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Minutes of Peace and Social Concerns Meetings

April 6, 2008 April 27, 2008 May 25, 2008 June 29, 2008 July 27, 2008 August 31, 2008 September 28, 2008 October 26, 2008 November 30, 2008 January 11, 2009

February 22, 2009 March 29, 2009 April 26, 2009 May 31, 2009 June 28, 2009 October 31, 2009 February 28, 2010 March 28, 2010 April 25, 2010 May 30, 2010

Minutes - Peace and Social Concerns Meeting
October 26, 2008

present were:Kate Murphey, Tony Swan, Ken Magee, Faith Marsalli and Shari and Bill Burke

The first item for discussion was the banner stating that "Torture is a Moral Issue" that has been hanging on the outside of the meetinghouse for several months. Because people felt that perhaps it was not being noticed anymore because it has been up for awhile, we agreed to take it down after Election Day and put it back up in the spring or if events warrant it before then.

Food Bank Project and Bread for the World was the next topic up for discussion. We all agreed that we would like to continue providing food to the food bank and we will think further about ways to make the process of collecting the food interesting. Some possibilities include preparation of simple food of the kind that is being collected in a given month, a tour of the food bank, and whatever other ideas we can come up with. Shari suggested that Bread for the World be put on the list for consideration as our recipient of funds generated next year through Quaker Bakers and other activities. Everyone agreed to this.

We had a short discussion about whether to begin selling fair trade items again. As with the international project the meeting focuses on each year, it was agreed that if we were to do this it would be best if there was a strong educational component and not just a situation where we are selling the same things that can be found in local stores for the sake of selling them. If we do this, it would be to increase awareness. Kate is going to get more information about various aspects of this and report back.

Immigration was the next item on the agenda. Faith has been in touch with David Leslie from Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon in Portland. He said he would be available for a Peace Supper as would many other people he knows-all from the Portland area. He forwarded her email message to John Munson who emailed her back. There was some concern among various committee members that this is a huge and controversial topic about which we do not currently have enough information to do anything meaningful with. We all felt that educating ourselves was the best first step we could take. Faith pointed out that the issue has been coming up a lot in meeting. She said further that in her mind, simplicity was not all about money, but also has to do with how we spend our time. What we choose to focus on is important. Ken pointed out that at Yearly Meeting the issue was tabled-not because it was considered unimportant, but because it is so big that people need more time to get educated and get more information. There are now 8 Spanish-speaking churches in the Northwest Yearly Meeting, so it is an issue of increasing importance. Faith will look into getting a speaker for a Peace Supper in January so we can begin to educate ourselves on the issue. We will also ask Marshall Staunton, who has experience with the issue to come and talk to us at our next meeting. With regard to an email we received from Cindy Prince about a specific case, Kate said she would find out more about what specifically we could do.

Ken passed out a list of activities undertaken by other churches in the southern Oregon area of Northwest Yearly Meeting.

Since it is budget time again, we discussed our funding requests for next year. We agreed to have less for the Peace Suppers-we will budget $250 each for two suppers that would involve people traveling from out of town and $100 for a local supper. We will discuss next time whether to budget for the Community Helping Fund or whether to fund that through specific donations or sales of something.

With regard to the scholarship money for Kaimosi University we agreed that we would wait to speak to Dennis Hagan, who will be visiting with us on November 16 before making any recommendations to the whole meeting.

Finally, Tony talked about some ideas he had as a result of his experience giving a talk at the First United Methodist church recently. He noticed that they are actively doing important work in the community and thought it would be good for us to think about doing some collaborative work with other churches in the area. We were excited by the idea and will discuss further how to pursue this at our next meeting.

As always, feel free to email Shari at: shariannburke@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments!

October-November Food Drive will be food used for Holiday meals and food help for the family that Karen Little is working with.