Tag Archives ⇒ philadelphia

Peace and Twenty-Somethings

October 17, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’ve post­ed some­thing I orig­i­nal­ly start­ed writ­ing for my per­son­al site: Where is the grass­roots con­tem­po­rary non­vi­o­lence move­ment? It asks why there’s no the kind of young, grass­roots cul­ture around peace like the net­works that I see “else­where on the net.”

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of con­text and a few obser­va­tions to make. The first is that the grass­roots cul­ture I was think­ing of when I wrote the piece was the “emer­gent church,” “young evan­gel­i­cal” move­ment. Thir­ty years ago the kids I’ve met at “Cir­cle of Hope”, a Philadel­phia “emer­gent church” loose­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Brethren could eas­i­ly have been at a Move­ment for New Soci­ety* train­ing: the cul­ture, the inter­ests, the demo­graph­ics are all strik­ing­ly similar.

(MNS was a nation­al but West Philly-centered net­work of group hous­es, pub­li­ca­tions, and orga­niz­ing that forged the iden­ti­ties of many of the twenty-somethings who par­tic­i­pat­ed; Non​vi​o​lence​.org is arguably a third-generation descen­dant of MNS, via New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers where I worked for six years).

The obser­va­tion for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new “Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work” [web­site URL long since dropped & picked up by spam­mer] will have a real­ly hard time act­ing as any sort of out­reach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal accord­ing to a talk giv­en my month­ly meet­ing by its direc­tor). The grass­roots peace-centric com­mu­ni­ties that were thriv­ing when the Net­work spon­sors were in their twen­ties don’t exist any­more. Rather pre­dictably, the pho­tographs of the next two dozen speak­ers for the Pen­dle Hill Peace­build­ing Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she’s from an exot­ic locale which is why she gets in). I’m glad that a gen­er­a­tion of sixty-something Quak­er activists are guar­an­teed steady employ­ment, but don’t any Quak­er insti­tu­tions think there’s one Amer­i­can activist under forty worth lis­ten­ing to?

I think the best descrip­tion of this phe­nom­e­non comes from the mil­i­tary. They call it “inces­tu­ous ampli­fi­ca­tion” and define it as “a con­di­tion in war­fare where one only lis­tens to those who are already in lock­step agree­ment, rein­forc­ing set beliefs and cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion ripe for mis­cal­cu­la­tion.” I sus­pect that peace activists are so wor­ried about their own rel­e­van­cy that they have a hard time rec­og­niz­ing new peers or changed circumstances.

These num­bers and the lack of speak­er diver­si­ty explain why I rarely even both­er with Quak­er peace con­fer­ences any­more. I would­n’t mind being over­looked in my peace min­istry if I saw oth­er activists my age being rec­og­nized. But I can’t take my invis­i­bil­i­ty as feed­back since it’s clear­ly not about me or my work. The homo­gene­ity of the speak­ers lists at most con­fer­ences sends a clear mes­sage that younger peo­ple aren’t want­ed except as pas­sive audi­ence mem­bers clap­ping for the inspir­ing fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of cur­rent retro peace orga­niz­ing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group inces­tu­ous­ness has cre­at­ed a gen­er­a­tion gap of rel­e­van­cy. When insti­tu­tions and move­ments become myopic, they become irrel­e­vant to those locked out­side. We have to go else­where to build our identities.

The inter­net is one place to go. From there it’s clear that the insti­tu­tion­al projects don’t have the “buzz,” i.e., the sup­port and excit­ment, that the Gen-X-led projects do. The inter­net alone won’t save us: there’s only so much cul­ture one can build online and computer-mediated dis­cus­sions favor argu­men­ta­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty, and ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness. But it’s one of the few venues open to out­siders with­out cash or insti­tu­tion­al clout.

