Peace and Social Concerns Committee, 1/2/2017

Present: Dan G, Connie B, Roger C, Dave G, Paddy L, Beth A, Diane C.

We began with a time of silence and then of giving thanks.

1. Connie has email: elf333@gmail.com. Please add her to your P&SC address list.

2. The poll taken to determine the best time to meet showed that the first Monday of every month was the time with the fewest conflicts with members’ personal schedules. We will meet on the first Monday of the month until further notice.

3. Dave proposed a vision of creating a unified voice on issues of racism, hatred, etc and taking this to groups in our area – religious groups and others. We suggested that Dave create a written statement for us to work with.

4. Roger will invite people to join Mary Gilbert’s Massachusetts Quaker Legislative Network (MQLN), a MA version of FCNL, using our listserv or the general announcements list.

5. Beth will do letter writing this month, the third Sunday as is now our standard time for it. The new MQNL may be a useful source for these letters.

6. Friends Concerns: Other Organizations: Roger has contacted Jan for RSWR and will invite her to our next meeting; Roger will present QVS; Beth is considering presenting Amigos Central. Dan will make an announcement to the Meeting about the FC:OO and inviting Friends willing to present an organization to contact him. We did not yet find a year-long overseer for the FC:OO.

7. 11:40 hour on Feb 26. Beth and Dan and others, if they wish, will confer about this hour, to be centered on the rights of nature and humans’ place in nature.

8. Beth is working with Pat Hynes on the talk on (trees for Vietnam, and the environmental impact of militarism) around Earth Day in April. We will cosponsor it. MtToby will be the venue for this talk.

9. Doctrine of Discovery movie: this seems like a promising item for our movie series. Beth will schedule a showing and get the film, and Roger will be the projectionist.

10. Roger will announce the January 31 event which came in Ka’s email. Ka and Jane have been active in getting information about refugees and sanctuary but neither was present at this meeting so we did not have clarity on how to proceed. We hope we can take up the matter at our Feb 6 meeting.

We ended with a time of silence and gratitude.