This summer, Third Haven Friends Meeting is hosting two sessions of a summer nature and mindfulness camp. The camp weeks are part of an effort both to support families in the meeting and reach out to families in the surrounding community. [Read more…] about Summer Camp Fun and Community Outreach
Peace & Social Justice
Experience Native American Culture at Historic Arch Street Meetinghouse
The Indian committee honored and fortunate to have the opportunity to present an exciting and moving work of art to the Quaker community and beyond.
The Indian Committee is supporting a performance of Tatanka vs. the Black Snake by Coopdanza, Inc. We felt it was within our guidelines to not only provide a grant for the artists and promotional materials but to put our work into action in our own community by co-hosting at Historic Arch Street Meetinghouse. [Read more…] about Experience Native American Culture at Historic Arch Street Meetinghouse
Resource Friends at Annual Sessions!
At the 2018 Annual Sessions this year, there will be a booth during free time and dinner time on Thursday and Friday where Resource Friends will be available to talk with you about their work and what they might be able to support for you and your meeting. They will also be offering workshops on Friday and Saturday. Resource Friends help our community thrive by providing support in specific areas of concern in our monthly and quarterly meetings. They offer a diversity of gifts and an extensive “how-to” knowledge-base. [Read more…] about Resource Friends at Annual Sessions!
Memorial Service and Obituary: Penny Colgan-Davis
Date for Memorial–Saturday, July 21 at 10:00
A memorial service for Penny will be held Saturday, July 21 at Germantown Monthly Meeting, 47 W. Coulter Street, Philadelphia, PA 19144.
The service will begin at 10 AM. Contributions in her name can be made to the Kelly School Library Fund; c/o Germantown Monthly Meeting; 47 W. Coulter Str. Phila. PA 19144.
Contributions may also be made to the Ridgeway Scheirer Fund for Peace and Justice at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Mail to 1515 Cherry St.; Phila. PA 19102 to the attention of the Development Office.
OBITUARY –
Educator, activist, traveler, Joan Penny Colgan-Davis, 72, passed away on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. Diagnosed with melanoma in November of 2017, she battled the illness for 6 months, before dying at her home in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia. Known as a leader in progressive education and active in the Philadelphia Religious Society of Friends, she brought innovative changes to a number of educational institutions and positively affected the lives of hundreds of students, parents and teachers throughout her long career. She is survived by her husband, John, her son, Evan, her brothers Tim and Tony, and her sister, Debby.
Penny was born in Wilmington, Delaware on October 21, 1945, and lived for many years in Arden, DE. Her parents were Tom and Joan Colgan. Born into a Quaker family, Penny grew up in a house and community that believed in social action. She was taken to Civil Rights Marches as a child, and that started her life-long concern with social justice. When she graduated from Guilford College in 1967, she became an elementary school teacher at Philadelphia’s Miller Elementary School and taught for there for 6 years. Following the protracted teacher’s strike of 1973, she left the school district, saying, “We struck for weeks, and when it was over I was still 1 teacher in a classroom with 33 students. That was not good for the students or for me.” She also had some different educational ideas she wanted to try out, so she joined a parent-run cooperative school in West Philadelphia-the University City New School.
At the New School she helped develop curriculum that featured research projects powered by student questions, plenty of outdoor play and study time, hands-on learning, student designed art projects, and consciously working on building and maintaining a supportive community. These ideas were important ones to her, and they became hallmarks of her later work at other schools. For Penny, education had to be active, involving students in questioning, making knowledge, discovery, and community building. Wherever she went she brought that vision into the lives of countless families.
Following the New School she was a lower school teacher at Friends Select School for3 years, eventually becoming the Director of Lower School for another 3 years. She also served as the principal of the Miquon School in Miquon, Pa for 11 years. From there she became the first head of the Russell Byers Charter School. Finally, she was Head of Frankford Friends School, from which she retired in 2015. At each place she worked she brought the vision and values she believed in and helped change each school in meaningful ways. Her influence was profound, and many of the programs and approaches she introduced can still be found in each of the institutions she led.
Retirement did not mean she was no longer involved with schools. At the time of her death Penny was organizer and leader of a group of volunteers who made the once closed library at the Kelly public elementary school in Philadelphia a vital part of the school. That project continues to grow and thrive. She was also an esteemed mentor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Aspiring Principals Program, helping to train future public and private school principals.
