A Friendly Letter

The Independent Report on the Charlottesville Riots

From the report: “In contrast to the July 8 event, the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety on August 12. The City was unable to protect the right of free expression and facilitate the permit holder’s offensive speech. This represents a failure of one of government’s core functions—the protection of fundamental rights. Law enforcement also failed to maintain order and protect citizens from harm, injury, and death. Charlottesville preserved neither of those principles on August 12, which has led to deep distrust of government within this community.”

Remembrance of Sex Scandals Past — Gerry Studds

Gerry Studds. I keep wondering: why hasn’t his name come up recently, in all the furor about public figures and sex scandals. Was I remembering right — what did happen to him?

I do remember who he was: a Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts; his district covered much of Cape Cod. And he got in sex trouble — but then it was kind of hazy.

So I looked him up. Turns out he was gay (I remembered that), and — well, some basics first:

He was elected to Congress in 1972. His district is known to outsiders as a place where many well-heeled folks hang out in the summer. But the locals are heavily involved in fishing. And so Studds became an expert on fishing and maritime issues. He also helped preserve many stretches of their beaches.

He was cruising along in Congress until, 1983 there was a high-octane (for the time) scandal involving sex between members of the House and Congressional pages, who were high school aged office staff.

A Quaker Race Riot – Comments & Response

White supremacy was an explicit part of the KKK “Kreed.” And this outlook continues.
Another such group, the “outing” of which shocked me at the time (early 1960s), was the Democratic party in many southern states. Alabama, for instance. The party there featured this emblem on its slates of candidates: a rooster and the motto: “White Supremacy for the Right.” Not much doubt there.
And while the Alabama Dems have changed (now mostly black, they have dumped the rooster), their place has been taken by others; many others. Here is a selected list:
ACTBAC NC, Traditionalist Workers Party, Proud Boys, Vanguard America, Identity Evropa, Generation Identitaire, Traditionalist Youth Movement, National Socialists, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Council of Conservative Citizens, the League of the South.
I don’t hesitate to call these “white supremacist” groups.
And they are not distant abstractions to me.
One of them, ACTBAC [Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County], is centered in the rural community of Snow Camp NC. The Friends meeting I attend is also in Snow Camp. A few months back, ACTBAC organized a pro-Confederate rally in Chapel Hill (in the next county east) in “defense” of a Confederate statue on the UNC campus. They have organized many such rallies.

Is There Life after Death in Quaker North Carolina?

So will there be a rush among the meetings which had quit the old North Carolina Yearly Meeting to join (“rejoin”?) FCNC? Wait and see. Greene did not sound sanguine about the prospects.
But never mind: some of the longtime pastors said they had a remedy: outreach & evangelism. They asked that endowment funds in the budget targeted for church extension be allowed to accumulate for about three years, to finance a big church planting project. And to start the process, they proposed to bring in a “church multiplication” expert from Barclay College in Kansas to do an intensive “kickoff weekend” next spring.
Clerk Greene was for it: “If we don’t grow, we die,” he said. The outreach work may be the FCNC’s most important mission: everything should support it. He asked for approval for the plan. He got it, but it was another subdued murmur.
Indeed, the mood that morning deserves specific mention: if the doors had burst open then, or at any point in the three-hour session, and a SWAT team had rushed in, determined to arrest anyone showing signs of enthusiasm, they would have gone away empty-handed. If there was any excitement and exhilaration among this group, they left it at home.