Faith newsletter/blog about Quak­er val­ues and iden­ti­ty.

I bris­tle when folks say a par­tic­u­lar behav­ior or action is not “Quak­er­ly.” I ask what is meant by that and often hear, “Well, it lacks integri­ty.” Rather than using “Quaker-ness” as a mea­sur­ing stick, what is real­ly meant? Is Quak­er the gold stan­dard and based on a list of val­ues drawn from a late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry acronym or assump­tions about a sin­gu­lar Quak­er ethos? Using lan­guage of reli­gious excep­tion­al­ism risks cre­at­ing pow­er dynam­ics that are unhelp­ful. Who gets to play the “Quak­er card”? 

Gwen’s right “Quak­er­ly” is often used as a boundary-setting word. The impli­ca­tion is that the object of the crit­i­cism does­n’t have enough Quak­er­ness for their opin­ion to be valid.

She also talks about how “SPICES” list 5 of tes­ti­monies sets up a dynam­ic of Quak­er excep­tion­al­ism. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er about lov­ing sim­plic­i­ty, peace, etc. As I’ve writ­ten before, even a world leader launch­ing a war will could claim they’re seek­ing the greater peace. If you read any list of Quak­er tes­ti­monies before the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, they’re tes­ti­monies against spe­cif­ic behav­ior. It’s hard­er to jus­ti­fiy par­tic­i­pat­ing in a war if you have a tes­ti­mo­ny explic­it­ly against war.

The clas­sic Quak­er tes­ti­monies weren’t enshrined on a tablet brought down from on high. They arose slow­ly, often organ­i­cal­ly, as lessons learned by indi­vid­u­als Friends. Over time they became spir­i­tu­al lessons rec­og­nized by the wider Soci­ety of Friends and they changed as the col­lec­tive wis­dom of our Soci­ety grew. Again from Gwen:

His­to­ry is the act of study­ing and engag­ing with the past through those sources. We bring our own times to that process and use objects and mem­o­ries (our own and those of oth­ers) to inform our under­stand­ing of the past. Those sto­ries will like­ly evolve and change through added infor­ma­tion and inclu­sion of nar­ra­tives pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able or ignored. 

We’ve cer­tain­ly been bring­ing in more voic­es, even if slow­ly and some­times real­ly bad­ly. But our reliance on the mil­que­toast SPICES for­mu­la­tion has short-circuited a review of the behav­iors and atti­tudes that might com­prise Quak­er val­ues in our age.

Brooklyn Friends School strike

October 5, 2020
· Martin Kelley
Pho­to from New York City Cen­tral Labor Coun­cil, AFL-CIO Twitter

Brook­lyn Friends School is closed today and tomor­row in response to its teach­ers strik­ing against the admin­is­tra­tion’s attempts at union-busting6. Gothamist reports that as recent­ly as a few days ago the admin­is­tra­tion was work­ing on a “mission-aligned part­ner­ship” with a hir­ing agency so they could get enough sub­sti­tu­tion teach­ers to keep the school open dur­ing the strike. The agency balked when they learned about the strike but the BFS admin­is­tra­tion still has ads for sub­sti­tute teach­ers up on Indeed.

Gothamist includes a quote from long-time teacher Sue Aaronson:

I’ve worked under six heads of school and 16 upper school heads, and so many times what­ev­er process and pro­to­col has been there has been thrown out and the new admin­is­tra­tion has to start all over again… My mantra is that process and pro­to­col shouldn’t depend on the per­son­al­i­ty of admin­is­tra­tors. That means peo­ple are not treat­ed equi­tably and that’s the most impor­tant thing.

The union was vot­ed in before the cur­rent head of school arrived. That the new head want­ed to “decer­ti­fy” it as one of her first acts under­scores Aaron­son’s point.

Not much news report­ing on how the strike is going but the local labor coun­cil tweet­ed out some col­or­ful pic­tures this morn­ing.

Relat­ed: I wrote about the con­flicts at Brook­lyn Friends School in late August, Union Bust­ing and Quak­erism Col­lide at Brook­lyn Friends.

Update, Oct 8: Union win at Brook­lyn Friends

Unpleasant teachings

October 4, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Emi­ly Provance on liv­ing as a Quak­er in times such as these:

We are to expect to be chal­lenged and changed in our encoun­ters with God. We aren’t yet per­fect. And that’s espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to deal with in a moment when everything’s already in chaos. Soci­ety seems to be struc­tur­ing itself in such a way that more and more peo­ple are cling­ing to one extrem­ist ortho­doxy or anoth­er, reject­ing any­thing that isn’t ful­ly in line with that point of view, even ver­i­fi­able facts. This is a nat­ur­al psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non in times of uncer­tain­ty. There’s only so much uncer­tain­ty that we can deal with, so when society’s unre­li­able, we clamp down inter­nal­ly: at least I know I’m right. At least I can depend upon my own judgment. 

“I’m a child of God. He gave me these beautiful hands and gave me this big heart…”

October 2, 2020
· Martin Kelley

On Quak­er­S­peak, a real­ly sweet and inspir­ing video from Avis Wan­da McClin­ton. It cen­ters on a Friends Vic­to­ry Gar­den start­ed as a response to the lives tak­en by COVID-19 (dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly lives of col­or here in the U.S.) but nat­u­ral­ly flows to fam­i­ly his­to­ry and redlin­ing and then to how she talks with God while tend­ing the plants.

When you’re farm­ing, it’s a soli­tary thing. Down on my knees, prepar­ing the beds for the plants, I just talked to God as I worked the earth, told him my fears and my wor­ries and what I hope for the future. 

There’s a whole lot of wis­dom here and video is a great medi­um for her storytelling.