But what about the con­tent of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today’s twenty-something Quak­ers were raised up as sec­u­lar peace activists. Our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often de-emphasize con­tro­ver­sial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny as the uni­fy­ing Quak­er val­ue. Going to protests is lit­er­al­ly part of the cur­ricu­lum of many Young Friends pro­grams. Even more of a prob­lem, old­er Friends are often afraid to share their faith plain­ly and ful­ly with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The prac­tice of per­son­al and Meeting-based spritu­al men­tor­ship that once trans­mit­ted Friends val­ues between gen­er­a­tions is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop par­tic­i­pat­ing in Quak­erism as they enter their twen­ties, com­ing back only occa­sion­al­ly for reunion-type gath­er­ings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out explor­ing alter­na­tive spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions that more clear­ly artic­u­late a faith that can give mean­ing and pur­pose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quak­er gen­er­a­tion that are going to Bud­dhist tem­ples, prac­tic­ing yoga spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, build­ing sweat lodges and join­ing evan­gel­i­cal or Roman Catholic church­es. Will they real­ly be won back with anoth­er lec­ture series? What would hap­pen if we Friends start­ed artic­u­lat­ing the deep faith roots of our own peace tes­ti­mo­ny? What if we start­ed tes­ti­fy­ing to one anoth­er about that great Pow­er that’s tak­en away occa­sion for war, what if our tes­ti­mo­ny became a wit­ness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thought­ful under-40s going to alter­na­tive church­es and what are they hop­ing to find there?

Don’t get me wrong: I hope these new peace ini­tia­tives do well and help to build a thriv­ing twenty-something activist scene again. It’s just that for fif­teen years I’ve seen a suces­sion of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, fail­ing to ignite sus­tain­ing inter­est. I wor­ry that things won’t change until spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions seri­ous­ly start includ­ing younger peo­ple in the decision-making process from their incep­tion and start rec­og­niz­ing that our focus might be rad­i­cal­ly different.

Post­script
I share some obser­va­tions about the dif­fer­ent way insti­tu­tion­al and out­sider Friends use the inter­net in How Insid­ers and Seek­ers Use the Quak­er Net.

UPDATE: The Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work was laid down in late 2005. The cit­ed rea­son was “bud­getary con­straints,” an emp­ty excuse that side­steps any respon­si­bil­i­ty for exam­in­ing vision, inclu­sion or impli­men­ta­tion. It’s forum is now an adver­tis­ing stage for “free mature porn pics.” It’s very sad and there’s no joy in say­ing “I told you so.”

UPDATE: After twelve years I laid down Non​vi​o​lence​.org and sold the domain. I nev­er received any real sup­port from Friends.

Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?

October 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Obser­va­tions on the first Philadel­phia Indie Allies Meet­up. “Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all ‘post’ some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church communities.”

The infor­mal net­work of younger Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians cen­tered around web­sites like theooze​.com and Jor​dan​Coop​er​.sk​.ca has start­ed spon­sor­ing a month­ly Indie Allies Meet­up of “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers.” Unlike pre­vi­ous months, there were enough peo­ple signed up for the Octo­ber meet­ing in the Philadel­phia area to hold a “meet­up,” so two days ago Julie & I found our­selves in a Cen­ter City piz­za shop with five oth­er “Indie Allies.”

Accord­ing to Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals, I fall pret­ty square­ly into the “Post Lib­er­al” cat­e­go­ry, a la Stan­ley Hauer­was. While it’s always dan­ger­ous label­ing oth­ers, I think at least some of the oth­er par­tic­i­pants would be com­fort­able enough with the “Post Evan­gel­i­cal” label (the one pas­tor among us said that if I read Web­ber’s book I’d know where he’s com­ing from). One par­tic­i­pant was from the Cir­cle church Julie & I attend­ed last First Day.

Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all “post” some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church com­mu­ni­ties. There’s some­thing about build­ing rela­tion­ships that are deep­er, more down-to-earth and real. Per­haps it’s find­ing a way to be less dog­mat­ic at the same time that we’re more dis­ci­plined. For Friends, that means ques­tion­ing the con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al ortho­doxy of liberal-think (get­ting beyond the cliched catch phras­es bor­rowed from lib­er­al Protes­tantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pec­u­lar­i­ly Quaker.

The con­ver­sa­tion was real­ly inter­est­ing. After all my Quak­er work, it’s always amaz­ing to find oth­er peo­ple my age who actu­al­ly think hard about faith and who are will­ing to build their life around it. There were times where I think we need­ed to trans­late our­selves and times where we tried to map out shared con­nec­tions (i.e., Richard Fos­ter was the known famous Quak­er, I should read him if only to be able to dis­cuss his rela­tion­ship to Con­ser­v­a­tive and Lib­er­al Friends).

