Peace and Social Concerns Committee

Annual Report 2004

The Committee sponsored a workshop at the 2003 Annual Session with Brigit Moix of FCNL talking on peaceful prevention of conflicts. This coming Annual Session Kathie Guthrie of FCNL will be talking about what Friends can do to encourage people to register and vote in 2004 (See http://www.fcnl.org/elections_2004.htm) and Ann Wilcox will talk about the need to restore voting rights for convicted felons and otherwise protect voting rights for all. The committee met at fall and spring interim meeting days at State College and Bethesda.

The Committee and Monthly Meetings were especially concerned about the administration’s pre-emptive war against Iraq and now the United States role as an occupying power in Iraq. Bethesda Meeting sponsored two events with AFSC speakers: Peter Lems the AFSC officer on Iraq and later Rick McDowell and Mary Trotochaud, AFSC staff members in residence in Baghdad. Some Friends took part in the peace march/vigil at Dover Air Force Base (where the bodies of dead soldiers are brought from Iraq) and Walter Reed Army Hospital (where many of the wounded are brought) and then to the White House.

Committee member, JE McNeil, has brought to the Committee the work of Center on Conscience and War and others on giving counsel to those who have conscientious objection to service in the military.

Committee membership represents only a fraction of the Monthly Meetings of BYM. Committee member Mary Ellen Atkinson brought together Clerks of twelve Monthly Meetings of BYM in March at Sandy Spring Meeting. This served a useful purpose of exchanging information and ideas on how to be more effective in addressing peace and social concerns and may lead to collaboration among the various meetings.

The Committee has also been supportive of the effort by many Friends across the country to restore the Meeting House in Ramallah, West Bank (Palestine), so that it may serve as both a place of worship and as a Quaker peace center to obtain peace in the Middle East. The Committee would like to thank Friends and Monthly Meetings of BYM that contributed to this effort. Funds for restoration have essentially been raised and the international committee is now in the process of developing plans for the program of the center. See http://ramallah.quaker.org/

John Salzberg, Clerk