So, we finally arrive at to how to put these spiritual leadings into practice.
The NewCO framework is a call to maturity. It asks us to move beyond the adolescence of ‘innocence’-where the goal is simply not to be the one pulling the trigger-into the adulthood of Responsibility.
We are called to live ‘in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars—and all empires.”
Responsibility is the ability to respond to fused violence with a fused resistance. It is the understanding that we cannot peacefully coexist with a system that requires the destruction of the earth and the erasure of its people. Our task is to build a new world in the shell of the old.
Our Maps Are Torn. Our World is Unraveling
| NewCO Concept | How to implement | How it relates to Christian colonial capitalist violence | What Quaker concepts apply | Examples of actual implementation of those concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Conscientious Objector (NewCO) Framework | Shift from ‘Static Objection’ (opting out) to ‘Active Objection’ (opting in). Establish a NewCO working group and Committee on Decolonial Repair. Use theological translation to frame decolonial action as an authentic expression of faith. | Redefines violence to include the systemic harms of fossil fuel capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism (CCV). It rejects the interlocking structures that generate violence rather than just military combat. | Peace Testimony (expanded), Continuing Revelation, Integrity, Immediatism (vs. Gradualism). | Jeff Kisling’s refusal of selective service registration; reframing LANDBACK and Mutual Aid as the ‘Justice Testimony’ 1. |
| LANDBACK | Direct, literal return of ancestral lands and restoration of Indigenous sovereignty. Move beyond symbolic acknowledgment to concrete action like voluntary land tax or rent. | Direct antidote to Colonial Violence (settler colonialism, land theft, and genocide). Counteracts the Doctrine of Discovery used to nullify Indigenous land title. | Integrity, Material Restitution. | IYM(C) Corporate Witness investigating historical ties to stolen land at Scattergood Friends School; donating to the Honor Native Land Fund. |
| Mutual Aid | Building ‘people’s infrastructure’ and autonomous dual power institutions based on ‘Solidarity, Not Charity.’ Meeting basic survival needs outside of market logic. | Antidote to Capitalist Violence (exploitation and resource extraction). Rejects the vertical hierarchy required for white supremacy in favor of horizontal relationships. | Equality, Corporate Discernment, Horizontal Integrity. | Des Moines Mutual Aid (DMMA) weekly food distribution and bail funds; GPAS Mutual Aid Coffee Shop operating on a pay-what-you-can model. |
| Abolition | A dual strategy of divestment from carceral systems (police, prisons) and investment in community-based alternatives like healing justice and non-police crisis response. | Antidote to Christian/State Violence. Recognizes police and prisons as the enforcement arm of the colonial state and property relations on stolen land. | Peace Testimony (expanded), Systemic Non-collaboration. | Healing Justice House and BIPOC Healing Collective at the GPAS Hub; Quakers for Abolition Network. |
| Institutional Self-Abnegation | Ceding institutional resources, power, and annual budgets directly to Indigenous-led or marginalized-led efforts. | Dismantles the ‘Paradox of Benevolent Harm’ where institutions maintain control. Breaks the cycle of institutional maintenance over prophetic justice. | Integrity, Active Objection, Repentance. | IYM(C) Peace and Social Concerns Committee donating its entire $1,100 budget to support Indigenous-led healing. |
| Systemic Non-Collaboration | Principled withdrawal of consent from state apparatuses, including rejecting electoral politics or state-sanctioned ‘CO’ status if it legitimizes coercive structures. | Rejects the ‘fused architecture’ of CCV that makes war and extraction inevitable. Asserts the state is fundamentally irredeemable and requires replacement by ‘people’s infrastructure’. | Integrity through Rupture, Immediatism, 1877 Precedent. | Des Moines Mutual Aid’s rejection of electoral politics; Jeff Kisling’s 1969 draft resistance; historical non-registrants. |
