The three councils that guide Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—Quaker Life Council, Administrative Council, and Nominating Council—recently gathered for their second meeting in a newly adopted joint format. In this structure, the councils come together as one Joint Council to worship, discern, and conduct business collaboratively. in an article written about this experiment this summer, this practice ensures that the Joint Council can promptly share its minutes with the PYM community after the meeting.
Quaker Life Council
2020 Poor People’s Campaign: A 52 Year History Renewed
In 1968, the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) was first named as a key concern of Friends in America. American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Associate Executive Secretary, Stephen Cary, remarked that the PPC “…has made poverty in America visible, and never again will it be possible to pretend that it is not real.”
52 years later, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) recognizes that we need to work together as a community to continue to make poverty and all the injustices that contribute to it more visible. As part of that process, PYM’s Quaker Life Council recently minuted an endorsement of the PPC, as has PYM’s Young Adult Friends community, Trenton Meeting of Friends and Haddonfield Quarter. PYM has also offered youth programming (described later in this story) around this initiative and will continue to support the community’s energy on addressing the causes and consequences of poverty in America today.
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Trenton Meeting of Friends Approves a Minute in Support of the 2020 Poor People’s Campaign
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has partnered with the American Friends Service Committee to support local community organizing around the Poor People’s Campaign. The Quaker Life Council minuted an endorsement of the Poor People’s Campaign alongside our Young Adult Friends community. Both bodies invited monthly meetings to endorse the campaign as well. Trenton Meeting of Friends has recently approved an endorsement, which was forwarded to us recently: