We are stronger than we think

As President Donald Trump is inaugurated for a second term, our work for peace and justice is both crucial and urgent. We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know that our movements for racial, social, economic, and gender justice will continue. And we know that we can move forward together with courageous nonviolent action grounded in love.   

Trump has promised mass deportations, a rollback of climate policies, a crackdown on civil liberties, and tax and spending cuts that will massively fuel wealth inequalities. Like his predecessors, he plans to continue the bipartisan surge of massive military spending and reliance on militarized approaches across the globe. 

But none of this is inevitable. As much as many in power might like us to think otherwise, the future remains unwritten. Fatalism is as much a tool of oppression as guns and bullets. 

We are stronger than we think. As a Quaker organization, our work for lasting peace with justice is guided by the belief that there is “that of God” in each of us. And we are not starting from scratch. History is full of people and movements who refused to accept the future people in power had charted for them. Led by the Spirit, today we draw inspiration and strength from those who came before us. 

The American Friends Service Committee was founded in 1917, just weeks after the United States declared war on Germany. In the chaotic aftermath of President Wilson’s announcement, a small group of Quakers gathered in Philadelphia to grapple with how they might live into their pacifist values in a time of war. 

Their goal was not just to refuse to fight, but to create the infrastructure for conscientious objectors to serve humanity in a constructive way. They counseled people on how to refuse military service, but they also trained hundreds of volunteers and sent them to Europe to provide relief from the ravages of war and help communities rebuild. 

Their ideas were neither popular nor familiar. Then, as now, those who work for peace and justice were called traitors and impractical idealists. The media treated them alternately as a curiosity or a threat. But they held fast to a simple truth later articulated by AFSC founder Rufus Jones in his book A Service of Love in War Time:

“The Friend merely declined to begin to put his highest nature under the control of this system. War ought not to happen. If individual men refused to take part in it, it could not happen.”

Acting from that simple truth, they touched the lives of millions, fed children, built houses, and revived and expanded a tradition of conscientious objection that played a key role in anti-war movements for decades to come. 

Of course, they did not end war, oppression, and exploitation. It is up to us to continue to transform the world through loving and courageous action. 

More than a century later, we once again face global upheaval defined by both acute and structural violence. And we must double down on our efforts to protect one another, to refuse and resist injustice, and to build something new. 

These three tenets – protect, resist, and build – can help guide us. 

Protect: Our collective solidarity is our greatest strength. Politicians use racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, and transphobic rhetoric and action to divide and manipulate us. We must protect and defend our communities, movements, and organizations. And we must oppose all efforts to criminalize and persecute Black and Brown people, queer and trans people, immigrants, poor and working-class people, and all who speak out against injustice. 

Resist: We resist systems and policies that devalue and destroy life. Bombs and militaries, prisons and militarized borders, are all mechanisms of destruction that will never lead us to safe and thriving communities. Like the conscientious objectors who came before us, we must build an infrastructure of refusal, creating the material and emotional resources to support those who do not conform to unjust systems. 

Build: We envision, create, and build the world we need. In our actions and projects big and small we show that another way of life – grounded in justice, equality, and freedom – is possible. Resisting oppressive systems and protecting our communities will help us survive. But it is through collectively building real alternatives that materially and spiritually improve people’s lives that we generate the power we need for structural transformation. 

The activist poet Martin Espada once wrote: 

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year.

As we move forward together, we commit to the vision and the work that is required to write a different future.

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The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) promotes a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression. Guided by the Quaker belief in the divine light within each person, we nurture the seeds of change and the respect for human life to fundamentally transform our societies and institutions. We work with people and partners worldwide, of all faiths and backgrounds, to meet urgent community needs, challenge injustice, and build peace.