Category Archives: Social Justice

A Concentration Camp in California: The Past Haunts the present — And sketches the future?

Ten thousand of them were packed into a camp called Manzanar, in the remote Owens Valley of California. Owens Valley could be a good definition of the “middle of nowhere.”

It’s almost 120 miles north of Death Valley in California, and 100-plus from the eastern entrance to Yosemite. This is the Owens Valley. It’s home to bands of Paiute-Shoshone Indians, some hardy fruit farmers, cattle ranchers, and not much else on two legs.

From here it’s 336 miles to San Francisco, 226 to LA, and almost 250 to either Reno or Vegas. “Manzanar” is Spanish for apple orchard.”

This is high desert, nearly 4000 feet, so it’s hot in the summer, freezing and snowy in winter, and whipped by strong winds at any season. Twenty miles or so west are the Sierra Nevada mountains, usually capped by snow and fantastic slow-swirling cloud formations.

Conditions were tough in the camps. Legal challenges to the internment were turned aside, even by the Supreme Court. Most Japanese-Americans were kept in the camps until late 1945, when the war ended.

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Dog Days Profile: Jim Corbett, Sanctuary Prophet of Post-Desert Quakerism

Jim Corbett was by no means a conventional social activist. But one night in the early 1980s, he volunteered to help find legal assistance for a Salvadoran refugee arrested by the Border Patrol. But before he could file the required forms, the Salvadoran was abruptly deported, in defiance of the U.S. government’s own laws. Corbett was shocked, then galvanized. From this spontaneous effort to respond to the refugees’ plight sprang what became the Sanctuary movement.

The movement was not unlike the later Occupy upsurge, only more low-profile, based in religious communities. It eventually involved hundreds of churches and synagogue across the U.S., and helped thousands of refugees who fled massacres and war in Central America — wars mostly supported by the U.S. government policy. As part of this policy, the refugees were mischaracterized as “economic migrants,” and many were deported, with more war and death waiting for them.

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Carolina Quakers (A Few, at Least) Speak On HB2

As a Quaker Christian community, we at Spring Friends Meeting remember Jesus’ first public words. In the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4), he said he was sent to preach good news to the poor, deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty to those who are oppressed.

We also recall his declaration that those who welcomed the stranger were in fact welcoming him (Matthew 25). At Spring Friends Meeting, we feel called to this same mission, and seek to do our small best, as way opens. As part of that effort, we now express our deep distress at the recent passage by the North Carolina legislature of what is called HB2.

This legislation is much more extensive in scope and insidious in intent than the widely publicized restroom provision.

• House Bill 2 specifically omits sexual orientation from a status that can be protected from discrimination.
• It specifically bans municipalities and other local governments from enacting locally-approved legislation such as a higher minimum wage, anti-discrimination for persons who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, safe-havens for undocumented immigrants or any measure which the State deems contradictory to its arbitrary will.
• The law also removes the ability for persons to use state courts for pursuing redress for discrimination.

We acknowledge the sincere fear that has induced many to support the law solely on the basis of its bathroom provision, and likely without knowledge of the bill’s other clauses. We believe this fear has been used to promote a broad range of real injustices through this law.

We see this law in its entirety as meant to increase oppression, reject and stigmatize those, who some see as strangers, and increase hardship for the poor and rejected.

We are even more dismayed and saddened that this action is supported by some in the name of Christianity, and what they call “religious liberty.”

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The Original Quaker On (Authentic) Religious Liberty Day!

Today, though, there are voices that claim that “religious liberty” should compel the state to preserve public space or approval for such dubious ventures as:
— demeaning treatment of persons or groups who are marginalized and stigmatized;
— propagating false and injurious slurs to create fear and panic, especially for political purposes;
— propping up systems of unearned advantage and power;
— denying access to justice for those who have been mistreated — even to deprive them of the ability to earn more for their honest labor.

Is that what Quakers in England suffered and lobbied for, through almost thirty years of perfection in England?

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Authentic Religious Liberty Day, May 24: More Testimony

“I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction. I have seen the hopes and aspirations of Negroes rise during World War II, only to be smashed during the Eisenhower years. I am seeing the victories of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations destroyed by Richard Nixon.”

Bayard, there have been ups and down since then. But I think it’s been increasingly tough in recent years, and this year is really awful. Maybe it’s better that you’re not here to see it. But I’d sure appreciate your counsel.

“I think the movement contributed to this nation a sense of universal freedom. Precisely because women saw our movement in the sixties, stimulated them to want their rights. The fact that students saw the movement of the sixties created a student movement in this country.”

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