Penny was very active in Philadelphia’s Quaker Community. A member of Germantown Monthly Meeting, she took an active role in that meeting and eventually became clerk for the meeting. She later became clerk for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the organization representing Quaker meetings in the tri-state area. She took a role in the re-organization of the Yearly Meeting and was active in it until her illness made that impossible.
Penny was not just an educator and Quaker activist. She was an active person for whom the world offered opportunities to explore. She was a tent camper, a birdwatcher, a quilter, a lover of literature, and a gardener. She visited spots in Pennsylvania, in Canada, New Mexico and Arizona and more on birding trips with her husband. She and John camped regularly in upstate New York, Maryland, and yearly outside of Kingston, Ontario. Her garden is a wildlife friendly habitat and a stopover for hummingbirds, butterflies, finches, wrens and more. She grew herbs and vegetables that found their way to her kitchen and eventually to her table. She was a member of both a cookbook club and a literary book club. She was also a member of the Mt. Airy Quilters and loved to visit quilt shows and shops whenever she traveled. And she was an active participant in the movement to connect kids with gardening, starting an outdoor garden at Frankford Friends.
Penny Colgan-Davis led a full and joyous life that directly affected many people in many ways. Her giving spirit, sense of purpose, and love of life touched people of all ages. She will be well remembered and missed by many who were fortunate enough to know her. Her light shines brightly and casts a radiant glow.
A memorial service for Penny will be held Saturday, July 21 at Germantown Monthly Meeting, 47 W. Coulter Street, Philadelphia, PA 19144 from 10 AM until 1 PM. Contributions in her name can be made to the Kelly School Library Fund; c/o Germantown Monthly Meeting; 47 W. Coulter Str. Phila. PA 19144. Contributions can also be made to Ridgeway Scheirer Fund for Peace and Justice; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting; 1515 Cherry St.; Phila. PA 19102
Update July 7, 2108 — An additional obituary has been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Bringing It All Back Home Again
Something significant & sobering is happening in Montgomery, Alabama (MGM). PYM can participate in the reckoning MGM is going through. Montgomery was a hub for warehousing & auctioning of enslaved persons. It is now recognizing that history with the Legacy Museum: Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, & a ten minute walk away, The National Memorial for Justice & Peace, a collection of 1600 weathered steel monuments, two for each US County where a black person was lynched between 1877 & 1950. The hanging monuments, pictured, will always remain, but duplicates spread out like coffins waiting to be buried are gifts to the 800 US counties where a lynching took place.
There are two monuments for each county because counties are invited to take their monument home. Frank Meadows was lynched in Chester County, PA on July 27, 1917. Do we, PYM & Chester County Friends, want to bring his monument home? It could be a sad, sobering, but grand project!
Rick Howe
Slavery and Mass Incarceration; CPMM Members Observe Cash Bail Hearings
If we are proud of our heritage of opposition to slavery, we have no choice but to take a stand on mass incarceration. Last spring Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting passed a minute in opposition to mass incarceration. As one step in bringing that minute to life, to test the role of outside observers in the effort to end cash bail, several members of our meeting recently ventured through a metal detector and down to the small basement room in Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center where bail hearings take place. There we found the court players separated by a glass wall from a few benches for observers. People who have been arrested appear via a video screen from where they are being held at different police districts around the city.
Many of the individual hearings take less than a minute. The bail commissioner, or magistrate, verifies the person’s name, reads the charges, lets them know their court date and warns that if they don’t show up a warrant will be issued for their arrest. Then comes the question of bail. Sometimes this is done with minimal consultation. With a simple DUI or drug possession case, the person is often now released on their own recognizance—signing for bail without having to pay anything. Sometimes the Commissioner wants more information and enquires about previous arrests or detainers (requests that a person be held in relation to another charge). Sometimes it’s more complex. The DA’s representative suggests a bail amount, the Public Defender counters. The Commissioner may ask for their reasoning. Then s/he decides, announces the amount of the bail, and the next person in line is brought in.
We learned from a fellow observer at the second session that the hearings are held every four hours, 24 hours a day, with different court personnel rotating in and out. With such a steep learning curve, all we could do at first was try to follow along. By the end of the afternoon, however, we had gotten our bearings and could start to reflect on the nature of what we were witnessing.
