Newtown Quakers to Hear Philadelphia Quaker on Racial Justice

Newtown Quakers to Hear Philadelphia Quaker on Racial Justice

Lucy Duncan, Director of Friends Relations of the American Friends Service Committee, will speak on Waking up White, Showing up for Racial Justice at 9:45 a.m. on Sunday, September 27, at the historic Quaker Meetinghouse at 219 Court Street http://www.newtownfriendsmeeting.org). Meeting for Worship in the manner of Friends will follow at 11 a.m. The public is invited to all events.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Quaker organization devoted to service, development, and peace with justice throughout the world. Its $30 million annual budget supports programs in fourteen countries and in thirty-five cities in the US based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

In 1947, the American Friends Service Committee was a co-recipient on behalf of “all Quakers everywhere” of the Nobel Peace Prize for Quaker relief work “…from the nameless to the nameless….”

In this interactive session Lucy Duncan will share her own story of waking up to white privilege and racism. She will share an exercise to explore what white privilege is and how it shows up in our lives daily, and then invite participants to share their own stories with one another. She will also explore how this understanding might lead to more racial justice.

Duncan will discuss such questions as: What is racism and how does it operate? What is your story of waking up to racism and white privilege? How do we learn and unlearn racism? What would it mean if we fully embraced our commitment to equality in our country and worked to end racism?

Lucy Duncan has been a storyteller for over 20 years and has worked with Quaker Meetings on telling stories for racial justice and spiritual experience. She serves as the co-clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s (Quakers) Undoing Racism Group. Before working for AFSC, Lucy was Director of Communications at Friends General Conference (Quakers), managed QuakerBooks of FGC, and owned and managed her own children’s bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska -- The Story Monkey.

Duncan received her BA from St. John’s College in Santa Fe. NM and was credentialed to teach elementary school at UC-Berkeley, CA. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, got to know Quakers during her mother’s tenure as a teacher at Scattergood Friends School in Iowa, and became a member of Iowa Yearly Meeting Quakers in the early 1990s after a powerful mystical experience. She attends Green Street Friends Meeting in Philadelphia and lives with her son on the grounds of a Quaker cemetery, for which her partner serves as caretaker.

Newtown Friends Meeting, co-founded in 1815 by Quaker minister and artist, Edward Hicks, is open to the public, with Sunday School classes for children and adults at 9:45 a.m. and worship based on expectant silence “after the manner of Friends” at 11 a.m. Childcare is provided.

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