Category Archives: Activism

A Quaker Doing His Incognito Bit in North Carolina Politics

 

Lately it’s been hard to find yard signs for the disgraced pizza-and-pornstar NC Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Governor Mark Robinson. But this one was in Burlington a few days back.

Burlington is in North Carolina’s Alamance County, once notorious as a hotbed of the Ku Klux Klan back in the day, Neo-Confederates now. A 35-foot statue of a rebel soldier still guards the county courthouse, and the monument itself is surrounded by a thick wrought iron fence and plenty of Don’t-Tread-On-Me attitude.

The county voted against Obama twice by ten-point margins, and for Trump in 2016 by 14 and in 2020 by 8.

During Covid it was a locus for pandemic mask and mandate defiance. When Hispanic Democrat Ricky Hurtado managed to unseat a Republican state rep a few years back, the supermajority GOP legislature promptly re-drew the district and pushed Hurtado out in 2022.

Nevertheless, to lift our spirits on Thursday, Oct. 3, the Fair Wendy and I drove straight into Alamance and then Burlington, to a modest storefront on the edge of downtown. If too much of the county is still stuck in a revanchist fantasy past, this was an outpost of a very different Alamance future that is beginning to unfold.

Alamance County NC Democratic Party office

Yes, Alamance has Democrats. And they’re on the move. Their monthly meeting is the first Thursday, and inside, the joint was jumping.

The session was predictably focused on the last climactic weeks of the current  campaign; but there were a couple of important preliminaries :

First, a discussion of relief efforts for the hurricane-devastated city of Asheville and other communities in western NC. (My contribution was some bottled water.) The County Chair, Ron Osborne (above) knows such emergency work inside and out: he specialized in it for Duke Power as an electrical engineer, managing large crews who helped get the lights back on in the wake of dozens of the worst storms and floods from Katrina to Sandy. Osborne pointed out the safest and most useful ways for those of us who managed to dodge the deluge of Helene to do our bit.

Ron Osborne holds a prized possession, a book autographed by Jimmy Carter, as he speaks of the 39th president’s achievements at turning his religious faith into continuing practice.

Then he turned to a more pleasant landmark, the 100th birthday of Jimmy Carter. The 39th president was clearly a model for Osborne: another southerner, who publicly renounced his segregationist heritage, and overcame the experience of defeat in 1980 to build a long and uniquely productive post-political career with a multitude of projects, from building houses for the poor to preventing wars and reducing the toll of guinea worm disease from multimillions annually to thirteen (yes, 13) cases in 2023.

Seneca Rogers, a school board candidate in Burlington, addresses the session.

Osborne even made a pilgrimage which I long hoped to make, to Plains, Georgia, to join in the Sunday Bible classes Carter taught for more than 40 years whenever he was in town.

Then to the main business of the meeting, which was a series of rapid-fire short speeches by candidates for local offices, county commission, and district judgeships. The multicultural character of the lineup was a standing rebuke to the dogged whiteness of the rival party (does Mark Robinson count? Thats above my paygrade . . . .)

The enthusiasm level was high, and the candidates welcomed the intensity before them in the campaign’s frenzied final month.

Jaded pundits might still be noting that the Carolina GOP has been  gerrymandering and suppressing votes nonstop for fourteen years (true) and is counting on the institutional bias it has been cementing to hold back the rising insurgency growing around the corner in their Alamance stronghold (true again.)

Your faithful blogger, with the sticker he was awarded at the meeting’s conclusion, since the supply of the ”Old White Geezers for Harris-Walz” stickers was gone. They accepted my solemn affirmation that I’m an emeritus member of the youth cohort.

And to further harsh my buzz, they can carp, “So Alamance is happening; fine. But there’s 100 counties in NC, and what about the other 99??” And true, I don’t get out that much.
Finally, they’ll repeat that the polls are all tight as a tick, margin of error, yada yada. (Undeniable.) So is my optimism just whistling Dixie??

Well, I’ve resigned from the Pundit Prediction Panel, so I’ll concede the prognosticators may turn out to be right. However, I’ll recklessly stick a toe back in this muddy pool, and forecast that, at least in Alamance County, the NC Democrats in 2024 will  — wait for itDo BETTER.

Will that be enough to save us?

Check back with me in a month.

[Note: Here’s the part for Quakers: Ron Osborne is a longtime member of Spring Friends Meeting, which has been in Alamance County for more than 250 years. He’s also a Quaker history buff, like me.  He’s enjoying his retirement, and I don’t think he likes political campaigning much more than hurricanes, but like saving lives devastated by the latter, helping rescue democracy by the former is a part of his low-key but diligent and distinctive Quaker witness.]

For Quakers (& Justice Seekers), September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month; Here’s Why . . .

The Top Ten Things Quakers & Seekers Need to Know About Willie Frye Jr.:

A Preamble: Why should September be Willie Frye month?

Willie Frye Jr. (1931-2013)

Two main reasons:

One, because he was both born (on the 26th) and passed away (on the 9th) in September. And–

Two, because of the remarkable but little-known legacy he left us (Friends and other modern seekers); which takes some explaining. That follows, along with a confession.
Continue reading For Quakers (& Justice Seekers), September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month; Here’s Why . . .

Meme Alert: This Just Fell Out of My Coconut Tree . . .

 

The Economist:

United States | The “brat” vote
Is Kamala Harris “brat”?

