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  • Read more about 5 Years of Move to Amend in Ohio

Watching Selma in a crowded theater, the connections to the Black Lives Matter movement were very apparent. As Vanessa Julye and Barry Scott said in their Acting in Faith post earlier this week, “The struggle for equal voting rights along with the dehumanization of African American lives and experiences continues in 2015.”

  • Read more about Feeding the flame for racial justice
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  • Read more about Vanessa Julye & Barry Scott

Vanessa Julye works to increase awareness of racism in Quaker and other religious communities. She has a calling to ministry with a concern for helping the Religious Society of Friends become a whole blessed community. She travels throughout the country and abroad speaking on this topic and leading workshops about racism focusing on its eradication and the healing of racism’s wounds.

Note: I invited Vanessa Julye, author of Fit for Freedom, not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice and her husband, Barry Scott, clerk of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, to write thier reflections about Ava DuVernay's film Selma. Below are their thoughs and stories, with queries for reflection at the end. - Lucy

We were blessed with the opportunity to preview Ava DuVernay’s film, Selma (2014), twice. Each time we sat in the movie theatre, we experienced a range of emotion from anger to horror to tears to cheering.

  • Read more about Where are we 50 years later? What can we learn from Selma?
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  • Read more about Maureen Farris on her AFSC internship
  • Read more about Vicktoria Lariche talks about her internship with AFSC
  • Read more about Aura Kanegis
Aura previously worked for over a decade on issues impacting Native American communities, serving the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) first as Deputy Director for Governmental Affairs and subsequently as Director of Operations and Programs. Later she served as Director of Communications and Development for the First Nations Development Institute, working to restore Native control and culturally-compatible stewardship of the assets they own, and to establish new assets for ensuring the long-term vitality of Native communities. She holds a B.A. in Third World Studies and Women’s Studies from Oberlin College and an I.B. from the Armand Hammer United World College. She is the lead vocalist of Brûlée, a jazz-blues band performing in the Washington area.

Note: Several US staff visited Gaza recently. Aura Kanegis, AFSC's Director of Public Policy and Advocacy, was among them. This was her first trip to Gaza. These are her reflections and photographs from the trip witnessing the recent devastation of Operation Protective Edge, just the latest round of violence against a people under siege.  - Lucy

  • Read more about An unnatural disaster: What I saw in Gaza
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  • Read more about Greg Elliott

Greg serves as the Friends Relations Associate for AFSC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born and raised in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania, Greg grew up attending North Branch Friends Meeting at the Curtis family farm in the Poconos. Over the last ten years, he has facilitated numerous workshops for activists and Friends on a variety of topics, including anti-oppression activism, empire, and the "Inquirer's Weekend" at Pendle Hill with Trayce Peterson.

“Here, you might be interested in this. They’re a Quaker organization.” I look down at the title: "MARStar: Newsletter of the Middle Atlantic Region, American Friends Service Committee." The cover has a large image of protestors holding signs. “Cool,” I say out loud. I turn the pages and see words I’ve never seen before -- “social justice” “activists” “the prison industrial complex.” Immediately, I recognize that this magazine, this document, is something significant, something important, something I am connected to. For the first time in my life, I feel proud to be a Quaker.

  • Read more about A work of the Spirit: Why I felt led to work at AFSC
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