Bassem Masri is a Palestinian American who grew up in St. Louis and Jerusalem and has been documenting the protest movement in Ferguson since Michael Brown's killing.  

Note: This guest post is by Bassem Masri, a Palestinian who has been very involved in the Ferguson protests and has documented the events with Live Stream. He was arrested this week and interrogated and writes in the post below powerfully about the ways that the police presence in Feruguson resembles the police presence in Palestine.

Note: I first met J. Jondhi Harrell through Philadelphia’s prison and reentry activism circles. Later, I worshipped with him at Germantown Friends Meeting, where he recently became a member. As an insider to the worlds of both Quakerism and the criminal justice system – he was incarcerated for over 20 years – he speaks powerfully about prison, reentry, and Friends’ mandate to confront the dehumanizing system of mass incarceration. -Madeline Smith-Gibbs

Raed Jarrar serves as AFSC’s Policy Impact Coordinator at the Office of Public Policy and Advocacy in Washington, D.C. Since his immigration to the U.S. in 2005, he has worked on political and cultural issues pertaining to U.S. engagement in the Arab and Muslim worlds. He is widely recognized as an expert on political, social, and economic developments in the Middle East.

Note: Raed Jarrar serves as AFSC's Policy Impact Coordinator. He is Iraqi and Palestinian and has been speaking out in many media outlets including All in with Chris Hayes, Democracy Now, and Common Dreams since the United States' decision to bomb ISIL. Here he responds to a question that kept him up the night after it was asked at a recent presentation. - Lucy

Avis Wanda McClinton is a resident of Glenside, Pa., in Upper Dublin Township. She is a board member of the Grandom Insitution, a grant making project of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

Note: On September 28^th Upper Dublin Friends Meeting of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting celebrated the unveiling of a Pennsylvania Historic marker which honored the lives of Thomas and Hannah Atkinson, members of the meeting who offered safe haven on the underground railroad. Avis McClinton, a member of the meeting, was instrumental in having a marker placed which recognized and remembered the formerly enslaved African Americans who lost their lives while seeking freedom and were buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves next to the meeting house.