Despite the trauma from the deployment of ICE agents to Minneapolis, the response of the people there, and supporters globally, has given us a template for effective, nonviolent systemic non-cooperation to state violence. Something that will likely be needed to withdraw our consent from further occasions of state violence, perhaps in our own communities.
Category: Quaker
Minneapolis Active Objection and Renewal
The powerful and peaceful witness shown by the people of Minneapolis is a template for other communities that will likely be confronted with similar tactics by ICE.
Signs and Witness 2
In Indianapolis, we had been working on defunding the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) for several months. On November 15, 2016, a crowd of about 200 of us alongside Native Americans in traditional dress marched through downtown Indianapolis with our signs about defunding the pipeline. We stopped in front of two of the banks involved with funding the pipeline, Chase and PNC Bank. The crowd stood in silence as people went in to close their accounts. That day the group withdrew $110,000 dollars.
A dozen Roses for Renee Good
In these tumultuous times, we should pay a great deal of attention to our Spiritual life. Now is the time to join with others outside our usual circles. We all need each other.
Quakers Silent Witness for Peace
Quaker public witness has stood in opposition to cruel and authoritarian actions in our country before. It is time for us to show this love in action again. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
National Quaker Conference on the Draft 1968
As Friends we have for many years been granted privileged status within the draft system. This has often blinded us to the evil of the draft itself, and the treatment of those not so privileged. We are grateful for all those who by resolutely resisting the draft have quickened our conscience. We are called into the community of all who suffer for their refusal to perform unconscionable acts.
Actively Object, Don’t Resist
What a witness provides is testimony. This is true both in biblical teaching and in contemporary legal practice. People being trained as observers in relation to ICE gather the testimony, not just of their own eyes and ears, but of the videos they take on their cell phones. And the testimony must be unbiased. Marshall Massey
It is time
Many among us — people of good will and faithful conscience — are wondering: is now the time? Are we at the time when our most fundamental rights as human beings and as citizens are being existentially threatened? No one will announce that it is that time. There will be no proclamation. We must listen to our conscience and, with our brothers and sisters, decide to suspend the normal order of things and step into the breach to declare the truth we see with our eyes, hear from our neighbors and know in our hearts.
Who is colonized now?
Today, the "Economic Draft" expands the definition of the colonized to include those trapped by manufactured scarcity: the poor funneled into the military through the Poverty Draft, the working class captured by Job Lock through employer-sponsored healthcare, and the educated class held in Indentured Servitude by student debt.
The Economic Draft
As I've been exploring the ideas of the NewCO (new conscientious objector) I've been led to see that the systems of oppression and injustice we are living in, the Christian, colonial, capitalist violence, can be more clearly viewed as an 'Economic Draft.' Framing it this way makes it more clear what the NewCO is consciously objecting to.