Everyone was focused on “just the facts”, as the conveyor belt on their assembly-line job brought an endless stream of human misery—oppression, straitened circumstances, addiction, poor judgment. The one sign of shared humanity we witnessed was with a veteran charged with DUI and damage of another vehicle. The Commissioner probed to learn that he had served in Afghanistan, made a point of telling him about court programs for veterans, and thanked him for his service.
It was hard to watch people attempting to dispense justice in the midst of such an unjust system. There was no uniform treatment here. The Commissioner and DA’s rep in the second session were both much more punitive than those in the first. At one point, the latter recommended a bail of $300,000! That the Commissioner came down to $50,000 was probably of scant comfort to the guy on the screen. The $5000 required up front was clearly beyond his reach or the reach of anybody else we saw that day. Even the challenge of finding $500 for bail of $5000 would keep most of these folks in jail or send them straight to the bail bondsmen and their extortionate rates.
Did any of the thirty or forty people we observed need to be behind bars before their arraignment? Maybe the guy who had missed 23 of his last 26 court appearances. Possibly the two who had threatened family members. If so, then why not just say that those few need to stay in jail, rather than using a bail system that punishes the poor and lets the rich buy their way out? Looking at the bigger picture, the people who are seriously endangering us and eroding the quality of life in our country have fat wallets, work in high places and would never be caught by this system.
We now carry the weight of what we witnessed. How can those of us who have some protection from this part of our penal system take in its enormity? How can we face squarely the incredible injustice and pain that permeate it, and acknowledge how we have acquiesced to its existence? In a situation where silence implies consent, what needs to happen for us to speak out?
Friends inspired by NY Friend Sandra Steingraber speak out against Pipelines and in favor of Clean Energy
Members and attenders of Westtown and other Monthly Meetings joined several hundred in West Chester on June 9th to publicly witness on behalf of our neighbors facing the dangers of new pipelines snaking their way through Chester and Delaware counties designed to carry high risk liquefied gas pipelines. The Mariner East Rally for Community Safety speakers painted a grim picture of the threat to families, schools and local businesses. Quaker activist Sandra Steingraber came from NY to lend us encouragement. She and other Friends in NY State led a multi-year civil disobedience effort to protect the water resources provided by Seneca Lake. Many of us first heard of Sandra and we were inspired by her letter Why I am in Jail. Others of us had read her compelling book Living Downstream. In the evening, we attended the Pennsylvania premier of the film Unfractured depicting this struggle and the hard work that she and others undertook which finally led to the ban on fracking in New York State. Her message was clear – as people of faith, we all need to find our courage and determine what role we can play in choosing life giving energy over fossil fuels, given what we know about their short and long term impact on human and environmental health. She herself had to overcome her own preference to stick to research as an approach to change, as she is by nature more of an introvert. To learn more about the pipeline movement and which Monthly Meetings are in or near the blast zone visit the Middletown Coalition for Community Safety.
EMIR Healing Center ministry supported by Green Street Monthly Meeting
Green Street Meeting’s Quaker Social Change Ministry group in support of EMIR Healing Center is having a “Fill a Bookbag” drive to gather school supplies for 85 children participating in the center’s programs this year.
EMIR stands for “Every Murder is Real.” The center, in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, was founded by Green Street member Victoria Greene, after her son Emir was murdered. Victoria has spoken about the work of EMIR Healing Center in keynote addresses at PYM Annual Sessions and the FGC Gathering, as well as in a QuakerSpeak video.
Murder is devastating to families. Children risk falling behind in school or being unprepared due to the traumatic emotional and financial consequences of murder. Parents and caregivers may still be struggling with grief and trauma long after the incident. The ministry support group is pulling together backpacks with school supplies for the children, so their families have one less thing to worry about.
You can help by writing a check to Green Street Friends Meeting, memo EMIR Fill a Bookbag, or shopping an Amazon wish list and having the supplies shipped directly to EMIR Healing Center. The ministry support group will assemble the backpacks in August. Learn more at http://greenstreetfriendsmeeting.org/emir.html.
Uniting for economic and social justice with other people of faith: POWER Philadelphia, Metro, Central and Northeast
Over the past several years, three monthly meetings in Philadelphia–Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia (Arch Street), Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, and now Germantown Monthly Meeting–have joined a broad-based interfaith coalition founded in 2011 under the name Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild, or POWER.
