Peace and Social Concerns Committee minutes, 1/4/2016

Present: Jane J (clerking), George M, Carol L, Ka R, Diane C, Roger C, Frank G, Daniel G.

We began with a time of silence.

1. Roger will put Ka on the email distribution list.

2. Diane will clerk our meeting on February 1.

3. Daniel will handle letter writing on February 14. Roger will do it on January 10.

4. The interfaith calendar brought to us by Frank was brought up again, and he will take last month’s proposal to the Clerk again, with a proposal for locating it in the Fellowship Room.

5. Ka and Jane, and possibly others, are planning to attend the refugee meeting on January 9 and will tell us what they learn there.

6. Our recommendation last month on the Muslim statement was approved, and Andy sent it to the media, where it appeared in at least three papers.

7. We have been asked to endorse a “Faith Letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch” asking for a federal prosecutor to investigate the case of Tamir Rice. We did not find that we could endorse the letter as currently written. Ruth H has offered to work on a letter on essentially the same subject, which we could use, perhaps on one of our letter writing days. Frank offered to help Ruth with that. We expect a candidate letter to come to our February 1 meeting.

8. The pipeline: Carol attended a meeting on how to become an Intervener on the proposed Kinder-Morgan pipeline and she told us what she had learned there. The description of how to become an Intervener which Carol wrote up will be sent to the listserv by Carol ASAP, or by Roger if necessary. Note: to send something to the listserv, just send it as email to mtpsc@lists.riseup.net.

9. The Pipeline statement sent by us to the Meeting in December was not approved because of some reservations, some of which were sent to us by Will S. Among ourselves we discovered we were not in unity on some of the assumptions in the Pipeline statement and we spent some time in discussing these. The issues are complex, and there are conflicts between values involved. Andy has offered to work with us to have a threshing session on these issues, perhaps to be held during the 9am Sunday time. We came to agree that a conversation among our community on these issues may be more important than agreeing to a statement soon and issuing it to the papers, etc. We will report to the meeting for business that we cannot bring back a revised report, but we will work with the Clerk to arrange a threshing session on issues raised.

10. We closed with a time of silence.