things of import from the radical quaker world

Good grief

2011-03-27T20:08:00.002-04:00

I've spent today reviewing the religious activist side of my life for the past five years or so.
It has now been almost exactly five years since I took a trip with the Christian Peacemaker Teams to Isralistine. It's been four since Jordan. On each of those trips I took different baggage with me and came back with different conclusions. The CPT trip taught me to engage and commit, to get so fed up with the knowledge of something that there would be no arguing with the passion with which I was engaging. To bring up the issue until it was being acted upon. The Lebanese War and the withdrawal from Gaza later only furthered my intention to speak up that something terribly wrong was going on. I even gave presentations to meetings, though I didn't follow up with CPT about that outreach. However, as happens, the words written there, the pictures taken there, the connections that were initiated there were an inflatable anchor, they lost the weight that had come with good intentions and the naive belief that we were there for an incredibly important reason. As time wore on, other priorities had come up, and a crucial message I still carry with me from Palestine, that Americans should do what they can with what they have where they are, and not rely on short volunteerist trips, meant that soon I had other things to do. However I practiced my Arabic, talked more with Palestinians, and discovered the effect of distance on an issue to which I had only fleeting, if intense, contact.
By the time Jordan rolled around I was more prepared for the area, had not worked myself up for any earth shattering work, had deepened my analysis of power dynamics, and was prepared to have fun, however I had swung the other way in communicating about it in ways that might eventually have made a difference. Rereading my blog from that time period today, I am embarrassed about how vague and flippant I was in my description of my surroundings. I think I might have been trying to ham it up for an assignment I did not necessarily feel (the blog was mandatory), but I clearly was not taking seriously what I had been given. I found Jordan a dull land of small pleasures and clearer interactions, but of stifling political climate, and little to connect with with the Jordanians I managed to make friends with.
What I remember of both places was the sense of place and epic scale of such a small area. It was obvious that I was an outsider. I missed home and felt for the first time, an inkling of what 'America' is as a nation of people appeared for me. Lest I be misunderstood, I do realize that there are many experiences of people in the United States and that making a nation out of a people is a very debilitating exercise, but it was an altogether surprising event to sigh with delight at the sight of a Speedway gas station in the hot, humid suburbs of Detroit. I was moved by the smell of home.
God in all of this was thorough. My grandfather died while I was in Jordan and, after an interview with a civil engineer, I was moved to visit a nearby church and pray. The room started filling up and soon a mass was said. As everyone left, I ducked out, but was interrupted by a man who thanked me for coming to his grandfather's funeral. Traveling to the holy sites filled me with horror at the commercialization which had sprung up in the past several years, but also with awe at the sheer history and faith of Christians who, most likely, had seen many commercial schemes wither and become ruins for future exploitation. Living for a week with the Bedouin gave me a completely new understanding of shepherd metaphor, as well as the reason that the goats would be sent to hell (they are stupid, stubborn, and unintentionally evil). What was most clear to me however, that my next task was to be closer to home, again to do what I can with what I have where I am. Especially since it had become clear to me that one of the best things to do was to withdraw American influence from the region. I had a culture to fight at home.
These experiences have all come back to me now as the aftermath of the Arab World protests continues. Moved in particular by a friends visitation of Jordan, reflecting on what I have done since then continues to be a challenging, yet surprisingly refreshing reminder of what Light I still have to shine.

2009-03-23T16:13:00.002-04:00

This sums up pretty well what I don't like about the Obama cult of personality. Seriously, you want a cult, look at some of those pictures. Obama with an earth chakra and blue veins for instance.
The tremendous solemnity of most of them just shows how earnestly some people believe that he has somehow shifted the way we all think. Aside from horrible artistry it's very much a mythology. AS MUCH AS HE IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS IN SOME WAYS HE IS STILL A POLITICIAN. It has started coming apart at the seams a little bit but I can't help but feeling the real sense of betrayal is yet to come.

