Tag Archives ⇒ flyer

Some pseudo-convergent outreach events at Gathering

June 30, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Those Quak­er Ranters read­ers who are com­ing to the “FGC Gathering”:www.FGCquaker.org/gathering but haven’t lost inter­net access yet might be inter­est­ed in some of the events the Advance­ment & Out­reach com­mit­tee is spon­sor­ing over the week. There will be a fly­er in the reg­is­tra­tion pack­ets (all these events will take place in Admin 203). For those not com­ing, I sus­pect I’ll have some sort of Gath­er­ing round-up post at some point after it’s all done. I’m also co-hosting a Mon­day night inter­est group with LizOpp and Robin: “On Fire! Renew­ing Quak­erism through a Con­ver­gence of Friends.” For details, see “Liz’s post”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/06/interest-group-at-gathering.html or “Robin’s post”:http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2006/06/convergent-travels.html.

bq.. The FGC Advance­ment and Out­reach com­mit­tee is spon­sor­ing after­noon events dur­ing four days of Gath­er­ing. Come share your out­reach ideas, learn about FGC and sup­port the growth of Quakerism!
*All Friends Wel­come, 1:30 – 3:00*
Mon­day: “What Do Quak­ers Believe?” Come talk about the range of Quak­er beliefs, from Robert Bar­clay to the present day, and explore what binds us togeth­er as Friends. Con­vened by Deb­o­rah Haines.
Wednes­day: A spe­cial wel­come to Friends from Pacif­ic, North Pacif­ic and Inter­moun­tain Year­ly Meet­ings. Come talk about the spir­it, con­cerns, and Quak­er ways of these three inde­pen­dent year­ly meetings.
Thurs­day: Vis­i­tors from Free­dom Friends Church will join us to talk about the wit­ness of this unique inde­pen­dent evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church.
*Out­reach Hours, 3:15 – 4:15*
Sun­day: Vis­i­bil­i­ty. Inter­est­ed in pub­li­ciz­ing your meet­ing and get­ting the Quak­er mes­sage out into your com­mu­ni­ty? Friends are invit­ed to come share their sto­ries and ques­tions and pick up a free copy of our “Inreach-Outreach Pack­et for Small Meet­ings.” Jane Berg­er will host.
Mon­day: Iso­lat­ed Friends & New Wor­ship Groups. Learn about FGC’s new ser­vice for Friends and seek­ers who live far from any meet­ing or wor­ship group. Are you inter­est­ed in help­ing to nur­ture new wor­ship groups? Come find out what resources are avail­able from the FGC Advance­ment Com­mit­tee, and share your sto­ries and ideas.
Wednes­day: Friends inter­est­ed in affil­i­a­tion. FGC is an asso­ci­a­tion of 14 year­ly meet­ings and region­al groups and 9 direct­ly affil­i­at­ed month­ly meet­ings. A&O clerk Deb­o­rah Haines will talk about the work of FGC and the ben­e­fits of affiliation.
Thurs­day: Spir­i­tu­al Hos­pi­tal­i­ty. It’s easy to feel iso­lat­ed even with­in a local meet­ing. A&O coor­di­na­tor Mar­tin Kel­ley will talk about some strate­gies to over­come the iso­la­tions of age, the­ol­o­gy, race, lifestyle, etc. What can meet­ings do to help these Friends not feel isolated?

Horses on a Trot?

December 8, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Almost a month ago I ques­tion a “newly-launched cam­paign of phone tax resistance”:http://www.hanguponwar.org in a post called “Beat­ing Dead Horses”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php.
Robert Ran­dall, a dear friend who I haven’t seen in far too long, wrote in last night explain­ing how the new cam­paign came about and some of its goals.
bq. Hi, Martin.
   I’m all for com­ing up with new tac­tics, and I think a lot of peo­ple have
been doing just that. This does­n’t mean, though, that we have to leave old
tac­tics behind if they can serve us. Nor should we assume that old tactics
are not new tac­tics for some.
   Inter­est­ing­ly, at its Nov. 2002 meet­ing, the Nation­al War Tax Resistance
Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee did in fact decide to shelve a “Hang Up On the SOA”
fly­er because the ease of tele­phone tax resis­tance was no longer there: with
the pletho­ra of new phone com­pa­nies and the unwill­ing­ness of the FCC to
apply its old rul­ings on the AT&T tar­iff to oth­er com­pa­nies, we felt that it
would be inac­cu­rate to pro­mote phone tax refusal as an easy, low-risk form
of remov­ing sup­port for war.
   Now, though, we have the pos­si­bil­i­ty, through a large phone tax
redi­rec­tion cam­paign and the Inter­net, to learn and gath­er togeth­er the
how-to-do-it infor­ma­tion on all these dif­fer­ent phone ser­vices. It may take
time, but it is far from impos­si­ble. In the process, a lot of edu­cat­ing can
be done, both of the pub­lic and of phone com­pa­ny employ­ees. ease of doing
it can rise and risk can be lowered.
   What I like about the Hang Up On War cam­paign (www​.hangupon​war​.org) is
that it did not orig­i­nate with a war tax orga­ni­za­tion. It comes from the
iraq peace Pledge, made up of a num­ber of peace groups, old and new. NWTRCC is avail­able to ser­vice the cam­paign, but the fact that “main­line” peace
groups are pro­mot­ing wtr is some­thing which, as you are aware, those of us
who are long-time war tax con­vert­ers have long desired. While sup­port for
this cam­paign was not unan­i­mous at our recent NWTRCC meet­ing in Chica­go, I,
for one, felt it a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to get peo­ple start­ed toward less
sym­bol­ic, real war tax redirection.
   True, the fed­er­al excise tax on phone ser­vice is no more directly
linked to war than the fed­er­al income tax, but it is also no less. One
strat­e­gy which I favor is to pro­vide as many avenues of ingress to resisting
war as pos­si­ble. This is one. We can cer­tain­ly come up with oth­ers, and
with bet­ter ones, but I see no ben­e­fit in dis­parag­ing what some are doing
for peace. For many peo­ple, phone tax resis­tance is a new tac­tic and a big
step. Let’s applaud what I see as a step for­ward, into any kind of
resis­tance, for groups which have often stopped short of such things, and
work with them to keep mov­ing ever for­ward. I trust you will be suggesting
to where that might be.
 peace and hope,
 Robert Randall