I love complicated identities like this. There’s a lot of discernment that goes on about how to incorporate Indigenous and Quaker elements into life. For many, it seems a surprisingly natural fit. This is true elsewhere, in parts of Africa and South America, where missionary Quakers’ beliefs meshed with the belief systems of pre-colonial ethnic groups, allowing an easy transition.

Also of interest is that these meetings are all Christian, which demographers tell us is the norm for Native Americans today.¹ Decolonialism means something very different for those who are committed to hold on to Christianity.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

The prosecutors have released a bunch of pictures of violent activity being perpetrated by someone who looks like Jacob, with a similar arm tattoo. That protestor threw a brick at an ICE agent that hit his head, drew blood, and required medical attention.

I sure hope it’s not Jacob in those photos and that his defense attorneys can prove it.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

Later update: Sad to say the photos were Jacob and he really did engage in multiple actions of property destruction and bodily harm that day. The famil leaned on the Quaker defense claiming he was innocent as pure driven snow until the defense lawyers convinced them the evidence was overwhelming (of course it was, the place was lined with cameras and press) and told them to take a plea deal. He’ll be spending 30 months in jail with no chance of early release. How tragic.

Great detail at the end:

In the late 1980s, his son said, John Robbins reconciled with his father: Irv Robbins, suffering from weight issues, heart disease and diabetes, was given a copy of “Diet for a New America” by his cardiologist. The doctor had no idea that the book had been written by his patient’s son.

Veg News also has an article on his life and impact.

The asterisk up is there because the podcaster apparently renounced their membership in the Society of Friends when Britain Yearly Meeting passed a minute on trans inclusion. I appreciate someone disagreeing with a yearly meeting resolution and even staying in the fold despite the opposition. But when an affirming minute that doesn’t actually affect you (just your ideology) is such a burden that you leave… well then the question is why you would put such effort into a podcast of your ex-religion. it doesn’t seem like a project borne in good faith.

Clair does a great job bringing the receipts and explaining the context (I haven’t been following the details of the UK back-and-forth on this).

A Quaker anti-trans campaign

How much work will Quakers do to welcome trans people, after our yearly meeting minutes expressed such powerful…

Clare Flourish

The North is the part of England to which the radicals retreated under Norman violence, and I suspect that’s part of why the more radical side of England comes out there. Quakerism developed mainly in the north and west of England and I suspect that nonconformity comes out of that radical spirit – which needs to be rekindled, not in ways manipulated by the Murdoch press or the Conservative Party or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake understood, of connecting with the spirit of the land.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIntosh in the February issue of Friends Journal. He talked about Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk with Quaker roots. Again, our spirituality in context.

Alastair McIntosh

Reece is a proud Quaker and believes it’s his Quaker roots that sent him to Dr. King’s side. “I was raised to believe all people are equal, are born equal, created equal,” he said. Reece met King in 1967 at the old Robert Morris Hotel in Philadelphia. He spent several hours with the civil rights icon. Reece says that night he, King and a few others planned a poverty march for the following spring, but King never made it.

Norval was an activist with AFSC back in his youth, served as a Pennsylvania secretary of commerce, and became a cable television entrepreneur. He’s pretty ubiquitous in Quaker circles these days, linking the activist and entrepreneurial in interesting ways. My favorite part of the video is when they casually redisplay a picture they had blurred out near the beginning (the one in the preview) and don’t bother naming the guy walking just ahead of him.

The family found a community of Quaker friends in the small town, of which Stoneman Douglas wrote, “It may have been a ‘frontier town,’ but there was strict tradition to guide him, the tradition of ‘Yea and nay,’ the tradition of plain living and clear and independent thinking, and there were family stories to point up the stiff-backed breed. They may have been plain people but they were colorful.”
— Read on m.startribune.com/namesake-at-school-of-latest-massacre-was-a-minnesota-native-born-in-1890/475206053/