Green Sustainable Sound and Fury Community

2009-03-10T14:27:00.003-04:00

There are a few words that make me physically uncomfortable. It's a phenomenon I haven't really tracked, but I'd imagine that it points to a discrepancy in my life where I both agree basically with the concept but really wish there was a way of separating it, either from multiple meanings that share the same word or from other connotations that have been built up previously. Right now two words that make me grind my teeth are 'sustainable' and 'community.' Together, they instantly turn me off of any subject they happen to be attached to.
Sustainable - so the average knowledgeable jerk could point out that nothing, in fact, is absolutely sustainable owing to the second law of thermodynamics which means the universe will one day burn out and die. I am not that jerk, however I do think there is good reason for giving a time line for sustainability and thinking about it as more than a by-word for 'good.' There are some things like anything based on fossil fuels (coal-fired power plants, internal combustion engines) whose sustainability is measured in decades, there are some things such as mono-cropped bananas whose sustainability is measured in years, there are some things for which sustainability hasn't really been determined, such as industrial (or even further, agricultural) civilization. The word 'sustainable' seems to have entered our lexicon as the product of well meaning visionaries who wish for things to be capable of remaining unaltered for centuries or millenia, but was almost instantly corrupted when the term gained mass usage by capitalism wishing to cash in on desire for a softer edge, a feeling of betterment, ultimately, I would argue, an assuagement of guilt from the violence and domination inflicted on the planet. Hence: greenwashing!
Maybe it's just a question of societal literacy. Maybe as the term circulates and is modified, society will begin to think beyond the fad of sustainability and more towards how it's implemented. Maybe. I somehow really doubt it because the habits of exploitation are there. The habits of consuming a new (more sustainable) thing at the expense of an old, still useable, thing are all there. The urge to wipe the slate clean and start all over is misleading and harmful to...
Community - My father is a civil engineer, I'm an aspiring urban homesteader and environmental builder. Social subjects such as gentrification, urban planning, blight, power are pretty much always on my mind. Environmental subjects are not far behind. God and religion, though dear, somehow aren't as translatable into the absolute standards you can measure any worldly project against. It just doesn't use that kind of language. What I mean is that there is no standard of measuring how Godly, or of the spirit, something is. And even if there were would you call solar power of the spirit? Anyway, when dealing with those subjects there is always always tradeoff. There is absolutely no such thing as a win-win. For example, development, whether overtly hostile to established condition (such as a new high rise) or seemingly benign (such as planting trees) is usually based off of a perceived need to 'clean things up' and is usually highly selective about where they happen. Not that planting trees is secretly a bad thing, making sure that all the streets are tree lined has to start somewhere and is a relatively equitable and low-cost project with high benefits, but there should be an accurate assessment of risk and possible loss. What will putting this art gallery here do to the immediate vicinity?
Take this article:
It focuses on a group called the New Kensington Community Development Corporation. The cover is telling. A bulldozer emblazoned with "Clean and Green." The idea of the group is to 'build community' (literally, geographically, there is an Olde Kensington, a Kensington, but no "New Kensington") in the place of an area that has seen much much better days. So far, they've established art residences and studios as well as coordinated with the new "green" developments in the neighboring neighborhoods. Hooray for them I guess. It's positive thinking in a relatively new way, it's worked so far, but the overall effect is like a boutique. It raises all sorts of questions about how these ventures are funded, what the long term economic vision of the area is (artists are not exactly known for their purchasing power or tax base stability) and who gets to live there. It's common practice to introduce artists and "urban pioneers" to an area in order to slowly work up towards professionals and consumer based lifestyles, it's the story of gentrification. The bulldozer says much more about what is pushed out than what is built upon. And that stings me as a Quaker and a radical and a Christian. I am called to live among the poor and outcast but will my presence help bring more people to live among the poor and outcast? I am called to right living, but does that include participating in really positive, but in some ways damaging, projects?
In part it's hard because there are very few role models. An alternative to NKCDC would be something like ABC No Rio (mentioned by the magazine in connection to a similar project: LAVA Zone) but the lower east side of Manhattan is rapidly gentrifying. As soon as capital and speculation got involved, hoo-boy did that take off. Kensington Welfare Rights Union may be another in that it features a strong presence in the neighborhood but not much outside of it. Try to name an ideal community. It doesn't exist! And that's kind of my point. For all this talk about building community and sustainable community, there's a remarkable unrecognition that part of the project is breaking down existing communities of privilege and power. The revolution will not be sold at Whole Foods.

