Peace and Social Concerns meeting 10/2/17

Present: Dan G, Beth A, Ruth H, Roger C, Margaret M, George M, Frank G

We began with a time of quiet.

Our 11:40 hour on October 1, with Jeff Napolitano telling of the new Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, was a great success and helpful in understanding the developments.

Ruth spoke of the Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, NY and told of its mission (see http://www.soulfirefarm.org.) The farm was co-started by Leah Adele S-P. We agreed to support this by asking the meeting to include it in the Friends Concerns: Other Organizations part of the budget.

Dan agreed to continue clerking for another year, continuing the tradition of clerks serving for two years. Since Beth was also interesting in clerking, we agreed to have Dan and Beth be co-clerks for the year.

We agreed to keep letter writing on the third Sundays. Roger will do it on October 15.

We read and approved the report of the concert series and will send it on to the meeting Clerk.

Beth will ask Ka if she wants to continue as our FCNL representative. We hope she will continue.

Since the local AFSC has ceased, we believe that the $330 in our budget marked for the W MA AFSC office now closed should be redirected to the new Resistance Center for Peace and Justice and will recommend that to the Meeting. Dan will look into “what’s going on” in the national AFSC and whether continuing the $200 for the national AFSC should be continued or redirected.

We talked over the “timely issue” matter and Roger agreed to print up the proposal for general distribution. He will announce its availability.

Andy has negotiated a way for MtToby Friends to go to work with Habitat for Humanity. We think a “MtToby Habitat Day” will be a good project if we can get enough Friends to sign up. We will ask Andy if he is willing to recruit people and handle the project. Dan will talk with Andy, and Frank will talk with Isaac to see if YFs want to get involved.

We endorse the project that Peter brought to our attention, to get the funds to enable the local mosque to open.

Ruth brought up the Race and Class group and its thoughts about becoming a committee, but we did not find any action clear enough to proceed on. Dan will talk to the Clerk to see what is happening about the current questions about Meeting structures, which arose in the September meeting for business.

We ended with a time of quiet.