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Wednesday Night at the DNC: Having Some Church & a Quaker/Interfaith Vigil

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A 2019 (pre-Covid) survey of U.S. protestant pastors showed that nine out of ten held some kind of services on Wednesday evenings.

The pandemic likely reduced that number, but for many churches, it’s still a thing. And if you kept up with the extra-long speakers list for DNC Day 3 (my copy listed 37 names, but still missed a few), it would hardly be a surprise to find a sprinkle of Wednesday churchgoers among them.

Maybe that explains why, when the midweek marathon adjourned after midnight, amid all the hubbub, I had heard, not one but two homilies  from the podium (and maybe missed a few others).

Outside media, with its pronounced secular tilt, hasn’t seemed to notice. I couldn’t find any news coverage of these two speeches (other than YouTube videos).

So as a public service, they are excerpted & summarized below. Continue reading Wednesday Night at the DNC: Having Some Church & a Quaker/Interfaith Vigil →

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AFSC: When the Slides Went Awry, And The Key Questions Weren’t Asked . . .

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Brian Blackmore

Last month I attended two presentations by the new AFSC Director of Quaker Engagement, Brian Blackmore, at Durham and Chapel Hill Meetings here in North Carolina.

Blackmore, just a year in the job, is the successor to Lucy Duncan, a longtime AFSC staffer who was unceremoniously fired in early 2022 when she tried to start a staff uprising to stop a major internal reorganization. Continue reading AFSC: When the Slides Went Awry, And The Key Questions Weren’t Asked . . . →

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Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination?

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1. A Murder, a Diplomatic Dust-Up and the Risk of Impunity

By Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Ktistof

Father’s Day this year, two heavyset men were loitering near a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Then the president of the temple, a Canadian citizen and an activist named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stepped out and climbed into his pickup truck to drive home for dinner with his family.

The two waiting men, wearing masks, fired through Nijjar’s window about a dozen times. Temple members bravely ran after the gunmen, who escaped in a getaway car driven by a third man.

Continue reading Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination? →

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AFSC Impostor Scandal Going National & Viral

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Brief: More AFSC Fallout  from Philly: 

USAToday & the New York Post have stories & videos up about the AFSC Fake DEI [Diversity, Equity & Invlusion] kerfuffle. They may only be online, but The NYPost has run 2 or 3 stories, and both “papers” have broad social media readership.

There’s no news in these reports, since Saraswati announced her resignation, as reported here. But the photos are vivid.

The wider exposure of how easily the feckless AFSC “leadership team” was taken in by “charm” and glib DEI palaver must be very embarrassing to the poohbahs of Race St.  Saraswati is gone, but the impact of her tenure and what it exposed is still unfolding.

The NY Post is ranked as having the #7 largest news site online readership; USAToday is second only to the New York Times.

Links:

Saraswati stories go national:

USAToday

New York Post

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Flip-Flop at AFSC: Saraswati In? No, Today she’s Out. Who’s Next?

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The Bronzer Saga Continues?

On February 17th, the AFSC “Leadership Team” (LT) asserted that Raquel Saraswati’s job as DEI Director was safe, that they “firmly believe” in her “Loyalty to AFSC’s mission,” despite accusations about her being an impostor and  fake. Continue reading Flip-Flop at AFSC: Saraswati In? No, Today she’s Out. Who’s Next? →