It was real­ly good to get out­side of Quak­erism and to hear the lan­guage and issues of oth­ers. One impor­tant les­son is that some of the strong opin­ions I’ve devel­oped in response to Quak­er cul­ture need to be unlearned. The best exam­ple was social action. As I’ve writ­ten before on the web­site, I think the Friends peace tes­ti­mo­ny has become large­ly sec­u­lar­ized and that social action has become a sub­sti­tute for expressed and lived com­mu­nal faith. Yet my Meet­up cohorts were excit­ed to become involved in social action. Their Evan­gel­i­cal back­ground had dis­missed good works as unnec­es­sary – faith being the be-all – and now they want­ed to get involved in the world. But I very much sus­pect that their good works would be root­ed in faith to a degree that a lot of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er activist projects aren’t. I need to remind myself that social wit­ness (even my own) can be fine if tru­ly spirit-led.

Com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple switch­ing church­es often bring with them the bag­gage of their frus­tra­tions with the first church and this unre­solved anger often gets in the way of keep­ing true to God’s call. Even though I’m not leav­ing Quak­erism I have to iden­ti­fy and name my own frus­tra­tions so that they don’t get in the way. Hang­ing out with oth­er “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers” is a way of keep­ing some per­spec­tive, of remem­ber­ing that Post-Liberal is not exact­ly anti-Liberal.

Rec­om­mend­ed I check out: N.T. Wright, at allelon​.net. I just saw him ref­er­enced as a per­son­al friend of some of the Repub­li­can par­ty lead­er­ship in Con­gress, so this should be interesting.

Constituting Mediocrity: the new National Constitution Center

July 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It’s obvi­ous that the Cen­ter is just a hold­ing pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a muse­um or nation­al shrine as it is a high­way rest stop. On your left­’s the super-sized cafe­te­ria, on your right the store for crap­py hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

It’s hard not to make the connection

June 21, 2003
· Martin Kelley

In Iraq, U.S. sol­diers are blar­ing the sound­tract to ‘Apoc­a­lypse Now’ to psych them­selves up to war:

“With Wag­n­er’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ still ring­ing in their ears and the clat­ter of heli­copters over­head, sol­diers rammed vehi­cles into met­al gates and hun­dreds of troops raid­ed hous­es in the west­ern city of Ramadi”

Mean­while in my home­town of Philadel­phia four teenagers lis­tened to the Bea­t­les’ ‘Hel­ter Skel­ter’ over forty times before attack­ing and beat­ing to death one of their friends.
   Hor­rif­ic as both sto­ries are, what strikes me is the choice of music. ‘Hel­ter Skel­ter’ and most of the music on ‘Apoc­alpse Now’ were writ­ten in the late 1960 and ear­ly 70s (the movie itself came out in 1979). Why are today’s teenagers pick­ing the music of their par­ents to plan their attacks? Can’t you kill to Radio­head or Linkin Park? Could­n’t the Philly kids have shown some home­town pride and picked Pink? Why the Oldies Music? Seri­ous­ly, there have been some topsy-turvy gen­er­a­tional sur­pris­es in the sup­port and oppo­si­tion to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Is there some sort of strange fetish for all things 70s going on here?

Visioning the Future of Young Adult Friends (1997)

March 21, 1997
· Martin Kelley

This is a vision­ing essay I wrote in March of 1997, for Friends Insti­tute (FI), the Philadelphia-area Young Adult Friends (YAF, rough­ly 18 – 35 year olds) group I was very involved with at the time. I repost it now because many of these same issues con­tin­u­al­ly come up in Quak­er groups. See the bot­tom for the sto­ry on this essay, includ­ing the con­tro­ver­sy it kicked up.

I think the YAF/FI chal­lenges can be rough­ly divid­ed into three cat­e­gories. They are intro­duced in the next para­graph, then elab­o­rat­ed on in turn. They are:

  • *Account­abil­i­ty*. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and group process with­in YAF/FI has nev­er been very good. We can change that, revi­tal­iz­ing the role of Busi­ness Meet­ing as set­ter of the vision and forum for sub­com­mit­tee feed­back and pol­i­cy setting.
  • *Out­reach*. Who Do We Serve? YAF/FI has done no out­reach to newly-convinced Friends and the plan­ning of events has shown an insen­si­tiv­i­ty to the needs of this group.
  • *Activ­i­ties*. We’ve had a lot of con­fer­ences with mediocre pro­grams that have lit­tle spir­i­tu­al or Quak­er focus. We can set year­ly themes as a group in advance, giv­ing Steer­ing Com­mit­tee guid­ance for par­tic­u­lar programs.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

PYM/FI has not been an orga­ni­za­tion with good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, group process or account­abil­i­ty. Busi­ness meet­ings have been thought of as a nec­es­sary and begrudged task where half the par­tic­i­pants fall asleep.

