10/2/2022

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Kudos to you for your speech at the Phoenix Dinner, the best part being the end when you reminded the audience about the origins of the name of the event. Thanks for introducing me to Rep. George Henry White & his speech where he paid a “temporary farewell" to the 55th Congress noting the negro, “Phoenix–like will rise up someday and come again.” Did you know of his support for “the bold proposal that states with discriminatory laws should have decreased representation in the U.S. House, proportionate to the number of eligible voters they prevented from going to the polls?”

            Was your buddy, Cedric there? I looked him up & found that he is back in NOLA so he can live with his family. I was surprised to see his proposal to “start an all-male residential school where we’d take young men out of their community & we’d push them & we hug them & we kick them & we make sure that they know that the world is theirs if they apply themselves.” I had a dream of that kind of thing back in the day. Maybe I should team up with Cedric.

            My ask of you today is to acknowledge World Quaker Day. It’s the 1st Sunday in the 10th month when those of us who are compelled by George Fox’s idea that there is that of God in everyone reach out to one another. I participated in a Zoom gathering last night with Friends from Canberra, Hong Kong, Singapore & the Philippines. As we discussed “becoming the Quaker the world needs,” we reflected on the idea that WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER, even in Myanmar & Ukraine.

            FYI some Black Americans share our commitment to peace, I encourage you to look up “Black Alliance for Peace” which seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement” & “work(s) to oppose both militarized domestic state repression, & the policies of de-stabilization, subversion and the permanent war agenda of the U.S. state globally.”   

            BYBS,