Category: Environmental Justice
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New Jersey Meetings Organize To Stop Export of LNG From Gibbstown
by Ruth Darlington. When Priscilla Adams and Maria Esche learned about the plans of New Fortress Energy to export Pennsylvania fracked gas from a terminal in Gibbstown, NJ, they took notice, and then they took action. It all started when organizers at Food & Water Watch (FWW) asked Medford Friends…
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Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation
Oil, gas and coal are the root cause of the climate crisis and despite the destructive reality of fossil fuels, as well as the constant warnings of the scientific community, there is no binding mechanism to limit their production. The Paris Agreement, important as it is, does not reference fossil…
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The Climate Justice Movement Must Be Anti-War: Notes from Antiwar Organizers
by Jasmine Butler, Power Shift Network. Power Shift Network is an intergenerational network of organizations and campaigns that center the diverse young people most impacted by the climate crisis. They generously let QEW reprint this article. No matter your specific organizational or ideological affiliation, anyone who cares about…
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A Native American Land Reparation Pledge
by Gail Melix and Lewis Randa. Reparations to Indigenous Peoples can take many forms. Through our work with Massachusetts’ Peace Abbey, we have developed one action that might work well for others, the Native Land Reparation Pledge (NLRP). The pledge states one’s intention to donate 1% of the sale price…
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Beverly Ward Interview on Northern Spirit Radio
Co-Clerk Beverly Ward Interviewed on Northern Spirit Radio! Beverly Ward is Field Secretary for Earthcare of SEYM, doing all kinds of work to motivate, inform, & unite around work for care for the planet. She offers a range of tailored Earthcare workshops, including topics like Angelic Troublemaking, Climate Equity/Climate Justice, Racial…
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June Earthcare Engagement for Your Community
Dear Friends, As Shelley wrote to you earlier this week, “Our strength and stamina come from our spiritual connection with the living world, and with each other.” Thanks for being part of this community. Here are a few June updates: UPCOMING EVENTS More on…
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Military Jets & Environmental Restoration
By Katherine van Wormer. An issue of immediate concern to the Madison (WI) Friends is government’s selection of our airport as home for the notorious F-35 fighter planes. The Madison Friends’ Minute begins: As Quakers, we seek to remove the circumstances that foster war, based on…
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The North-South Divide
By Brad Stocker. Context is everything. Context shapes the meaning of our words and thoughts. Recently I attended a workshop called “What’s Missing (and Needed) Post COP26?” hosted by the Quaker United Nations Office and the Quaker Council for European Affairs. During this event, the “North” and the…
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Moral Standards for Asset Managers?
By GreenFaith. Religious leaders spanning diverse faiths and continents, representing over half a billion people globally, are making an unprecedented demand this spring on the leaders of large asset managers such as BlackRock and Vanguard. The demand is for these companies to recognize the universal moral values that…
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International Climate Policy: From Quiet Diplomacy to Youth Activism
The video is available of the March 15th discussion with Kallan Benson (Fridays for Future USA Director and Friend from Annapolis, MD) and Lindsey Cook (QUNO Representative for Climate Change and Friend from Bonn, Germany). Both Kallan and Lindsey participated in COP 26 in Glasgow, approaching the situation from…
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Vanguard Customers Have an Important Role to Play, so Don’t Move Your Money (Yet)!
by Eileen Flanagan. As soon as Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) announced that we had joined the international campaign to pressure Vanguard to become a climate leader, we started hearing from Quakers and others who were Vanguard customers that they were eager to move their money to funds that are…
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Earth Quaker Action Team Takes on Vanguard
by Jonathan Ogle. The world’s biggest asset managers have a big problem. Companies such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street manage trillions of dollars of investment on behalf of millions of investors. Even while they sign commitments to make their own office operations carbon neutral, they have been investing hundreds…
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Recognizing a Human Right to a Healthy Environment
by Lindsey Fielder Cook. Recognition of a human right to a healthy environment can have, in the words of the UN Special Rapporteur, “life-changing potential.” The 2010 UN recognition of water and sanitation as a human right led to significantly improved access to clean water and sanitation…
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Midwifery
by Pamela Haines. A regular high point in my week is being in touch with a handful of young climate activists. Through a young man who stayed in our spare room while doing student fossil fuel divestment work and then went on to be one of the founders of the…
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Young Adults’ Workshop: Exploring Ecospirituality
Join Hayley Hathaway, of Quaker Earthcare Witness, for Exploring Ecospirituality: Old & New Ways to Imagine & Transform, a workshop for young adults (ages 18-40). The workshop will be held online, Thursday, February 17, 7:30 – 9 pm Eastern Time. “The world is not a problem to be solved; it…
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Our Wishlist: 7 Ways to Get Involved
Hello Friends, Our Quaker Earthcare Witness network is filled with gifts. Friends offer their time, financial resources, prayers, experience, expertise, and connections to help our growing community care for the Earth and each other. Here are a few ways we’re hoping you can continue to generously share your gifts this season.
