Tag Archives ⇒ commentary

Remembering David McReynolds

August 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m sad to hear of the pass­ing of the indomitable David McReynolds, who I knew most­ly through his work with the War Resisters League. I first got to know him when I was work­ing for New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers but got more expo­sure when I start­ed Nonviolence-org back in the mid-90s and trav­eled up to NYC more fre­quent­ly as a mem­ber of WRL’s board.

I got to pub­lish a won­der­ful series of David’s paci­fist writ­ings online in that era when the web was becom­ing a thing. I also remem­ber stay­ing at his place on at least one of those vis­its and get­ting to meet one of his beloved felines. His inter­ests were far more wide-ranging than the aver­age activist’s and he was always ready to chal­lenge group-think ortho­dox­ies with an intel­lec­tu­al rig­or I deeply appreciated.

I often found myself dis­agree­ing with David (and I got the dis­tinct impres­sion he could get pret­ty unbear­able at times), but he helped me see the con­se­quences of my choic­es in a way that kept me honest.

I think I still look beyond my answers more read­i­ly because of con­ver­sa­tions in David’s apart­ment. For all my qualms with Face­book, I’ve been grate­ful that it brought me back into David’s orbit in recent times and I will miss his com­men­tary and discussions.


David McReynolds, Socialist Activist Who Ran for President, Dies at 88 (Published 2018)

David McReynolds, Social­ist Activist Who Ran for Pres­i­dent, Dies at 88 (Pub­lished 2018) 

His paci­fist work spanned decades and sev­er­al wars, and he twice ran for the White House as an…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Ask Me Anything: How easy is it to become a Quaker?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have an Ask Me Any­thing request from read­er Ruby M:

Hel­lo! I’m study­ing The Friends Church for aca­d­e­m­ic pur­pos­es and I’d love to hear from some­one with first­hand expe­ri­ence. How easy is it to become a quak­er? Do you ever feel peo­ple treat you dif­fer­ent­ly because you’re a quak­er? Do you think there should be more rep­re­sen­ta­tion of quak­ers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!

Since my expe­ri­ence is just one data point, I hope oth­ers will use the com­ment sec­tion below to add their stories.

I found becom­ing a Quak­er to be some­thing of a spi­ral process. I first walked into a Friends meet­ing­house at the age of 20 and only slow­ly took on an iden­ti­ty as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clear­ly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deep­er faith­ful­ness. I didn’t for­mal­ly apply for mem­ber­ship until a decade or so after I became a reg­u­lar atten­der. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usu­al. It’s more of an insight into my own care­ful­ness and ret­i­cence about join­ing things than it is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing the meet­ings I attend­ed required. When I did final­ly apply for mem­ber­ship I was quite qual­i­fied and want­ed the clear­ness process to be exact­ing: again, this is an insight into my psyche!

Most peo­ple on the street don’t quite know what Quak­ers are so I can’t say I’m always treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I guess see­ing more Quak­ers in the media would be help­ful, though giv­en our over­all small num­bers I sus­pect even our fleet­ing appear­ances in TV shows and movies are more than we might pro­por­tion­al­ly expect.

I’m inter­est­ed to hear how oth­er Friends would answer Ruby’s question.

 

Update: reader answers by email and commentary

Jes­si­ca F: I’ve want­ed to be a Quak­er since I learned about the Abo­li­tion­ists who helped with the Under­ground Rail­road and prison reform. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the movie Gen­tle Per­sua­sion pre­sent­ed Quak­ers as being against music so I became a Uni­tar­i­an instead. Even­tu­al­ly I learned that wasn’t true for many Quak­ers and I found that all of the val­ues I had devel­oped through the years were also Quak­er val­ues and so becom­ing a Quak­er gave me a sup­port sys­tem and a com­mu­ni­ty of like minds.

Hitler jokes and Quaker schools

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The case of a beloved Quak­er Jew­ish teacher being fired from a NYC Friends School for mak­ing a Nazi salute as a joke is bring­ing us some inter­est­ing com­men­tary. Mark Oppen­heimer writes in Tablet:

One might call this whole episode the tri­umph of Waspy good inten­tions over Jew­ish com­mon sense… But of course Quak­er schools — and Quak­er camps, like the one I once attend­ed, and Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es — are, these days, pret­ty Jew­ish places. The Times arti­cle has a bur­lesque feel, with a bunch of Jew­ish stu­dents and alum­ni per­form­ing in Quaker-face.

He also makes inter­est­ing points about the cul­tures of Jew­ish humor (“We Jews sur­vive because of Hitler jokes”) and that of Friends:

The Quak­er prac­tice of silent wor­ship can dis­pos­es its prac­ti­tion­ers against the loud, bawdy, con­tentious dis­course that infus­es Jew­ish cul­ture. I’m not mak­ing claims about indi­vid­ual Quak­ers — I can intro­duce you to per­fect­ly hilar­i­ous Quak­ers, some of whom inter­rupt even more than I do — but at their insti­tu­tions, the val­ues that come to the fore are Gene Sharp not Gene Wilder. In their earnest­ness, Quak­er schools are David Brooks not Mel Brooks. You get the idea.

