Annapolis Friends Meeting’s (AFM’s) Change Group is part of AFM’s Peace & Social Concerns committee formed to address racial and age diversity concerns, both within the Meeting and in the larger community.
Change Group began as an “Ad Hoc Black Lives Matter Banner Committee (BLM),” but, in response to Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s (BYM’s) Growing Diverse Leadership Committee’s recommendation to local meetings, BLM changed its name to “Change Group (CG)” and expanded its mission. The new Change Group promptly obtained AFM’s adoption of a commitment (excerpt below) on 4/6/20 to formally become an antiracist faith community.
Generally, CG may partner with other AFM committees as appropriate and already done to encourage particular activities with Deconstructing Racism (in book reading) and PSC (in Arundel Connecting Together), as well as proposing actions directly to Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business (MfW w/ATB) (e.g., donations to BYM’s STRIDE scholarships).
Excerpted from Anti-Racist Declaration of 4/6/20:
CG role in AFM Anti-Racist Declaration:
AFM’s Change Group recommend[ed] that [AFM] adopt this Declaration as a living document that later may be changed and may be part of our learning process.”
Simply “addressing racism” is too weak. We must immerse ourselves in this concern and act. …Annapolis Friends are called on an ongoing basis to hold ourselves accountable, individually and collectively, in our decisions and practices, our actions and inaction, using queries for this purpose. For example:
- To place our decisions in context, how do we hear the voices and include the concerns of our neighbors in our decisions and actions? Do our assumptions and stereotypes, privilege and assigned social-status impede our efforts to be in community with our neighbors?
- To consider the impact of our decisions, how might our decisions or practices promote fairness and inclusion of those harmed by racist behavior or systems?
- To offer a model, how do our decisions or practices fulfill our intention to be an anti-racist faith community? Do they enable us to “let our lives speak” and to be more welcoming?
The Change Group also recommends as examples that, individually and as a Meeting, we:
- Make it our custom regularly to seek visits with our African-American neighbors and others we perceive as different in their faith communities and elsewhere to listen and understand their lives and their concerns;
- Invite our neighbors, regardless of race, origin or class, to share our friendship and our communities as they are led; and
- Seek and adopt ways we can act to end racism and other harmful-isms, to undo prejudices, and to make our communities more inclusive, diverse and whole.