Peace and Social Concerns Committee, 8/18/14

Present: Andy G, George M, Beth A, Roger C , Susan C,  Carol L, Chris M.

We began with a time of meditating on what gives us our motivation for working on the concerns of our committee.

Andy spoke with gratitude about his time on this committee, which he is leaving now to begin as Clerk of the Meeting.

Susan offered to take charge of letter-writing in September.

Roger will act as clerk between now and our first meeting on September 15^th and will make up its agenda with input and help from other P&SC members.

Andy will follow up with the Finance Committee, as mentioned in our July meeting.

Plans for the September 11 event are proceeding.  Beth will contact the New England Peace Pagoda to invite them.  They and the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice are cosponsoring the event with us.   Roger will write a newsletter article and will give it to George L so that he can make an after-meeting announcement, and Roger will send it and the poster out on our listserv.  Beth will do publicity about the event.   Andy offered to help with setup on the evening of the presentation.  Annie’s title: “Viet Nam Today:  Agent Orange and Peace Villages” seemed more appealing than the original title proposed by Pat Hynes.

Andy prepared a list of the concerns and activities of our committee during the last year, which we went through and discussed, and which will become the core of the annual report of our committee.  He will send the draft report to the committee for comments, and we gave advance approval to the report, having seen the list of concerns and having given direction to Andy.  Dan had agreed earlier to present it to the September meeting for business.

This inspired a rich time of reflection on our purpose and spiritual basis, and the connections with AVP, the Climate Witness Committee, the YAFs, and others.

We approved donating $55 of our budget to the Olympia Friends Meeting for their work on the Friends New Underground Railroad/Safe Passage Fund aiding Ugandans who are fleeing their homeland for their lives and safety (http://friendsnewundergroundrailroad.org/)  Carol has agreed to be the contact with the Olympia Friends Meeting  and the Underground Railroad.  She will send a notice about it out to the listserv, including that our committee has donated $55 of our budget to the effort.  Roger will ask Don to send the $55 check from our budget.

It was hoped that we could become more informed and involved with efforts to respect and aid Native Americans in their efforts to honor Native American history, particularly in our region.  Beth gave a workshop at NEYM about the Two Row paddle down the Hudson River.  Andy spoke of visions he has of how this might evolve in our meeting and quarterly meeting, which led to a wider sharing about the concern.

We thanked Andy for his time as clerk of our committee.

Agenda items for our September meeting include: designating a new Clerk, the film series, the name of our committee, our budget, retrospective on Pat Hynes’ event, and the possibility of a committee retreat.