Busi­ness Meet­ings should have clear, advance agen­da. The YAF clerk should call for agen­da items by email two weeks before the meet­ing (phon­ing promi­nent mem­bers who don’t have access to email), and send out a draft agen­da the week before. Basic agen­da items should include vari­a­tion on the fol­low­ing (my facil­i­ta­tion expe­ri­ence comes from Quaker-inspired but not Quak­er process, so some of these tasks might need to be turned into Quakerese):

  • silent wor­ship;
  • agen­da review;
  • reports from all sub­com­mit­tees (treasurer’s report, steer­ing com­mit­tee report, dis­tri­b­u­tion com­mit­tee report, email/web report);
  • two sub­stan­tive issues;
  • set­ting next date;
  • eval­u­a­tion of meeting;

All reports should be writ­ten (ide­al­ly dis­trib­uted by email before­hand and with a dozen copies at the meet­ing) and should include activ­i­ty, fis­cal activ­i­ty, pol­i­cy ques­tions need­ing busi­ness meet­ing input, approval of future tasks. Every deci­sion should have spe­cif­ic peo­ple as liaisons for follow-up, and part of the next Busi­ness Meet­ing should be review­ing progress on these tasks.

OUTREACH: WHO DO WE SERVE?

I have a very large con­cern that the offi­cial YAF/FI orga­ni­za­tion does not do exten­sive out­reach and that it hasn’t always been sen­si­tive to the needs of all YAFs.

As a con­vinced Friend who first ven­tured forth to a Quak­er Meet­ing at age 20, I spent years look­ing for YAFs and not find­ing them. The only out­reach that YAF/FI does is to grad­u­at­ing Young Friends (the high school pro­gram). Our out­reach to new­ly con­vince Friends has been nonexistent.

Oth­er under­rep­re­sent­ed YAFs: the Cen­tral Phi­la. MM group, thirty-something YAFs, YAFs of col­or, les/bi/gay YAFs (our Pres­i­dent Day’s gath­er­ing con­flicts with the pop­u­lar mid-winter FLGC gath­er­ing, an unfor­tu­nate mes­sage we’re send­ing), YAFs with children.

Some of the out­reach chal­lenges for YAF/FI include:

  • Cliquish­ness. Many plugged-in YAFs know each oth­er from high school days and it can be intim­i­dat­ing to jump into such a group. There’s also a reluc­tance to review assump­tions brought down from the Young Friends (high school) program;
  • The poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion in YAF/FI keeps many dis­en­fran­chised YAFs from hav­ing a forum in which to express their con­cerns and needs. We can reach out to under-represented YAFs and ask them what a age-fellowship could pro­vide them;
  • Single-type events: the week­end gath­er­ings keep away many YAFs with respon­si­bil­i­ty. The tenor of YAF/FI events often keeps away the more mature YAFs. I doubt one type of event could sat­is­fy all types of YAFs. We should be open to sup­port the lead­er­ship of dis­en­fran­chised YAFs by pro­vid­ing them the mon­ey, resources and insti­tu­tion­al sup­port to address their com­mu­ni­ties’ need (keep­ing in mind YAF events should be open to all).

ACTIVITIES

YAF events have had their prob­lems. The­mat­i­cal­ly, they usu­al­ly have not had Quak­er themes, they have not been geared toward spir­i­tu­al growth (usu­al­ly First Day’s Meet­ing for Wor­ship is the only spir­i­tu­al com­po­nent). They have fol­lowed the pat­terns of Young Friends events (3 day gath­er­ings), even though this for­mat excludes many (most?) YAFs.

We could eas­i­ly have more of a mix of events. Some could be the tra­di­tion­al week­end events, some could be day events, like the suc­cess­ful apple-picking expe­di­tion and Swarth­more gath­er­ing a few years ago orga­nized by Friends Center-employed YAFs.

As far as I’ve known, there has nev­er been any Busi­ness Meet­ing brain­storm­ing for themes, and each event has been orga­nized in an ad hoc man­ner by a small group of peo­ple with­out feed­back from the gen­er­al YAF pop­u­la­tion. This is part­ly a result of the need for con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers to have a con­fer­ence planned long in advance.

I pro­pose that we set Year-Long Themes, a process that some groups employ to inter­est­ing effect. In the fall, there could be a Busi­ness Meet­ing to decide the next cal­en­dar year’s theme; Steer­ing Com­mit­tee could then orga­nize all of the pro­gram­mat­ic events around this top­ic. This would give large YAF input into the selec­tion process and also pro­vide an inter­est­ing uni­ty to top­ics. Each top­ic should be broad enough to allow for an inter­est­ing mix of pro­grams and each top­ic should have a spe­cif­ic Quak­er focus. One ped­a­gog­i­cal moti­va­tion behind these events should be to intro­duce and rein­force Friends’ his­to­ry and culture.