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Canadian ClimateFast
by Lyn Adamson. I’m the co-chair of Canada’s ClimateFast, a volunteer-based non-profit dedicated to building strong, informed public pressure to take urgent, substantial and just action on climate change. Our group fasted on the first full day of COP26, November 1, outside of the U.S. Consulate in Toronto as…
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Frontline Communities & Workers Demand Real Climate Solutions, ‘No Net Zero’ and an End to Fossil-Fuels at COP26
It Takes Roots is a multiracial, multicultural, intergenerational alliance of alliances representing over 200 organizations and affiliates in over 50 states, provinces, territories and Native lands on Turtle Island (known as North America). It is led by women, gender non-conforming people, people of color, Black and Indigenous Peoples. This November,…
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Friends Travel in Faith to #StopLine3
Quakers are coming together to support the growing Indigenous-led movement in northern Minnesota to resist the construction of the Line 3 pipeline. Several Friends participated in non-violent civil disobedience over this past Minnesota winter, several more took part in the June 7 Treaty People Gathering, and others have visited the…
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Examining Institutional Racism
By Lauri Langham. The intersection between environmental justice and racial justice is a busy one. We recognize how Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and low-income people are the frontline communities that suffer the first and worst effects of planet destruction and climate change: from the placement of toxic dumps…
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Equality -> Equity -> Justice: The Transportation Case Example
By Beverly Ward “Our equality testimony flows inevitably from our belief that there is that of God in every person. If we believe in Equality, we must work for Justice. British Friends remind us: ‘Are you alert to the practices throughout the world which discriminates against people on the basis…
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Build Back Fossil Free
By Hayley Hathaway and Ruth Darlington. “If we’re going to Build Back Better, we need to do better. And that starts by putting Indigenous people and their voices first, before any [fossil fuels] project is put in place…It is our Indigenous right to protect what little we have left,” shared…
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What I’m Learning From the Pandemic
By Shelley Tanenbaum. EVERY YEAR WE Friends ask ourselves, “How has truth fared for Thee?” It is a way of refreshing ourselves, of self-evaluating personally and in our Meetings. It gives us an opportunity to change course and to respond to emerging leadings. What if we see the coronavirus pandemic…
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Important Reasons to Use Native Plants
Important Facts. Native plants are adapted to the local area and its climate. Unfortunately, many of our beautiful non-native garden flowers provide little or no food for honeybees, native pollinators, songbirds, and other wildlife. Non-native plants have the potential to become invasive species – weeds that spread rapidly and often crowd…
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A Shared Quaker Statement: Facing the Challenge of Climate Change
“It would go a long way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and knowing in the Creation of it. For how could [they] find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the great Creator stare them in the…
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Recommendations for all Friends
To Friends Everywhere: Quaker Earthcare Witness developed some challenges, which are recommendations for Friends’ Churches and Meetings throughout North America. We ask local Friends’ fellowships and Yearly Meetings to prayerfully examine these challenges and to explore ways to act upon part or all of them. These are suggested actions to…
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Sharing Love and Knowledge in the Time of COVID-19
An Interview with Beverly G. Ward. “IT’S LIKE PEELING an onion: layer after layer of pandemics and it all makes you cry,” shares Beverly Ward. She’s referencing the built-in injustice of her home state of Florida, where she works as Field Secretary for Earthcare for Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) and…
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Collective Community Resilience: Thinking Through Climate Change and Defunding the Police
By Sara Jolena Wolcott. ONE OF THE MOST important lessons I learned when working in sustainable development overseas is to listen to the people most impacted by the problems to appropriately co-create viable solutions. Sometimes they would prioritize things that seemed strange to me. But over time, I would realize…
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Young and Old for Climate Justice
By Hayley Hathaway. GEORGE LAKEY, lifelong civil rights activist, and Friend, hosted “Young and Old for Climate Justice: A Dialog” at Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, CA this January. Forty Friends, ages ranging from 15 to 80, joined the weekend-long retreat in the redwoods. Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW’s General Secretary, and…
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Farming for Social Change
By Sayrah Namaste “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves,” Gandhi said. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has been addressing the impacts of climate change through programs in New Mexico, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Baltimore, to name a few.
