Category Archives: Social Justice

Sierra Cascades YM: “Our New Thing” versus the “Same Old Thing”?

Promising to reform this traditional system, even while coping with being purged by it, is not a new response. When the group that became  “Hicksites” were pushed out of Philadelphia Yearly meeting in 1827, their initial leadership insisted that they would preserve the recorded ministerial elite system — only they would run it better, less oppressively, than had the rival Orthodox junta. 

And maybe they did, for a short while. But before long, internal agitation surfaced among Hicksites about rising issues like women’s rights, and abolitionism, with the specter of civil war on the horizon. And it was shortly clear that the Hicksite recorded establishment did not like such reforming notions one whit more than did their Orthodox rivals. Soon enough there began among Hicksite meetings what I have called the Great Purge: hundreds of Friends deemed to be, in Kershner’s words, “divisive voices” or “only troublemakers,” who were silenced, marginalized or disowned.

But this time many victims stayed and, pardon the expression, fought back.

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Liberal Quakers Need More “Theological Diversity.” What could possibly go wrong?

The First Month 2019 issue of Friends Journal includes an article by Friend Adria Gulizia, “Greater Racial Diversity Requires Greater Theological Diversity.” At one level, I very much empathize with Adria Gulizia’s concern for what I would call “theological inclusiveness.” The widespread ignorance, apathy & avoidance of theology/Bible in “liberal” meetings I have known have … Continue reading Liberal Quakers Need More “Theological Diversity.” What could possibly go wrong? →

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The Lonely “Wall”: Rolling Through Flyover Country To the Mexican Border

That was the best we could do. Half an hour more of exploratory driving suggested that all access roads had either been closed or demolished. In the distance a cream-colored Border Patrol van raised a dust cloud, following a track near them; it was clearly not open to us, if we could even find it.

We headed back toward San Diego and the motel. Puzzled, I started googling local news reports about this. Why was the location so remote in the first place? Why was it then closed off, essentially hidden?

Turns out the administration was expecting all hell to break loose around them. Homeland Security sent a memo to local officials, warning them to expect huge, militant protests. In response, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department spent at east $50,000 on riot equipment, including lots of pepper spray and tear gas, then paid for 10,000 hours of overtime for  deputies and staff to practice using it. Much more was spent on “securing the area” around the prototypes. (It certainly was too secure for us tourists.)

But there weren’t any meaningful protests. When the president came to visit last March, about a hundred veterans were assembled to wave MAGA flags and applaud. Nearby, 15 anti-wall protesters gathered to chant and wave posters; there was no trouble.

Local radicals told the press they had decided to ignore the whole thing. (Once, though, a few art grad students parked behind the prototypes on the Mexican side, and when it got dark, projected some anti-wall images on them; but no damage was reported.)

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Pow Wow Chow-Gate: Therapy for The Feverish Media

The ever reliable Fox News piled on, crowing that, “When it comes to political mistakes [she] . . . just made a doozy. President Trump wasted no time drawing more attention to Warren’s foolish move with two stinging tweets Tuesday.

Gosh, if she hadn’t done it, does anyone think Trump would have stopped sending out racist tweets about her? Really? {His early comment: “a scam and a lie.” Also: “Who cares, who cares?”}

What was surprising to me was how eager some liberal pundits were to jump into the echo chamber. The one who made the biggest fool of himself  was the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. He struck a faux empathetic tone:

“Poor Elizabeth Warren.

She took President Trump’s bait and submitted to a DNA test to demonstrate her Native American genealogy — and, in so doing, may have doomed her presidential campaign before it began.” 

And why were her hopes now doomed? Milbank made a grab for Ross Douthat’s smoking gun, agreeing that it was “her contribution to the ’80s cookbook, Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes from Families of the Five Civilized Tribes, and found that one of the recipes Warren sent in was for a cold crab omelet. Further, he insinuated, it was plagiarized from the New York Times. This was enough to convince Milbank why “all people of good taste — might wish to disavow Warren: It’s the crab mayonnaise.”

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