Minutes

Olympia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) pledges to support immigrants in our larger community, particularly those who face unjust criminalization, detention, and deportation. We will work to defend and protect individuals, families, and communities affected by unjust policies and to protest the enactment of these policies.

Our Quaker testimonies of equality, community, and peace lead us to honor the worth and dignity of each individual, regardless of immigration status. We will encourage members of our Quaker community to engage in the sanctuary movement, providing support in the following ways, as we are able and led:

• Accompanying immigrants to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) hearings and to court, and writing letters of support.
• Organizing for the enactment of just immigration policies.
• Resisting unjust policies, including efforts to remove Sanctuary status from our city and state.
• Supporting faith communities that offer physical sanctuary and individuals living in places of sanctuary.
• Providing financial assistance, material support, and other contributions as requested by the immigrant community.
• Rapid Response, such as being present in places of ICE activity.

We will work in partnership with our immigrant communities and leaders and with the South Sound Faith Network for Immigration and Refugee Support and other like-minded groups.

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This Minute is available in PDF format here.

Olympia Monthly Meeting acknowledges and embraces the need to address systemic/institutional racism both within our OMM community and the wider community.  To take action on this concern, we agree that we will do the following:

1. Members and attenders of the Olympia Monthly Meeting will make time in our lives to make a real contribution to an ongoing effort to reverse systemic racism and to promote personal transformation concerning our own racism.
2. As a first step, we will form a subcommittee on racism under the care of our Peace and Social Justice Committee to help structure and organize the work. We encourage broad participation in the subcommittee among all members and attenders. We ask this subcommittee to help us hold ourselves accountable to contributing to those changes that we believe our Testimony and Discipline require of us. This work will be reviewed after one year to determine any required next steps or changes in structure.
3. When planning and pacing this work, we ask the subcommittee to consider the following:

i. How can we increase our experience of the “light of truth” by working with African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color to develop an increased individual and corporate understanding of systemic racism?

ii. How do we identify traditions and behaviors that could make our society and monthly meetings less inviting to people who have been harmed by systemic racism? How do we increase our awareness and sensitivity to better welcome these individuals and their families or descendants when they are led to join us?

iii. What ways exist to celebrate our neighbors by meeting with them where they live, work, worship, and play? Consideration of African-American activist and scholar Ron Daniels’ statement that the “goal … is not so much integration and organization, at least from the vantage of most African Americans. It is a question of equity and parity,” and his discussion of “coerced internalization of the dominating, or white culture” also encourages us to look for ways to meet with neighbors where they are most at home.

iv. What are other Friends organizations doing to contribute to all the above work? What opportunities exist for us to contribute to these efforts?

The Minute was Accepted.
10/09/2016
Olympia, WA

Olympia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends has noted with deep concern the Ugandan Government’s passage of a law targeting the LGBTQ population. This law has created a climate where the life, health, and freedom of all LGBTQ Ugandans and those who help them are at immediate risk. We are appalled at hearing about those who have already been kicked out of their homes, denied basic rights, abandoned, beaten, imprisoned, or killed, or who live in constant fear.

Olympia Monthly Meeting has been called to create a “New Underground Railroad” project – “Friends Ugandan Safe Transport Fund” to aid LGBTQ Ugandans who are fleeing their homeland for their lives and safety. We have been given an opportunity to provide direct assistance that will save lives. In the first few weeks of this effort we have helped 17 LGBTQ Ugandans get to safety and freedom. Many others remain at risk, and are trying to escape.

We call on all Friends, both individually and in their Meetings, Friends’ organizations, and all people of good will, to help us in this effort. For more information, contact Gabi Clayton, Co-Clerk, Peace and Social Justice Committee, Olympia Monthly Meeting.

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You can make a donation to the Friends Ugandan Safe Transport project through PayPal:

Or send a check to:

Olympia Friends Meeting
3201 Boston Harbor Rd. NE
Olympia, WA 98506-2800

Make checks out to “Olympia Friends Meeting” and put  “Uganda” in the memo line. Please let us know through the form below that you have sent a check so we can use that information to plan.

Thanks!

Note:  Contributions to Friends Ugandan Safe Passage Fund through Olympia Friends Meeting are tax-deductible. This Minute has led to a project:  “Friends Ugandan Safe Transport Fund” and we have  a separate website for it  here: http://friendsugandansafetransport.org/ where there is a lot more information.