I’m always a bit unsure how seri­ous­ly to take cul­tur­al Quak­er stereo­types as moti­vat­ing forces in pieces like these. I won­der how many Friends actu­al­ly work or study at a Man­hat­tan Quak­er school. A more gener­ic head­mas­ter fear-of-conflict seems as like­ly a cause as any­thing to do with silent wor­ship. Then too, we don’t know what oth­er issues might be at play below the sur­face of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. But the Friends Sem­i­nary inci­dent seems as good a mark­er as any­thing else of the com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ics with­in Friends schools today.

http://​www​.tablet​mag​.com/​s​c​r​o​l​l​/​2​5​8​3​9​4​/​j​e​w​i​s​h​-​t​e​a​c​h​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​f​o​r​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​n​a​z​i​-​j​oke

A Quaker Lens Aids Biblical Interpretation

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Rhon­da Pfalzgraff-Carlson reads main­stream com­men­tary on the book of Colos­sians and is dis­ap­point­ed. Why? They miss rela­tion­ships and con­texts that seem obvi­ous from a Quak­er per­spec­tive. A Quak­er Lens Aids Bib­li­cal Interpretation

Even know­ing that I’m col­or­ing this inter­pre­ta­tion through the use of a Quak­er lens, I believe that a Quak­er per­spec­tive can help the mean­ing of the Bible become more clear.

I must admit that I take claims that any denom­i­na­tion has some sort of spe­cial con­nec­tion to the ear­ly church with a heap­ing spoon­ful of salt. But the ear­ly church was dis­or­ga­nized in a way that Friends can be.

Can we count the ways that the McKinney video is messed up?

June 9, 2015
· Martin Kelley

mckinney2When the McK­in­ney video start­ed trend­ing I was­n’t in a state to watch so I read the com­men­tary. Now that I have, the whole thing is com­plete­ly messed up but at least three parts espe­cial­ly unnerve me:

  • The com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary commando-style dive-and-roll that intro­duces Cor­po­ral Eric Case­bolt. Some reports describe it as a trip but to me it looks like he’s play­ing a Hol­ly­wood action hero stunt dou­ble. Has he just been watch­ing too many of the police videos he’s been col­lect­ing on YouTube?
  • That none of the oth­er offi­cers saw his derring-do and said “yo Eric, stand down.” Is this some­thing cops just don’t do? And if not, why not? We all know what it’s like to be hopped up on too much adren­a­line. I know peo­ple do weird stuff when their rep­til­ian brain fight-or-flight mech­a­nism cuts in. It seems that offi­cers should be on the look­out for just this sort of over­re­ac­tion and have some sort of safe word to tell one anoth­er to take a chill.
  • The video­g­ra­ph­er was a “invis­i­ble” white teenag­er. He walked near­by – and occa­sion­al­ly through – the action with­out being ques­tioned. At one point Case­bolt seems to pur­pose­ful­ly step around him to put down his dark-skinned friends. The video­g­ra­ph­er told news reporters that he felt his white­ness made him invis­i­ble to Casebolt.

I nev­er quite real­ized all the race pol­i­tics behind the switch from pub­lic pools vs pri­vate pool clubs. I grew up in a Philly sub­urb with two pub­lic pools and very much remem­ber the con­stant wor­ry that Philadel­phia kids might sneak in (“Philadel­phia” was of course code for “black”). The town­ship did have a his­tor­i­cal­ly African Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hood so the pools were racial­ly inte­grat­ed but I’m sure every dark-skinned town­ship res­i­dent was asked to show town ID a lot more than I was. And it’s hard to think it was entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal that both pub­lic pools were locat­ed on the oppo­site ends of the town­ship from the black neighborhood.

There are no pub­lic pools in the South Jer­sey town where I live. A satel­lite view picks out thir­teen pri­vate pools on my block alone. Thir­teen?!? There’s one pri­vate pool club across town. There’s a lot of casu­al racism around here, pri­mar­i­ly direct­ed at the mostly-Mexican farm­work­ers who dou­ble the town pop­u­la­tion every sum­mer. If there was a town pool that reflect­ed the demo­graph­ics of the local Wal­mart park­ing lot on a Fri­day night in July, we’d have mini-riots I’m sure — which is almost sure­ly why we don’t have a munic­i­pal pool and why wealthy fam­i­lies have poured mil­lions of dol­lars into backyards.

(My fam­i­ly has joined the Elmer Swim Club, a pool locat­ed about half an hour away. While the major­i­ty of mem­bers are super nice and I haven’t heard any dodgy racial code phras­es. The pool is diverse but is most­ly white, reflect­ing the near­by pop­u­la­tion. That said, I’ve read enough Ta-Nehisi Coates to know we can rarely take white towns for grant­ed. So.)

February 6, 2013
· Martin Kelley

The End of the Web, Search, and Com­put­er as We Know It:

parisle­mon:

I think about what constantly-flowing infor­ma­tion means for blog­ging. In some ways this is Twit­ter, Insta­gram, Tum­blr, etc. But what if some­one start­ed a stand-alone blog that wasn’t a series of posts, but rather a con­tin­u­ous stream of blurbs, almost like chat. For exam­ple: “I just heard…” or “Microsoft launch­ing this is stu­pid, here’s why…” — things like that. More like an always-on live blog, I guess.

