New racial justice workshop: Available now!

The ECAM Racial Justice Group are happy to announce a new workshop. This will be facilitated by Till Geiger. If you are interested, please contact either Véronique Pin-Fat or Ann Lewis. Also attached is the complete programme of workshops for 2024, including 'Unlearning racism' and 'White allyship'. We are supported by ECAM and can attend your Local Meeting at no cost to you. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.

 

 

Quakers, Britain’s imperial past and reparations session

This workshop explores why Quakers are currently exploring our involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. This exploration aims to provide the basis for an informed discussion of the issue of reparations before Britain Yearly Meeting. 

 

I.Openings 

II.Commitment to become an anti-racist church and a sustainable church.

  • Locate in the testimonies particularly peace and justice
  • Locate in campaign to abolish the slave trade and eventually slavery

 

III.Reflection Prompt 

  • Should we assume individual/corporate responsibility for transatlantic slave trade and our extraction of resources/human capital/wealth? 
  • Was George Fox a Racist?
  • Was Woodbrooke built with money derived from the exploitation of worker on cocoa plantations? 

IV.Historical exploration 

  • Connection between capitalism and imperialism/Atlantic slave trade
  • Quakers as part of the Atlantic slave trade (eg small arms manufacture, slave trade and plantations)
  • Quakers as colonists - treatment of First Nations in the USA
  • Wealth accumulation and industrial revolution in Britain

 

V.Implications for Quakers today 

  • Continued exploitation of the global south
  • Structural racism
  • Our complicity and inability to escape capitalism 

 

VI.Worship sharing: How might we think about reparation now?