Note: This is the second installment of a series of three interviews with people who are living out Quaker values through their healing justice work. The first, an interview with Philadelphia Quaker and organizer J. Jondhi Harrell, can be read here.

Note: In this post I tell just a bit of the story of the commutation of the death penalty sentence of Randy Reeves. I drew from many sources for this piece, including an excellent article that was in PeaceWork magazine and an article published by Common Dreams.

Liz Oppenheimer is a Conservative Friend and member of Bear Creek Meeting in Iowa. She worships with Laughing Waters Friends Preparative Meeting and volunteers at the AFSC office in St. Paul. Liz occasionally blogs about Quakerism at thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com and edited Writing Cheerfully on the Web.  Liz is thoroughly enjoying watercoloring, which she began exploring last year.

Note: Liz Oppenheimer is a Quaker who has been very involved in supporting AFSC's Healing Justice program in Minneapolis. During Ferguson October she traveled to St. Louis and participated in protests and in supporting activists on the ground. The experience opened her eyes and led her to wonder about Quaker readiness to lend support to the communities of color most impacted by police brutality and other injustice. These are some of her reflections on her time in Ferguson, with an invitation to Quakers to become engaged and activated as allies in this movement.

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.