America’s TikTok election just became more interesting

Jul 25th 2024|new york

“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”, begins a viral clip of Kamala Harris. It resurfaced in the days after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, but this video has a twist.

The song “Von dutch”, by a British pop star, Charli xcx, begins to rev in the background. Ms Harris’s signature belly laugh rises up. A lime-green filter with the word “brat”—the cover art and name of xcx’s new album—flashes across the screen.

“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” says Ms Harris. The beat drops. Enter supercuts of Ms Harris.

Continue reading Meme Alert: This Just Fell Out of My Coconut Tree . . .

Quakers Quitting on QUIT: Torture Wins, this time. And maybe next time, too.

I wish it wasn’t time to write this post.

But it is: Quakers are quitting on QUIT.

QUIT is — or rather was — the Quaker Initiative to end Torture. It began in the spring of 2005, with a call by Friend John Calvi,  just as the international scope, the vast evil plus the flagrant criminality of the U. S.  “War on Terror” torture  program — all this was becoming shockingly clear.

As detailed below, QUIT formally ended this week, on July 15, 2024.

Nineteen years.

We worked hard, we did stuff. We joined with others.  But in my view, we failed. At our most active and diligent, we didn’t really lay a glove on our three main targets.

Those targets were:

Continue reading Quakers Quitting on QUIT: Torture Wins, this time. And maybe next time, too.

“Tell It Slant”: The New Quaker Biography’s First Review Is Out!

The Western Friend is continuing evidence (tho it’s still news to some) that there is lively Quaker periodical publishing outside Philadelphia. When the editor learned about Tell It Slant, she didn’t hesitate: Friend Mitchell Santine Gould’s review, the first, was included in its current online newsletter edition.

Mitch is a distinguished independent historian with a theological bent. His special interest in the quasi-Quaker poet Walt Whitman has produced many impressive essays, including Walt Whitman: 10 Misconceptions, Least to Greatest, which is here,  and very much worth a look (but read this review first . . .)

Published: June 22, 2024, in The Western Friend:

Emma Lapsansky-Werner “Tells It Slant

in a Mammoth Biography of Publick Friend Chuck Fager

Tell it Slant: A prophetic life of adventure and writing on religion, war, and justice, love and laughter (Kimo Press, 2024)

More book details here.

Reviewed by Mitchell Santine Gould, Multnomah Monthly Meeting (6/19/2024):

Emma and Chuck at a 2017 history roundtable at Earlham School of Religion.

Emma Lapsansky-Werner offers us a sprawling biography of Quaker journalist, activist, and gadfly Chuck Fager, in Tell It Slant. I read the first half with growing appreciation for two essential aspects of Chuck’s life. The first is his truly impressive involvement with so many historic moments in politics, society, and religion. The second, which nicely humanizes this history, is a very frank, very modest account of his own life – warts as well as triumphs. It must be rare that a biography succeeds so admirably on both aspects.

Chuck’s long experience as a professional journalist and author gives perfect clarity to his parts of the overall narrative. However, he had so much to say, that in order to marshal some flow and organization to so many anecdotes, memories, and histories, he was lucky that Emma Lapsansky-Werner extended her invaluable editorial contributions into the role of co-author.

As she put it, “In crafting this narrative, I have echoed Chuck’s scaffolding, weaving my spin together with many of Chuck’s own words; biography is interwoven with autobiography.” Although Dr. Lapsansky-Werner is an academic — a professor of Quaker history — she delivered the kind of powerfully clear and simple journalistic prose that seamlessly matched Chuck’s own. I think given all the constraints, Lapsansky-Werner acquitted herself well.

We’re no longer in an age of book-reading — info-snacking is more like it — and one might set the book aside rather read the whole thing at once. But should you resume in the middle of the book, its humor, charm, interest, and insight will even more deeply impress you. Tell It Slant is inspiring and above all, highly relevant. In addition to his decades of involvement with Quaker faith, practice, and internal politics, Chuck really kept his finger on the pulse of American society and politics — precisely because of his investment in his faith, of course.

When the stories are this compelling, you want the book to be perfect. Viewing Friend Chuck as the modern-day equivalent of history’s Publick Friend, I wanted him to be the exponent for liberal Quaker faith as I understand it. I hoped to see a conscious allegiance to the key innovation of Quakerism: its Inner Light theology. Informal polling that I did years ago revealed that Friends today have reduced the doctrine of Inner Light to little more than a sentimental “that of God in everyone.”

But historically, the Inner Light was recognized as a secret, silent hotline to the Divine, quite specifically as a source of guidance in times of an ethical crisis. Crucially, it was seen as capable of over-riding the two ubiquitous avenues for all moral supervision: the Bible and the clergy. Chuck mentions the Inner Light only twice, exclusively in anecdotes about an old Quaker lady he once admired. In reality, the Light is the power behind the often-praised Quaker virtue known as “discernment.”

Mitchell Santine Gould

Having said all this, let me turn to the controversial proposition that Quakerism can be succinctly described as SPICE: simplicity, peaceableness, integrity, community, and equality. I could write a whole sequel review showing how Chuck hits quite robustly on all these cylinders. And that ultimately trivializes all my criticisms of his book. I believe every Quaker should read it, and non-Quakers will also be deeply inspired, as I have been, by it.

– Mitchell Santine Gould, Multnomah Monthly Meeting (6/19/2024)