Peace and Social Concerns Committee Annual Report - 2007

(also available as a Word file)

We started the year by appointing a new clerk, which is why I have the privilege of presenting this report. Fortunately, Roger Conant, with some help from Peggy Anderson and Susan Conger, took thorough minutes for all of our meetings.� Reviewing these minutes for the past year was rather satisfying and enlightening.� Though we are a small group, we seem to have done quite a bit.� Though there were a few tasks which were begun, but not completely followed through on, these were relatively few.

We lead two 11:40 hour discussions.� The first one, on abortion, brought out much broader and deeper views of this complex issue than one might expect from stereotypical attenders of a �Liberal Quaker Meeting�.� The second, on immigration, was a direct follow-up to messages spoken in Meeting for Worship.� Hopefully, we, both collectively and as individuals will be moved to continue working on this issue.

We took over presenting the �Friendly Friday� series of evening presentations which had previously been overseen by the Affinity Group.� We organized four such �Friendly Fridays�:

� A presentation by the Conants on their trip to Bolivia and the Quaker Bolivia Link

� Bolivian Quakers and the Bolivian Quaker Education Fund, a presentation by Newton Garver

� Reverberations from the Civil Rights Movement, a presentation by Adele Smith-Penniman

� Detainees in the War on Terror, film and discussion, with Bill Newman.

We began a series of letter writing campaigns to make it easy for Friends to write letters to their representatives in Congress concerning matters of interest to Friends.� These have been somewhat successful and we hope to continue.

We have set up a small, but growing, library of videos and other materials related to peace and social concerns that others in the meeting may find of interest.� We invite everyone to check out from, or contribute to, this library.

We have:

� Helped with the G. I. Hotline project.

� Co-sponsored the �Wide Angle Film Series�

� Signed on to the �Declaration of Peace� as a committee.

� Co-sponsored a demonstration against the illegal detentions in the Guantanamo prison camp.

� Co-sponsored an educational forum about Torture and Detention without Trial at Smith College

� Etc.

Despite our work, we do not seem to have solved all of the world�s problems. Yet, at least one of us is regularly inspired by the members of this committee to recall why he ended up at a Friends Meeting in the first place: It is a community where one seems most likely to find people faithfully striving to make the world a better place, despite a sometimes apparent lack of success.