Reparations Action Working Group

The Reparations Action Working Group is under the care of the Growing Diverse Leadership Committee. The formation of the Working Group was accepted by the Supervisory Committee acting on behalf of Interim Meeting in Third Month 2020 during the SARS-COVI-2 pandemic.

Charge of BYM’s Reparations Action Working Group

(The full minute can be found in the BYM Yearbook 2020, p. 77 - here

The Reparations Action Working Group is under the care of the Growing Diverse Leadership Committee.  This Working Group will assist Quakers and others to explore injustices and harm resulting from systemic racism, how they occurred, and how they may be healed. At least annually, the Working Group also will review our goals, our progress, and report updates to BYM.  Approved at BYM Interim Meeting, May 2020

Focusing our work in 2023-2024

From RAWG’s Advance Report for Annual Session 2023

These are the goals of our working group for the coming year.  Let’s explore, discuss, and then discern how Friends in BYM are called to address the harms of systemic racism, an essential part of making peace in the world.   How can you and your Meeting take part in these initiatives?  

• Serve as a resource to help Meetings both better understand what reparations and retrospective justice might entail, and to set and reach goals for themselves in this work.

• Connect with other Quaker groups working on reparations outside our Yearly Meeting to keep up with what they are doing and set up relationships of mutual support

• Develop a fund for BYM for retrospective and reparative justice – we can create a BYM fund, we can support the creation of funds by monthly meetings, we can do both and help free up money for people who have been harmed by racism.  We are considering these.  This will let us immediately begin to share our resources in ways that will help address harms of racism in the lives of members of our wider community.

• Develop ways to support Friends in BYM who feel tensions with each other related to racism. 

• We are considering what it would look like to have a more public faith witness for retrospective justice and repair.  What do you think?

Listed below are the current members of the working group.

RAWG Resources

The following links provide further resources for learning more about Reparations, Retrospective Justice and current Reparations Actions. 

Resources for learning about Reparations

Actions for Reparations and other forms of Retrospective Justice

Reparation Actions happening now

Mutual Aid: A Friendly Approach

On Saturday, October 29th, BYM’s Reparations Action Working Group and Rashid Darden offered a new workshop, Mutual Aid: A Friendly Approach. Rashid Darden of Friends Meeting of Washington presented an engaging and interactive experience that walked Friends through the surprisingly colorful history of mutual aid. How do fezzes and tents connect with food pantries? What’s the difference between charity and true mutual aid? Friends explored answers to these questions and built skills necessary to begin their own mutual aid ministries in their local meetings. 

Meeting Facilitator, Rashid Darden. Black and gay for over 40 years, Rashid is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington where he has served on the Peace & Social Concerns Committee. In BYM, he served on the Growing Diverse Leadership Committee. From 2021 to 2022, he convened the Transatlantic Friends Worship Group, which, for 52 consecutive weeks, centered the spirit-led leadership of people of color as an essential element of the Quaker testimony of justice. He has been Clerk of the Fellowship of Friends of African Descent since 2021 and works as Communications Manager for Friends General Conference.

Reparations Working Group Annual Reports