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.

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.

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.