It’s sort of strange to me that blogs are still based around the idea of fully-formed arti­cles of old. This works well for some con­tent, but I don’t see why it has to be that way for all con­tent. The real-time com­mu­ni­ca­tion aspect of the web should be uti­lized more, espe­cial­ly in a mobile world.

Peo­ple aren’t going to want to sit on one page all day, espe­cial­ly if there’s noth­ing new com­ing in for a bit. But push noti­fi­ca­tions could alle­vi­ate this as could Twit­ter as a noti­fi­ca­tion lay­er. And with mul­ti­ple peo­ple on “shift” doing updates, there could always be fresh con­tent, com­ing in real time.

Just think­ing out loud here.

Good out loud think­ing from MG about where blogging’s going. I’ve real­ized for while now that I’m much more like­ly to use Twit­ter and Tum­blr to share small snip­pets that aren’t worth a fully-formed post. What I’ve also real­ized is that I’m more like­ly to add com­men­tary to that link share (as I’m doing now) so that it effec­tive­ly becomes a blog post. 

Because of this I’m seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing archiv­ing my almost ten year old blog (care­ful­ly pre­serv­ing com­ment threads if at a pos­si­ble) and installing my Tum­blr on the Quak​er​Ran​ter​.org domain.

I thought I’d try an experiment

November 8, 2011
· Martin Kelley

My life is now such that I don’t have the time to do long-form, thought­ful blog­ging. When I have time to think about big ideas expressed in well-chosen words, it’s as edi­tor at Friends Jour­nal. I have a rather long com­mute but it’s bro­ken up with trans­fers, I often have to stand and I usu­al­ly don’t have a lap­top on me. What I do have is a smart phone, which I use to keep up with Quak­er blogs, lis­ten to pod­casts and take pictures.

Despite this, I can usu­al­ly write a few para­graphs at a time. Kept at steadi­ly those could amass into blog posts. But the finishing-up effort is hard. I have a 2/3rds com­plet­ed post lav­ish­ing high praise for +Jon Watts’s new album sit­ting on my phone but haven’t had the chance to fin­ish, pol­ish and pub­lish. So what if I seri­al­ized these? Write a few para­graphs at a time, invite com­men­tary, per­haps even alter things in a bit of crowd-sourcing?

Any feed­back I’d get would help keep up my enthu­si­asm for the top­ic. This infor­mal post-as-chat was actu­al­ly the dom­i­nant ear­ly mod­el for blogs, one that fell away as they became more vis­i­ble. It’d be nice to get back to that. The medi­um seems obvi­ous to me: Google+, which allows for extend­ed infor­mal posts. So I’ll try that. These will be beta thoughts-on-electron. If they seem to gell togeth­er, I might then pol­ish and pub­lish to Quak​er​Ran​ter​.org, but no promis­es. This is most­ly a way to get some raw ideas out there.

Google+: View post on Google+

Convergent Friends: Content not designed for our market?

April 24, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Hen­ry Jenk­ins (right) mix­es up the names but has good com­men­tary on the Susan Boyle phe­nom­e­non in How Sarah [Susan] Spread and What it Means. I’ve been quot­ing lines over on my Tum­blr blog but this is a good one for Quak­er read­ers because I think it says some­thing about the Con­ver­gent Friends culture:

When we talk about pop cos­mopoli­tanism, we are most often talking
about Amer­i­can teens doing cos­play or lis­ten­ing to K‑Pop albums, not
church ladies gath­er­ing to pray for the suc­cess of a British reality
tele­vi­sion con­tes­tant, but it is all part of the same process. We are
reach­ing across bor­ders in search of con­tent, zones which were used to
orga­nize the dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tent in the Broad­cast era, but which
are much more flu­id in an age of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture and social
networks.

We live in a world where con­tent can be accessed quick­ly from any
part of the world assum­ing it some­how reach­es our radar and where the
col­lec­tive intel­li­gence of the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture can identify
con­tent and spread the word rapid­ly when need­ed. Susan Boyle in that
sense is a sign of big­ger things to come — con­tent which wasn’t
designed for our mar­ket, con­tent which was­n’t timed for such rapid
glob­al cir­cu­la­tion, gain­ing much greater vis­i­bil­i­ty than ever before
and net­works and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up with
the rapid­ly esca­lat­ing demand.

Susan Boyle’s video was pro­duced for a U.K.-only show but social media has allowed us to share it across that bor­der. In the Con­ver­gent Friends move­ment, we’re dis­cov­er­ing “con­tent which was­n’t designed for our mar­ket” – Friends of all dif­fer­ent stripes hav­ing direct access to the work and thoughts of oth­er types of Friends, which we are able to sort through and spread almost imme­di­ate­ly. In this con­text, the “net­works and pro­duc­tions com­pa­nies” would be our year­ly meet­ings and larg­er Friends bodies.