Pennsylvania is beautiful in October. Like many places on the East Coast, fall turns the expansive deciduous landscape into a blanket of fire, transforms light into magic and the mind to the past. Time slows down this time of year. The future is no longer yours to be explored, but is yours to be remembered as life takes its rightful place within the cycle of death and rebirth. 

Several weeks ago, we invited our Quaker meeting/church liaisons to join our staff on a call to learn more about the "If I Had a Trillion Dollars” youth film festival, which is entering its four^th year. The festival asks young people (middle school through college age) to create a short film on how they would redirect the money in our nation's budget that has been spent on war.

Note: I met Robert Awkward last year during his internship with Erin Polley and the "If I Had a Trillion Dollars" (IHTD) youth film festival. The festival invites young people around the country to engage in conversations around how to shift our nation's budget priorities from militarism and war, to supporting the resources that communities need to thrive. 

Michelle Alexander points out that mass incarceration and the war on drugs is built on the foundation of demonizing people of color, particularly brown and black men and boys. A very strong thread in her message was that in order to end the system of mass incarceration in a way that keeps it from being reconstructed, all of us must be able “to see and value the humanity in one another.” 

Niyonu Spann and I presented a keynote address at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sessions this summer in which we examined the anatomy of racism in individuals and organizations and explored how the Spirit can break through the dynamics of white supremacy to offer healing and transformation. The session was described in the yearly meeting epistle this way:

AFSC’s Sharon Goens-Bradley says that the desire to be seen as “good” causes much of the harm in the world, and that the difficulty of hearing when we’ve caused harm can cover up opportunities to truly heal.