We could use a little momentum. A decade ago, as I was getting started with this, platforms like Facebook took advantage of our desire for a simpler option and used it to silo up our data, lock and key. We lost an exciting blogosphere in the midst of all of this—and the first step towards getting it back is by realizing that ownership should be a first class citizen, whether or not we eventually give away those words, sell them, or keep them close to our chest. A blog that you own, that you pay the hosting bill for? That’s the first step—a form of expression that should be the future (because after all, how awesome is it that anyone can own a printing press?!?) but somehow became the past.

I haven’t been updating this Quaker Daily Read as much as I’d like over the last month or so. That’s partly the result of an early December vacation and then the chaos of late December holidays with the family. I’m sure I’ve missed some great posts that I should have shared but there’s also days when I run through my RSS collection (I use Feedly to follow about a hundred or so blogs) and find nothing particularly fresh or interesting. I’d love to see more of us trading the Facebook dopamine-rush immediacy for some more thoughtful writing and conversation.

https://tedium.co/2019/01/01/2019-independent-blogging-trends/

There are 48 workshops to choose from this year, which is about the normal number for recent years. I used Archive.org to look back and the biggest year I could dig up was 2006, when 73 workshops were offered. Gathering attendance has dropped since then but I also suspect 73 selections were a bit ambitious. The current normal is more suited to the Gathering size. There are lots of familiar workshop leaders. Are there any that stand out for you? Fell free to drop recommendations (or promote your own workshop if you’re doing one!) in the comment section.

https://www.fgcquaker.org/connect/gathering/programs-and-events/workshops

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have concluded that war, from the practical standpoint, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more important moral standpoint, it is unethical.” Some time later, he received the United States Selective Service System’s Form 150, asking him to detail his objections to military service. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first question: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” Unsatisfied with the two available options—“Yes” and “No”—Seeger finally decided to draw and check a third box: “See attached pages.”

Seeger’s victory helped mark a turning point for a minority that had once been denied so much as the right to testify in court, even in their own defense. Atheists, long discriminated against by civil authorities and derided by their fellow-citizens, were suddenly eligible for some of the exemptions and protections that had previously been restricted to believers.

Daniel Seeger has written for and been featured in the pages of Friends Journal many times over the ensuing decades but last year he wrote a great feature for us about the court case, An AFSC Defense of the Rights of Conscience. A tip of the hat to Carol Holmes Alpern for sending this New Yorker article way!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/why-are-americans-still-uncomfortable-with-atheism

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/

While school children in New England are selling candy to rebuild the Statue of Liberty, we have a large and quite different project going on here in Louisiana: the “alien detention center” in Oakdale. This $17.1 million facility with a projected budget of $6-$7 million per year will be able to imprison 1,000 “aliens” initially, then 2,000.

It has been described by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials as a longterm holding facility and is the first such prison administered jointly by the unholy alliance of the Bureau of Prisons and the INS. A new center is also being built in Alexandria to train 1,000 people for the border patrol, doubling the present capacity.

https://universalistfriends.org/weblog/liberty-quinlan

For us who’ve walked this road (ourselves or with others), it all fits with the world we now live in, the one where our eyes have been opened and our hearts are filled at times with despair. This is the world where abuse happens, where perpetrators so often get away with it, where it’s so hard to risk revealing it, where we see with crystal clarity that if you do disclose, the questions and doubts and the character assassination will overwhelm.

https://greggkoskela.org/2018/09/27/self-reinforcing-cycles/

Ariel Eure and Layla Helwa allege the Quaker school violated their civil rights by suspending and terminating them last year for supporting student protests to permit the Palestinian professor [Sa’ed Atshan] to speak. Additionally, they claim school administrators conducted a smear campaign after they were fired.

Friends Journalcovered the incident last year, as did multiple news outlets. It also came up in an interview I had with Sa’ed Atshan a few months ago. When we contacted Friends’ Central to fact-check Sa’ed’s account, the school couldn’t point to any inaccuracies but still said “we disagree with the fact pattern, including the timeframe, as described.” I still not sure what that’s even supposed to mean.

https://www.philly.com/philly/education/fired-friends-central-teachers-sue-palestinian-professor-saed-atshan-invite-20180508.html

http://www.phillyvoice.com/fired-teachers-sue-quaker-school-discrimination-defamation/

The nature of religion has changed, within Quakers we have seen the numbers of young people engaging in our community fall as the effects of economic insecurity have taken hold. And perhaps more importantly, because ‘young adults’ have no time for institutions that often seem arcane and irrelevant, and which have failed to engage with the realities of life for the vast majority of people in our society.

I wish I could share more of his enthusiasm. I’m not seeing anything particularly game-changing in his article. Half of it is generic cliches about millennial preference with extrapolation that they should align with decontextualized Quaker values. He cites a few happening young adult Quaker scenes in the UK and a promising Young Quakers podcast five episodes old; he’s fond of American Emily Provance’s blog. Good stuff to be sure, but you could pick pretty much any year in recent memory and point to similar evidence and imagine an imminent surge. It’s 2018 and we’re still saying “hey this could happen!” It could but it hasn’t so why hasn’t it and what can we do about it?

Also in these contexts “radical faith” sometimes sounds like buzzwords for non-faith. Is the Quaker meetinghouse just a quiet empty room for participants to BYOF (bring your own faith)?

Could Quakerism be the radical faith that the millennial generation is looking for?

After a year of working with young adult Quakers, Chris Venables shares three ways to welcome in young…

Quakers

Update: Chris chimed in via Twitter to add that his piece’s observations aren’t just from the year of working with BrYM Friends:

Ah, I’ll take a read of yours too — but those thoughts come from my experience of being around Quakers over the last 8 years, inc setting up a new young adult group (Westminster!), visiting Qs across Britain, and interviewing many of our community over the last year!