Themes that I’d love to see:

  • Spir­i­tu­al and his­tor­i­cal roots of Quak­erism. (Bec­ca Grunko, Mar­garet Hope Bacon, Peg­gy Mor­sheck might be good resource peo­ple). Events could include a look at the fiery birth of Quak­erism and an his­tor­i­cal explo­ration of Friends Insti­tute itself (found­ed in the 1880s, FI played a role in uni­fy­ing the Hicksite/Orthodox schism in PYM and pro­vid­ed key assis­tance to the ear­ly AFSC; Gen­nyfer Dav­en­port is hot on the trail of this history!).
  • Quak­ers in the world. a look at vol­un­teerism, and wit­ness and min­istry. An obvi­ous event would be to par­tic­i­pate in a week- or weekend-long PYM workcamp.
  • Neat Quak­er fig­ures (maybe even neat PYM fig­ures!). Con­fer­ences that look at the his­to­ry of folks like John Wool­man, William Penn, Lucre­tia Mott, per­haps cur­rent fig­ures like the Willoughby’s.
  • Quak­er Lifestyle and the Tes­ti­monies. Egads, we could read Faith and Prac­tice! For those of you who haven’t, it’s real­ly an inter­est­ing book. Not all events should be the­mat­ic, of course. The ear­ly Decem­ber Christ­mas gath­er­ing doesn’t need to be; nei­ther does some of the day long events (i.e., the apple-picking expe­di­tion was a fun theme in itelf!).

This essay writ­ten Third Month 21, 1997 by Mar­tin Kelley

 

The Sto­ry of this essay (writ­ten fall of 2003)

I wrote for Friends Insti­tute, the Philadelphia-area young adult Friends group, back in March of 1997. I was very involved with the group at the time, serv­ing for­mal­ly as trea­sur­er and web­mas­ter and infor­mal­ly as the de-facto out­reach coor­di­na­tor. We had a vision­ing retreat com­ing up in a few months and I wrote this as a strengths / weak­ness­es / oppor­tu­ni­ties piece to get the ideas rolling. I thought we had some work to do around the issues of cliquish­ness, and I also thought we could become more thought­ful and spiritually-focused but I tried to find a sen­si­tive way to talk about this issues.

I got a lot of reac­tions to this essay. Some peo­ple real­ly real­ly loved it, espe­cial­ly those out­side the Philadel­phia insid­ers group: “Thanks for the insight­ful analy­sis! You real­ly did a won­der­ful job of objec­tive­ly explain­ing the frus­tra­tions that some PYM YAF’s (myself includ­ed) have with FI” and “I was so inspired by your essay ‘YAF vision for future’ that we are hop­ing bring it for­ward and cir­cu­late it here in among Aus­tralian YAF.”

But some of the insid­ers felt chal­lenged. One did­n’t even like me talk­ing about cliques: “I think that as a group we have all been aware for some time of the prob­lems plagu­ing Friends Insti­tute… I don’t like the word clique because it makes me think of an exclu­sion­ary snob­bish group of peo­ple that looks down on oth­ers.” (of course this was my point).

As if to prove my analy­sis cor­rect, the insid­ers imme­di­ate­ly start­ed talk­ing amongst them­selves. With­in two weeks of email­ing this essay, both of my for­mal posi­tions in the orga­ni­za­tion were being chal­lenged. One insid­er wrote a request to the year­ly meet­ing to set up a com­pet­ing Friends Insti­tute web­site; oth­ers start­ed won­der­ing aloud whether it prop­er for an atten­der to be Friends Insti­tute trea­sur­er. No one ever ques­tioned my ded­i­ca­tion, hon­esty and good work. I was more active­ly involved in Quak­erism and my meet­ing than most of the birthright mem­bers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in FI, and I was the most con­sci­en­tious trea­sur­er and web­mas­ter the group ever had. My essay had obvi­ous­ly hit a nerve and the wag­ons were cir­cling in against the out­sider threat. Real­iz­ing just how ingrained these issues were and to what extent the insid­ers would go to pro­tect their pow­er, I even­tu­al­ly left Friends Insti­tute to focus again on my month­ly meet­ing’s thriv­ing twenty- and thirty-something scene.

