Speaking of George Lakey, he and other Friends have been looking at of the possibilities of an election meltdown and power grab by Trump in the event of a disputed election. They’re part of a new coalition called Choose Democracy. George is co-leading two upcoming Zoom workshops on “How to Beat an Election-Related Power Grab.”
Here’s a QuakerSpeak video from last year in which George linked the Quaker message with his activism.
This week’s featured FJ article is George Lake’s “The Fiery Forge of Polarization”. I’ve been thinking a lot about it since I first read it in submission form earlier this year. George’s thesis is that major political change tends to happen in times of great polarlization.
It makes sense from a certain intellectual level. I think a lot of Trumpism is a certain segment of voter’s worries about the end of White dominance in this country. It’s showing up in our politics now because the Obama years showed that we can make headway on progressive ideals. Only regressive institutions like the electoral college and voter suppression tactics are keep Republicans in power. The shift will happen. The question is how much of our country gets ripped apart in the meantime.
From my editorial column:
And yet in great turmoil comes opportunity. In “The Fiery Forge of Polarization,” George Lakey shares how his dismay at our political polarization gave way to optimism when he began researching the twentieth-century histories of Scandinavian countries. They were poor, with few democratic institutions, and polarized by the politics of the 1920s and ’30s. But it was in this very crucible that these countries began forging democratic institutions that underlie today’s economically successful democracies. Fundamental societal change often happens in these darkest of times.
My Friend Peter Blood wrote me that he’s hosting a new online Bible series on the first Sunday afternoon of each month this fall. There’s a different guest leader every month. It’s cosponsored by Woolman Hill and Beacon Hill. and will take place 4pm Eastern Time.
There’s a different leader each month. Upcoming people include:
* Carl Magruder (Pacific YM) on Oct 4
* Adria Gulizia (New York YM) on Nov 1
* Colin Saxton (North Valley Friends Church, Newberg OR) on Dec. 6.
This is a great lineup. Information on registration can be found on the Beacon Hill website
John Jeremiah Edminster sent me a note about yesterday’s post about the demise of the Scattergood Motto Calendar:
I hadn’t realized that the Scattergood Calendar was ceasing publication. But the Tract Association of Friends continues to publish its calendar in both the pocket version and the wall version, each for $2 per copy and $20 per dozen, and it might be a worthy public service of thee to direct readers to the website, tractassociation.org, so that anyone grieving the demise of the Scattergood Calendar and wondering what to do for the Friends they used to give gift-calendars to might know where else to look.
The over correction for this was Friends largely have turned their back on this practice. I regard this as too bad because from my point of view we are sadly lacking true eldering in modern Meetings. We both lack Friends who are really grounded in Quaker practice, we lack mentoring for younger friends in everything from clerking to giving faith ministry.…but most importantly we lack a real accountability when things go estray.
Formal eldering requires a kind of connected community that I don’t see as much anymore and I can’t recall ever seeing it in the wild. In my experience eldering has happened when someone I really admire as a grounded soul questions something I’ve said or done. The weight of my respect for them makes me reconsider my surety and cockiness. It can take months for me to process just their few words of observation. It can be wonderful.
Jim Smart has a charming reminisce of a fading Philadelphia Quaker tradition:
I don’t remember what the Motto calendars cost when I first began buying them, probably in the ’60s. It was a pleasant December chore to stop in at the little old Quaker meeting house on 12th Street near Market that had survived when the PSFS building began scraping the sky next door.
I’d buy the new calendar from Mrs. Elizabeth Lewis at the front desk, who would greet me, “How is thee today?” and prove that I was still in the Quaker City.
— More
I must admit I haven’t thought of the Motto Calendar in years but they certainly have been their own quiet remnant of a Philadelphia Quaker world that’s largely disappeared. I remember selling them myself in the late 1990s from the QuakerBooks shop on the 1200 block of Arch (though I didn’t address any customer as “thee,” alas).
Here is Augusta Scattergood’s blog post announcing the end. She also wrote a little bit of family history about it in 2010.
Update: Friends Journal has written a more thoroughly sourced article on this. And apparently there is a movement to continue the calendars. Contact scattergoodmotto@gmail.com for information
A look inside a surprising move at Brooklyn Friends School:
Employers usually don’t welcome unions, and they can adopt ugly tactics to prevent workers from organizing. But Brooklyn Friends isn’t the average workplace. The school is famously progressive. Parents hear of its commitment to social justice on orientation tours. Second-graders study the lives of labor leaders Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez as part of a curriculum on “changemakers.” The school’s union – which includes about 200 teachers, maintenance staff, and office workers, and is represented by United Auto Workers Local 2110 – seemed like a natural extension of its left-wing ethos. At least to staff.
Quakers have long had a complicated history with unions. The complaint that unions get in the way of one-on-one relationships between the bosses and workers was not uncommon in nineteenth century Quaker circles. It disrupted the family model of social organizing that early American Friends had developed at least in part to justify their slave holding. While Friends finally turned against slavery the attitudes of workplace paternalism remained strong. The arrogance of the Quaker family model undergirded a lot of cringey history — things like Indian boarding schools, Henry H. Goddard’s Kallikak Family, and embarrassing Quaker educators like M. Carey Thomas.
But it’s 2020. Friends today are far more likely to be wage earners than factory owners. Many Quakers belong to unions. Power dynamics in a modern metropolis in twenty-first capitalism looks nothing like a nineteenth-century cozy Quaker village. Our understanding of power is much more sophisticated. There are many modern liberal Quaker attitudes that would have scandalized our spiritual forbearers — our attitudes toward music and the arts, our support of government regulations to protect environment and worker rights, social safety nets like social security and Medicare, our embrace of LGBTQ identity.
We’re a diverse group. There are Quakers who still hold to an ideological anti-unionism (they might well be over-represented in boards of trustees at Friends schools). But the position doesn’t hold any kind of consensus among contemporary American Friends. That Brooklyn Friends School is arguing with Trump’s NRLB that this is a religious freedom issue is insulting. Union busting is not a Quaker value.
Ps: full disclosure that in my career I’ve interned at one union and belonged to another.
From Emily Provance:
Now ask yourself: are the same activities, or even thoughts about the same activities, still bringing me joy? Still feeling as if they come naturally? This might be a hard question. For some of us, very few things are feeling joyful right now. Maybe nothing is feeling joyful at all.