"We need to be clear that there is no such thing as giving up one's privilege to be 'outside' the system. ONE IS ALWAYS IN THE SYSTEM. The only question is whether one is part of the system in a way which challenges or strengthens the status quo. Privilege is not something I take and which I therefore have the option of not taking. It is something that society gives me and unless I change the institutions which give it to me, they will continue to give it, and I will continue to have it, however noble and egalitarian my intentions."
--Harry Brod, quoted in "Privilege, Power, & Difference."

2009-03-02T15:40:00.004-05:00

This is pretty neat. It feeds into a project I'm in the middle of beginning to structure and hopefully will begin undertaking in earnest soon. When I do, I will post results and conclusions.

It also highlights something of a myth around Quakers and race, particularly the underground railroad. Historically if Quakers are remembered as a group at all it is in regards to the abolition movement, owing in no small part to the role of the Quaker couple in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the widely known stories of Levi Coffin and John Woolman. The historian in the article does mention that not all Quakers would offer help but that they were the most consistently anti-slavery. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, one could check it in Vanessa July's and Donna McDaniel's exhaustive volume Fit for Freedom: Not for Friendship. However the historian does right by first and foremost mentioning the type of slaves that would head north and highlighting the extraordinary hardships that they went through. Anything abolitionists did to help should be considered auxillary to what slaves did for themselves.
The closing lines though, are all too often what summaries about Quakers and the underground railroad end up as unfortunately.

2009-02-23T15:04:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I went on a work-camp retreat style thing in North Philadelphia with some Quaker teens and a friend. It was relieving that I was there really for moral support for the camp leaders, I had no responsibility and was there to be an extra set of eyes and an example. It was really fun, yet strange. Ostensibly the theme of the workshop was Entrepreneuership and sports yet our outdoor activity for saturday was cleaning up a vacant lot and staking it out in the first step of squatting the place in the interest of a developing land trust hosted at the Guild. This past fall I was involved in setting up a land trust. I never got further than reading through the processes, we had no list of potential members, no mission statement, conflicting visions, and the issue was moot anyway as the land we were hopefully going to use was already designated as a 501c3 with conservation liens on it but this was the first time I had heard of an urban group using it to appropriate vacant and blighted land, much less one that was done with Quaker support and involvement.
If you had to characterize Quaker professions easily the first spot would be occupied by educators, however not much further down the list would be organizers and office types, coordinators, communicators, avid readers if not publishers of information. It's no coincidence that Quakers are involved with organizations like the Friends Guild. If anything, it's a wonder there aren't more of them (I am aware that this sentiment is used quite a bit). It's a concept which is profoundly active and ultimately anarchist leaning but addresses concerns of Quakers who are concerned about community involvement and authority, with its inevitable ties to the integrity testimony.
It seems that quite a few, especially older, Friends I know are very into creating alternative forms of governance and administration, they do, every month in their business meetings, but find forms that directly challenge existing government (doing right ordered, but not entirely legal things) anathema. These Quakers are often more concerned with holding existing government to integrity than subverting it. I'm trying not to judge these Friends, they're probably either more experienced or smarter than me. I'm still feeling out what in my life can be teased out and untangled you know? Anyway, for all the tax evasion, consensus toting, and the best of modern liberalism, there's surprisingly little radical practice that hasn't been pioneered long ago.
Not that squatting is anything new, but the combination of a land trust, the use of easements, and a more aggressive approach to space, making use of the fact that we as people who live and work next to these empty fields have more power over them than the faraway people that legally own them, is a relatively recent phenomena in this country though a few have done it. It somehow makes sense to me that the land trust and easement idea would catch on given our cultural importance placed on pieces of paper and legalism. Hey, whatever helps.

Great

2009-02-17T16:41:00.000-05:00

So now I have a shiny new blog that hopefully I'll be posting in soon about Quakers and activism, quakers and politics, quakers and quakers, and quakers and goodness knows what else.