Peace and Social Concerns Committee: Annual Report, August 2014 – August 2015

Our committee has a policy of open meetings at which all Friends are welcome, and while our official members attend with regularity, others do come to present concerns from time to time.  We have been meeting on third Mondays, 7pm, at Mount Toby.  Starting in October we will meet on first Mondays.

This year we decided to have a committee clerk, who creates agendas and represents the committee between meetings, and to have committee members take turns in presiding as clerk at our meetings, providing practice in clerking for all. 

Because we recognize that the environmental issues have become a concern commonly raised in our meetings, we considered changing the name of the committee to include that interest but we were not able to find unity on a new name.

We continued with the letter-writing event every second Sunday, generally getting around twenty or thirty letters to send to governmental and sometimes other persons encouraging them to implement Quakerly concerns.  While we used to fax these letters in, lately President Obama and our two US senators have unfortunately withdrawn their fax numbers from public use.  We post the background materials on the website for use later by those not writing on Sundays, though we don’t know if anybody makes use of that offering.

We read aloud and discussed the "Quaker Statement on Climate Change" from QUNO, QEW, and FCNL, but we felt that the statement fell short of its aim, and we did not recommend that the Meeting sign on to it.

After considerable discussion and consultation with other committees and the Clerk, our committee recommended and the meeting approved a new concert series, “Mount Toby Concerts for Peace and Social Change,” which begins on September 19, 2015.  Diane C, who has experience in running such a series and initiated this project, has scheduled a remarkable series of performers for it.

The Pipeline Pilgrimage initiated by NE Young Friends came to our attention with a request for participation, housing, and food.  Jane J, a new addition to our committee, took charge of this and arranged help and participation of Mount Toby Friends.  This was an inspiring and empowering event, and the participation and support offered by our meeting members was heartwarming.  A great deal of credit goes to Jane for this, who took it on as a great act of faith.

George M led a drive to collect diapers for those in need, which has been a success though reminders to Friends seem needed to continue the drive.  Reminders are also needed to get contributions of food for the shelter, since the amount of contributions seems low for a meeting of our size.

Thinking that Friends would be interested in participating in a project of social service, we initiated such a project, assisting with the Not Bread Alone community meal at the First Congregational Church in Amherst, on the second Saturday of each month.  Despite reminders by Dan G, however, only a very few Mount Toby Friends, most of them from our Committee, seem drawn to participate.  We do know that several Mount Toby Friends are involved with helping with a community meal in Turners Falls, though that has no connection to our committee.

An attempt to restart the Full Moon Group did not succeed since attendance was slight and that project was dropped.

We arranged an 11:40 hour with an interest in gambling, risk-taking, and the ethical issues in such matters.

We found unity on recommending these organizations for inclusion in the meeting’s “Friends Concerns: Other Organizations” part of the budget:  Cambodian Water Project, Quaker Earthcare Witness, Right Sharing of World Resources, Centro de Amigos Cuaqueros para  la Paz, the Nonviolent Peace Force, and the Nolumbeka Project.  These considerations led us into a thoughtful consideration of the criteria for these recommendations.

An interest in promoting information about, and welfare of, native Americans in our area has been ongoing throughout the year, although our suggestion to include the Nolumbeka Project in Mount Toby’s “Friends Concerns: Other Organizations” budget line, in the September 2015 meeting for business, was not approved.

In September we presented a talk by Pat Hynes of Traprock, “Vietnam Today:  Agent Orange and Peace Villages” to which we invited the public. This was cosponsored with Traprock and the Peace Pagoda.  It was very well attended, mostly by non-meeting people, and its success encouraged us to invite attendance at other events by people beyond our Meeting.

We continued the film series: one was “Joanna Macy and The Great Turning“ followed by a deep conversation led by  two non-MtTobyites and our own Carol L. Another was “Guswenta,” about the Two Row Wampum paddle in which Beth A participated.  The public and several speakers were invited to this and filled the Fellowship Room to overflowing. Another was Michelle Alexander’s talk about “Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow,” with a good discussion following.

We cosponsored Frances Crowe’s memoir, recommended Meeting sponsorship of Human Rights Day, donated $55 to the Friends New Underground Railroad/Safe Passage Fund - aiding Ugandans who are fleeing their homeland for their lives and safety, passed along mention of local events on our P&SC listserv, cosponsored a talk at the Northampton meeting by Mel Duncan about the Nonviolent Peace Force, and did various other things described in our meeting minutes, which have been posted monthly on the Mount Toby website, open to the public to read.

Our committee is responsible to nominate an FCNL representative, to be approved by the Meeting.  We nominated Beth A who was approved, though recently she has had to lay that down and we are discerning her replacement.

We have not yet determined our relationship to the Race and Class discussion group, which was started by our committee but then “spun off,” or how to support it.  This is only one of ongoing unfinished matters, such as local interfaith cooperation, a new use for the Nelsons’ cabin, and others.  Our committee is a lively one with many matters to consider and it is a blessing to work with Friends on them.

NOTE: Last names of MtToby people are truncated here but not in the official, archival version.