POWER, affiliated at the national level with the PICO Network, aimed then (and still does) to bring congregations together “across lines of race, income level, neighborhood and faith tradition to build broad-based power for policy change.” In addition to fifty-plus congregations affiliated with POWER Philadelphia, POWER now has both staff and member congregations at work in Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery, and Chester Counties (POWER Metro) and York, Lancaster, Dauphin, and Lebanon Counties (POWER Central PA). There is also POWER Northeast, with a focus on the Lehigh Valley.
Five major thrusts of POWER’s work are as follows: The Live Free Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, currently addressing cash bail; the Health Care Campaign; the Economic Dignity Campaign, working on concerns such as the living wage; and the Education Campaign, pushing for a fair funding formula for public education in Pennsylvania. Recently, Quakers have been in collaboration with POWER on a sixth campaign, Climate Justice. POWER and Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) are working together to press PECO Energy both to shift towards solar and to create green jobs in low-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
Central Philadelphia Meeting has a group of Friends especially involved with the work of POWER. We meet monthly; individuals from other meetings are welcome to attend. We would also be glad to describe our experiences in the organization to other Friends meetings located in regions where POWER is organizing. We feel that Friends have a lot to offer in interfaith work–and that we have much to learn as well.
For more information, feel free to contact me: Sara Palmer, co-coordinator of CPMM’s involvement in POWER.
Quaker Abolitionist Benjamin Lay Remembered
Three years ago, Abington Friends Meeting member and caretaker Dave Wermeling noticed a tall professorial-looking figure wandering in the meeting burial ground. It was the historian Marcus Rediker doing research for a book he was writing on the 18th century Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay. Dave confirmed for Marcus that Benjamin and his wife Sarah were buried at Abington but the exact location was unmarked.
The only recognition Benjamin Lay received, after being disowned by the meeting for his active ministry against slave-holding by Quakers, was a small etching of his distinctive figure which hangs in the meeting fellowship room.
In 2016, Marcus was invited to talk about his research into the life of Benjamin Lay which inspired Friends at Abington to consider more closely Lay’s legacy. Member Loretta Fox was so inspired by Dave’s enthusiasm and Marcus’ research she felt led to a propose a memorial minute to the meeting recognizing Lay’s unwavering dedication to racial equality and his unstinting courage to witness to the evils of enslaving people.
“I felt led to draft a minute of unity because it is important for Abington Meeting to acknowledge that Sarah and Benjamin Lay were buried under our care,” said Loretta. “Not only for them, but more importantly for the enslaved people and their descendants for whom they so valiantly spoke. As the community that disowned Lay, we need to go on record as accepting his message and honoring his witness to the truth, however belatedly.”
Burial Marker for Sarah & Benjamin Lay
On Saturday, April 21, 2018, Abington Monthly Meeting unveiled a burial stone for Sarah & Benjamin Lay. The event which featured opening remarks by author Marcus Rediker and local resident and Quaker Avis Wanda McClinton was followed by a gathering in the meetinghouse in the manner of a Friends Memorial Meeting.
Part of the program was a dramatic reading of Benjamin Lay’s writing by meeting member and actor Benjamin Lloyd. “We are all indebted to Marcus’ book,” said Ben. “As I read, I found myself totally absorbed in the story of this little person, just a couple of generations removed from the birth of the Quaker movement, travelling the high seas and later confronting the evils of slavery in America. He seemed possessed of an almost pathologically contrarian nature. I identified with him!”
Ben Lloyd’s reading of passages from Lay’s publication “All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates” was electrifying. It convincingly conveyed the barely contained rage of Lays convictions as well the compassion he felt for those Friends whom he railed against. Any doubt as to the unsettling power of Lay’s message was dispelled by this dramatic rendition of his words.
The program concluded with a multigenerational and multiethnic/racial panel discussion exploring the query: What practices and beliefs do we hold that future generations will someday look back on and say, “What were they thinking?”
Friends shared their contemporary concerns and activities against the mistreatment and criminalization of immigrants, support for the Black Lives Matter movement, activism to confront mass incarceration and protesting gun violence in our schools and neighborhoods, among others.