As more states retaliate against BDS, we must stand against attempts to suppress protected speech and action.

Over the past month, there have been two significant victories for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which holds corporations and institutions accountable for their support for or complicity in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Willie Colón, writer and editor with AFSC, has worked for newspapers, magazines, and nonprofits in New York, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. He also teaches computer skills and conversational English to recent Latin American immigrants and volunteers with a Philadelphia nonprofit that uses media to bring together and amplify movements for social and economic justice. 

Art has the power to reach—and move—people beyond what traditional education and organizing can do. And today, a growing number of activists around the world are using art to challenge war and militarism in their communities.

On March 30, AFSC staff members Minerva Mendoza, Tabitha Mustafa, and Erin Polley joined media relations director Alexis Moore for “Cultural organizing: Art as a tool for social change,” a live-streamed discussion. Here’s a recap.

Pam and Ron Ferguson were invited to lead programmed worship at AFSC's Annual Corporation meeting on March 5, 2016.

Ron and Pam Ferguson are Quakers from Kansas and Idaho who spent 9 years with the Mennonite Central Committee in Southern Sudan working with refugees and in Uganda doing development and peace building.  For the last 17 years they've been released for ministry at Winchester Friends Meeting in Winchester, Indiana where they've been active in jail ministry, managing a food pantry and participating on the General Committee of Friends Committee on Na

Pam and Ron Ferguson were invited to lead programmed worship at AFSC's Annual Corporation meeting on March 5, 2016.

Colonization requires constant action. By definition, a process is implied. Initially, colonization is simply acquiring dominion over the people, land, and all therein the land. As a result, as Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic once said, “countries under foreign command quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language.”

In opposition to regressive policies pushed by the governor and state legislature including draconian cuts to Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and public education funding, Dr. Barber has mobilized the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement, a multi-racial, multi-generational movement of thousands for protests at the NC General Assembly the people’s house, and around the state. Hundreds, including Dr. Barber himself, have also engaged in non-violent civil disobedience to expose what the politicians in North Carolina are trying to do in the dark.