Previously I wrote, The question is, do we continue to accept the current dominant systems of colonial capitalist violence?
The question reflects my history of frustrating experiences in trying to make change happen. Which raises the question of how change occurs. Who decides what the changes will be and how they will be implemented? Who will pay the costs?
As a Quaker, I believe in and have had spiritual experiences to help guide me when I reach a fork in the road. Quakers as a body seek this spiritual guidance during our silent meetings for worship, during our business meetings, and in our daily lives. We believe in “letting our lives speak.” I was taught to seek spiritual guidance and then follow that guidance regardless of the personal cost. There are times when concrete action is called for. Often such actions require sacrifice, sometimes significant sacrifice.
I understood the significance of my first moral challenge (in 1969), which was what to do about registering for the draft (Selective Service System). There were clearly “safe” choices, such as doing alternative service as a conscientious objector. I was led to believe that cooperating with the system in any way, even as a conscientious objector, was wrong. When I say I was led to believe, that is in reference to spiritual guidance. That process played out over a long period of time. Many Quaker meetings for worship, many discussions with friends and family, much study. The guidance to resist the draft only became clearer with time. My grandmother said the will of God is often revealed in a series of steps over time.
The question became how much I was willing to risk for my convictions. Resisting the draft could result in a felony conviction, which would have life-long consequences.
I was at a fork in the road. I could become a conscientious objector and fulfill the requirements for the draft despite my misgivings. There would be lifelong consequences of knowing I had compromised. Or I could resist and take the chance of imprisonment and a felony conviction.
I don’t know if I could have resisted the draft had it not been for the example of Quaker men being imprisoned for their convictions throughout history. Who let their lives speak. My Quaker mentor, Don Laughlin, collected the stories of resistance to war and conscription. I was disappointed that not more Quakers resisted the draft.
I was also disappointed that more Quakers didn’t take more significant and effective actions related to Mother Earth and fossil fuel emissions. I’ve often shared my shock at seeing the dense smog when I moved to Indianapolis in 1971, and how that led me to live a life without a car.
I knew of a few Quakers who were passionate about environmental work, a few of whom refused to own a car. In the early 1970s, I anticipated a growing Quaker movement to give up owning personal automobiles and build up public transportation. Obviously, that never happened. The wrong fork in the road was taken.
Blowback
What has been changing is the significant ways in which the current US economic and political systems are failing. Systems that once supported a white middle class are failing to do so in an increasing number of ways, for an increasing number of people. Added to this will be the massive unemployment that will result from artificial intelligence systems.
Another change came from uncovering the horrors of the institutions of forced assimilation of Indigenous children. In May 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the discovery of 215 potential unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, bringing international attention to what had been happening at the Indian Boarding Schools across North America. A decidedly wrong fork in the road that symbolizes Christian, colonial, capitalist violence against the Indigenous peoples of this land.
What has also changed is a violent, authoritarian state that has crippled our governing institutions, our economy, and created massive systems of surveillance and imprisonment. Violently clamping down on any form of protest or free speech. Recklessly deploying violence here and abroad.
Most significantly, what will also continue to change at an accelerating rate is global environmental chaos.
A Crisis of Conscience
Every one of these realities calls us to conscience. We can either continue to live within the machinery of Christian colonial capitalism or choose another way. We are again at a fork in the road.
I urge Quakers and others of conscience to object to Christian, colonial capitalism, and instead build Beloved communities based upon Mutual Aid, LANDBACK, and the replacement of police and prisons with ways to promote community safety instead. To do so requires concrete acts of community building.
An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK
