Host Lori Aument interviews two people known to Friends Journal readers: Katharine Gerbner, author of September’s Slavery in the Quaker World; and Mary Crauderueff, who last wrote for us in November 2017. I’m a big fan of uncovering the stories of the 1688 protest, especially the dismissal it received from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. My review of Gerbner’s book will appear in the January books section of FJ.

Episode No. 1 – The Germantown Protest of 1688

Despite the risks, Rustin felt it was his responsibility to be open about his sexuality. He traces that duty back to an experience he had as a black man in the 1940s Jim Crow South, when he took his place at the back of a segregated bus.

“As I was going by the second seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the ring necktie I was wearing and pulled it,” he recalled in the newly released audio. “Whereupon its mother said, ‘Don’t touch a n*****.’ ”

As Rustin tells it, here’s what ran through his mind in that moment after the white woman called him the slur: “If I go and sit quietly at the back of that bus now, that child, who was so innocent of race relations that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down quietly that it’s going to end up saying, ‘They like it back there, I’ve never seen anybody protest against it.’ ”

Rustin was fired from his work with organizations like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and he often had to work semi-anonymously behind the scenes. The famous March on Washington that we remember for Martin Luther King Jr.‘s speech was Rustin’s idea.

One of his catch-phrases in speeches was that we should “speak truth to power.” When he worked with the American Friends Service Committee to write the famous 1955 pamphlet of that name, not only wasn’t he not listed as one of the authors, but the others concocted some ridiculous story about the phrase being some ancient Quaker saying. Shameful. I really want to listen to his story and can’t wait for the podcast!

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/06/682598649/in-newly-found-audio-a-forgotten-civil-rights-leader-says-coming-out-was-an-abso?fbclid=IwAR3eUSvE9RsHVjgQU3zCmDs6z49bIuK3ijTt1JBznV7BVzpekH7G2kwCm2c

When the marginalized cry out for compassion, they are not censoring anybody. They are fighting for their very right to exist. Nonviolent disobedience and rewriting the rules of civility is for these groups. It is our job, especially as white people, or those with more societal power and time to protest, to amplify the voices of the most marginalized.

https://millennialpolitics.co/redefine-rude-embrace-disruptive/

Society’s values are so often in opposition to God’s purposes. Slavery used to be legal. Love between two people of the same sex was illegal in our lifetimes. Our economic system is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s creation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrichment rather than loyalties lying with the Kingdom of Heaven and working for the enrichment of all humanity. When being loyal to God’s purposes runs counter to what society expects it can get pretty rough. There may be persecution, though it varies a lot: from tutting, telling you off for being vegetarian, being given white feathers, right through to imprisonment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant

I’m convinced that the USA is in a kind of danger that is new to most of us. But even if our worst fears turn out to be exaggerated, the scale of pain and despair among some (and wicked glee among others) is something that demands a prophetic and pastoral response from all who claim to represent Good News.

Also check out his list of eight options for responding to the current political crisis.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/06/sowing-in-tears-part-two-red-hens.html

Within the last month I became aware of the “Hometown Heroes” program. Hanging from lampposts in our downtown, and other downtown districts in the region, are banners with the pictures and names of former military personnel. I was looking at one of the banners hanging outside of my bank and I started thinking to myself. “Why is it always soldiers?

Off the top of my head I can think of plenty of other members of the community that are heros from my standpoint. Activists for justice and conscience. Civic-minded gadflies. Shopowners who provide so-called “third places” for for people to congregegate. Traffic engineers who push back against corner-cutting in safety issues. The most important heros are often everyday people who simply do the right thing when chance puts a dangerous moral dilemma right in their path.

I push back against a simple military-are-heros narratives because in times of authoritarianism the military often become the enforcers. There’s the jingoistic nonsense you hear that the military is protecting our freedom to protest. No: in most cases our liberty has been preserved by people standing up and practicing their liberty despitee intimidation by authoritarian bullies and their police forces. I have friends in the military and I respect their choices and honor their commitments. I know heros can be found throughout the enlisted ranks and in our police forces but so are scoundrels. We need to recognize hometown heroism wherever it happens and resist the mindset that it’s exclusive to state forces.

https://quakerreturns.blogspot.com/2018/05/hometown-heroes.html

Trump has surrounded himself by a protective scrum of advisors who spend much of their time keeping him steady and massaging his ego to assure him the people are all behind him. I don’t think he knows how to deal with the size of the opposition so far. He turns to conspiracy theory to try to convince himself that what he wants to be true really would be except for evil “dudes” out there—George Soros hiring actors to protest, millions of undocumented aliens voting, etc., and of course the original Trump conspiracy that refused to think a black American could be a legitimate president.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe

The Golden Rule project is an improbable accomplishment by unlikely volunteers. Members of Veterans For Peace, they are a motley bunch that might have appalled the original crew, all conscientious Quakers. They smoke, drink and swear like the sailors, though most of them are not. Aging and perpetually strapped for money, the mostly retired men sought to banish their war-related demons as they ripped out rotten wood and replaced it plank by purpleheart plank.

Friends Journal ran an article by Jane, Restoring the Golden Rule,  back in 2011 when the VFP volunteers first contemplated restoration, and a longer followup by Arnold (Skip) Oliver in 2013, The Golden Rule Shall Sail Again. Of course, the cool thing about working at a established magazine is that it was easy for me to dip into the archives and find and compile our 1958 coverage of the ship’s famous first voyage.

You ca follow more about the restoration work on the VFP Golden Rule website or check out pictures from the re-launch on their Facebook page.