The essay con­tin­ued to have a life of its own. The May 1997 vision­ing retreat focused on noth­ing at all and sub­se­quent busi­ness meet­ings dropped to a hand­ful of peo­ple. But the issues of the high-school focus, cliquish­ness, and unfriend­li­ness to new­com­ers came to the fore­front again a few months lat­er, after some sex­u­al assaults took place in the young adult com­mu­ni­ty. A con­fer­ence on “sex­u­al bound­aries” pro­duced an epis­tle that hit some of the same top­ics as my vision­ing essay:

We iden­ti­fied a num­ber of habits and issues in our young adult com­mu­ni­ty that tend to bring up dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. For exam­ple, some of our sex­u­al bound­aries car­ry over from our expe­ri­ence as high-school aged Young Friends… New­com­ers become “fresh meat” for peo­ple who come to gath­er­ings look­ing to find quick con­nec­tions… Peo­ple get lost espe­cial­ly when we have larg­er gath­er­ings, and we don’t watch out for each other.

Friends Insti­tute drift­ed for a few years. By the sum­mer of 2000, a con­vince Friend became clerk and tried to revive the group. She found my essay and emailed me: “I’ve been look­ing over the FI archives and am impressed by your con­tri­bu­tion. Do you have any advice, sug­ges­tions, or time to become active again in FI?” Sad to say this attempt to revive Friends Insti­tute also had a lot of problems.

I repost this essay here in 2003 part­ly to have a ongo­ing record of my Quak­er writ­ings here on my web­site. But I sus­pect these same issues con­tin­ue in var­i­ous young adult friends groups. Per­haps some­one else can see this essay and be inspired, but a warn­ing that I’ve seen these dynam­ics in many dif­fer­ent young adult friends groups and seri­ous­ly won­der whether reform or revival is impossible.
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Food Not Bomb’s Publisher’s Note

June 29, 1992
· Martin Kelley

Intro from 2025: I see that the Food Not Bombs book I worked on in 1992 is avail­able in the Inter­net Archive. Look­ing through it, I see my pub­lish­er’s note is there. I might as well retroac­tive­ly add it to the blog!

I some­times muse over whether the ostrich isn’t the most apt ani­mal totem of our age. Like that giant bird, so many of us react to prob­lems by tizzy­ing about and shov­ing our heads in the sand. With our sight thus obscured, we hope for some­one to fix our trou­bles for us.

How else to describe our response to the unweav­ing of those social threads that once bound us in the vision of a com­mon human­i­ty? Over the past decade, we’ve seen an alarm­ing rise in pover­ty and hunger, yet so many of us have done so lit­tle. As we step over home­less peo­ple, we demon­strate anew how even the great­est hor­ror can become mun­dane when seen often enough.

We spend hours excus­ing our­selves for our inac­tion, while at the same time blam­ing oth­ers for theirs. We stick our heads in the sand and wait for oth­ers — be they in gov­ern­ment, social work or reli­gion — to come and solve the crises in our communities.

Tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and action in our com­mu­ni­ty is pre­cise­ly the goal of Food Not Bombs col­lec­tives through­out the coun­try. Food Not Bombs is not about hir­ing pro­fes­sion­als, re-prioritizing the gov­ern­ment, or financ­ing new agen­cies; it is not at all about ask­ing oth­ers to solve our com­mu­ni­ties’ prob­lems. It is about ordi­nary, non-heroic folk empow­er­ing them­selves and com­ing togeth­er around food — the most basic of issues — as a way of pro­vid­ing for one another.

When you sit around a Food Not Bombs table, you get to know peo­ple in a way that does­n’t allow you to eas­i­ly stick your head back into the sand. By lit­er­al­ly break­ing bread with these won­der­ful strangers, you’re chal­lenged to break stereo­types. This is an essen­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

Some­times I look around the Food Not Bombs table here in Philadel­phia, and dream of a day when we will all take our heads out of the sand. Of a day when we will be able to look each oth­er in the eye and reach out to each oth­er in times of need. Of a day when we will pro­vide our­selves and each oth­er with free food, free hous­ing, free education.

We here at New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers are proud to be a part of that dream, and proud to offer you Food Not Bombs: How to Feed the Hun­gry and Build Com­mu­ni­ty. Read the book and vis­it — or start! — a Food Not Bombs chap­ter in your town. Maybe you’ll see why I some­times won­der if that dream might not be clos­er than we all think.

Mar­tin Kel­ley
for New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers
June 29, 1992