 

 

If you have questions, use the form below or call Gabi Clayton, Co-Clerk, Peace and Social Justice Committee, Olympia Monthly Meeting: 360 888-5291.

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“There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren.” – John Woolman (1746)

As Quakers, and as Americans, we are saddened by the spate of violence and hostility being directed toward our brothers and sisters in the American Muslim community. During the past several months, they have experienced the burning of a mosque, attacks on religious schools, attacks on graves, violence and hostility directed at both children and adults, libelous and untrue charges, and intensifying abuse and discrimination.

Our testimonies of peace lead us to pursue measures to end the pain and suffering experienced by our friends and neighbors who have done us no harm. We believe that attacks on American Muslims are attacks upon all of us.

We call upon all Friends, all members of meetings, churches, synagogues, community organizations, and people of goodwill everywhere to stand alongside our Muslim brothers and sisters to pursue peace, answering that of God in all of us. We call upon our community to replace “tolerance” with understanding and respect, and sustained collaboration on issues of mutual concern.

We commit ourselves to renewed efforts to engage and embrace the difficult work of reconciliation, to help heal the wounds inflicted by ongoing trauma, and to stand in support of the Muslim community against this violence.

This minute was adapted from the minute developed by the Atlanta Friends Meeting and approved by them on July 16, 2006

Olympia Friends Meeting supports the continuing work and courage of the Christian Peacemaker Teams. We hold all involved in prayer, the peacemakers, Jim Loney, Harmeet Sooden, Tom Fox and Norm Kember, their captors, and the many people who cannot escape violence. We hope for a safe and peaceful resolution of this situation, and urge the United States government to resist the temptation to use violence.

“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretense whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world. ” — The “Peace Testimony”, George Fox’s Declaration to Charles II, 1660

For some 350 years, Friends have held the right of conscience – the following of the leadings of the Spirit, “the Light Within” – to be paramount. Central to our faith and practice, we are called upon to abjure all war, and to seek out the causes and seeds of war among us.

Today, the leadings of the Spirit are still working among some who, through whatever circumstance, find themselves called upon to kill, or otherwise participate in organized military efforts that result in the death of others. When faced with the possibilities of losing their homes, their freedom, and their personal security, and placing their families at risk, those who feel led to obey the dictates of conscience may seek those sharing similar leadings for clearness and assistance.

Friends have a unique history in assisting those who have made the difficult decision not to kill, even placing ourselves at risk in order to do so. Olympia Monthly Meeting asks that all Friends consider this calling in the light of our history and our continuing experience of the Spirit, and act as they feel called. Specifically:

• We invite [Quaker] Monthly Meetings within North Pacific Yearly Meeting to join us as we consider adopting minutes affirming our historic commitment to assist those who, for reasons of conscience, can not participate in killing.
• We invite North Pacific Yearly Meeting and other Yearly Meetings to consider affirming this commitment.
• We invite individual [Quaker] Meetings and their members to consider and season how best to assist those who leave or consider leaving military service for reasons of conscience.
• We invite [Quaker] Meetings in Canada and elsewhere outside the United States to consider how they can assist those who leave or consider leaving military service in the United States for reasons of conscience.
• We ask Monthly and Yearly [Quaker] Meetings in the United States to work with and support Canadian and other Meetings outside the United States in this effort.
• We invite both Monthly and Yearly [Quaker] Meetings to consider witnessing to our adherence to our historic calling publicly in any and all ways which seem appropriate.

The Olympia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) affirms its opposition to the death penalty. We believe that every person is of value to God and is sacred. We uphold our historic testimony against the taking of human life, for any reason and under any circumstances. While our sympathies lie deeply with the victims, their families and friends, we also realize the suffering of the families and friends of the criminal. Executions restore no victim, brings no closure to families, and further numbs society to hatred and violence. We support efforts to find alternatives to execution, mindful of the sacredness of every life.

Olympia Friends Meeting affirms its willingness to take under its care the marriage of both opposite and same-sex couples using the traditional clearness process. People asking for marriage under the care of the Meeting should be members of the Meeting or long-term regular attenders. We are aware of the diversity of attitudes toward the term “marriage” and leave to the couple to characterize their relationship.

The Meeting regrets that the State does not recognize same-gender relationships as having the same legal and spiritual status as heterosexual relationships and commits itself to working to change the law so all marriages will be recognized both as spiritual and legal commitments.