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For the Love of the Land
By Pamela Haines. I’VE LOVED THIS bit of land for over fifty years. Coming up over the hill, my heart always opens anew to the jewel of a valley spread out below, part of the rolling farmland and woodlots of central New York state. My father bought an old farm…
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“We Had Something, Now We Don’t.” Bolivian Friends Face the Climate Crisis
By Emma Condori Mamani. My name is Emma Condori. I am from Bolivia. I was born near Lake Titicaca. Most of my childhood was very beautiful because I was raised in community life in one of the indigenous communities we have in Bolivia, called Aymara. One thing I really appreciated…
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Casa Pueblo: Truly the People’s House
By Liz Robinson. THIS STORY STARTS with Hurricane Maria and our Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting’s decision to select Casa Pueblo as the beneficiary for our 12th month charitable giving. Because of its outstanding reputation, and its amazing hurricane-disaster recovery work providing solar energy to restore power to vital community services…
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Eco-Justice: Ecological Responsibility Linked with Social Justice
“You can’t achieve peace unless it’s accompanied by a constant striving to address the issues of justice. This means that your work will never end. It will never end.” —John Mohawk, Seneca Nation This article is part of our Pamphlets for Sharing series produced by QEW’s Publications Committee.
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A Fight for The Yintah
By Daniel Kirkpatrick. THE THIRTY OF US STOOD in a quiet circle in the gravel on a sunny, cool morning. Wood smoke rose toward the sky from the adjacent lodge, and boreal forests surrounded the clearing. A First Nations elder, Lht’at’en, spoke in her Wet’suwet’en dialect, offering a prayer before…
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Stewardship is a Likely Place to Start: Mountain Valley Pipeline Resistance
By Jenny Chapman Jenny Chapman, a birthright Quaker whose ancestors made the pilgrimage to America with William Penn, lives on a farm on Bent Mountain in rural southwest Virginia and is a member of Roanoke Friends Meeting. She and her husband raised their two sons on the Mountain and now…
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Praying on Seeds: Solidarity for Puerto Rican Sovereignty
By Marian Dalke. SUNDAY MORNING’s soft light casts through deep wooden windows. The light shifts and picks up the soft cotton of milkweed seeds, sailing over the heads of those gathered for Quaker Meeting for Worship at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Grace Gonglewski shares a message about “praying on seeds,”…
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Rising Together: Community Health Mapping in South Florida
By Beverly G. Ward MANY COMMUNITIES in South Florida experience “sunny day” flooding during periods of very high or “king” tides. During a new or full moon, when the sun and the moon are aligned with Earth in their orbits, the gravitational pull on the oceans is at its strongest,…
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Friends Help Ban Fracking in Maryland
By Karie Firoozmand. ON APRIL 4, Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan signed legislation prohibiting fracking in the state. This is a huge success for the individuals and organizations that have been working together for this goal for several years, as well as a precedent for other states. I have been working…
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Bringing Light to the Dark: Environmental Violence
By Brad Stocker, Miami Friends Meeting. ONE OF THE MORE POIGNANT things to have affected my earthcare work was 2016’s QEW table and display, which had a darker element than in the past as it focused attention on those who have been killed for their involvement in environmental justice. We…
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Reflections on Standing Rock
Sacred Stone, Clean Water, Gathering People By Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary. The gathering at Standing Rock, with more than 280 indigenous tribes represented, is historic and has been an inspiration to all of us. The ongoing gathering is being held to block construction of the Dakota pipeline that threatens…
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Young Faith Leaders Rising During GreenFaith Convergence in New Orleans
By Sara Wolcott. Myself and the other 60 young (aged 20-35) faith leaders from across Canada and the United States who were partaking in GreenFaith’s 2016 North American Convergence eagerly peered out of our bus windows as it turned onto the road leading to Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana. We…
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Reckoning the “Other”
By Shelley Tanenbaum. Two dynamic and challenging speakers stood out for me at the 2016 Friends General Conference (FGC) gathering in St. Joseph, Minnesota this July. Nekima Levy-Pounds, law professor and leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, came to us after sitting-in at the Governor’s mansion in the immediate…
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Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Against the Mountain Valley Pipeline
By Vicki Tolbert As a member of the Blacksburg, VA Friends Earthcare Committee reminded us, we have been “thinking globally, acting locally” as we take on a global issue confronting our local area: the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline. Appalachia has historically been a target for those…
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Climate Justice—from Katrina to Paris and Back to New Orleans
By Shelley Tanenbaum. When we talk about how global warming will affect the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, or when we talk about how countries that have historically emitted the most carbon have a greater carbon debt than those with smaller carbon footprints, or how polluting industries…
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