The email below is going out today to a Friends General Conference mailing list. It deserves wider notice: Dear Friends After several meetings with a number of committee clerks, staff, and Gathering volunteers, it has become clear that we cannot safely hold the in-person FGC Gathering this year in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. … Continue reading The Big One: FGC 2020 Gathering Canceled
When I saw that Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM) had posted a notice on Tuesday March 17, that its 2020 Annual Session, set for August 7-15 in Winnipeg, has been cancelled I thought it was the first such cancellation of this virus crisis season. Wrong! Within a few hours I found that it was in fact … Continue reading Cancelled: Canadian Yearly Meeting Is The FOURTH to Go. More to Follow?
[NOTE: This post has been updated! Please go to the updated version here.] Tuesday March 17, Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM) posted a notice that its 2020 Annual Session, set for August 7-15 in Winnipeg, has been cancelled. A letter from the Clerks, Beverly Shepard and Marilyn Manzer, posted on their website quaker.ca, cited several … Continue reading BREAKING: First of Many? Canadian Yearly Meeting 2020 CANCELLED
[Note: this post is not as long as it may appear; some attachments are at the end for completeness and accuracy.] Two years ago next week, Sharon Smith met her match. It was on March 16, 2018, in a weekend anti-racism workshop at a suburban Asheville community center. It was presented by the Racial Equity … Continue reading SAYMA’s Not Safe, III: New Trouble: Threats Against Three Meetings
[Note: This post includes strong language.] Few Quakers I’ve run into are as certain of the divinely-mandated quality of their vocation as Sharon Smith, aka “The Intruder.” Last July 4, after she was confirmed as Clerk of the SAYMA Uplifting Racial Justice Committee, capping a three-year struggle, she put this with stark certainty in a … Continue reading SAYMA: “Born for this”? Or Standing in the Way?