Dear Friends,
Today begins the 56th annual Fellowship of Reconciliation conference in Seabeck, Washington, and some 200 FOR members and friends will gather for four days of workshops, music, keynote speeches, and fellowship over this July 4th weekend.
As I prepared to drive several hours from my home in Corvallis, Oregon to this wonderful FOR family event, I was filled with gratitude for the grassroots work of the Fellowship around our country and the globe.
This week, I was appointed as the new chairperson of FOR-USA's National Council, a great honor. It has been a privilege to serve each of you through the council the past four years, and I'm excited to assume leadership of FOR's governing body at this critical time for our peace and justice work. I express gratitude to the outgoing chair, Bill Scheurer of Lindenhurst, Illinois, for his two years of faithful stewardship in that role.
 Earlier this week at FOR's "Shadowcliff" headquarters in Nyack, New York, your National Council completed four intense days of productive meetings. We are delighted to the appointment of a multi-faith cohort of seven inspiring new members to NC: Sahar Alsahlani of Stony Point, NY; Max Hess of Atlanta, GA; Jeff Hood of Denton, TX; La Trina Jackson of Stone Mountain, GA; Schuyler Rhodes of San Francisco, CA; and Rolanda West of Chicago, IL. Your new Council members brings a wealth of diverse skills and experience in spiritually-based organizing for racial, economic, and environmental justice; let us welcome them together!
Please join us as contributing members of the Fellowship. Your donation is needed now more than ever.
We are very excited about FOR's plans for the coming year and our role in strengthening that work! Here are some highlights from our strategic planning conversations:
- We will target intergenerational engagement, developing training opportunities for young adults and their elders within a "mutual mentoring" framework. Next month's "The Future Is NOW" summit in Berkeley, CA will be a special program highlight (learn more and register!).
- We will strengthen the capacity of the movement for nonviolent social change: by identifying common needs and providing human and written resources to support grassroots organizing, especially in our local chapters & affiliates; by supporting FOR's work globally, especially through the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and FOR Peace Presence; and by providing fiscal sponsorship to dynamic emerging initiatives, like Waging Nonviolence and the Freedom House.
- We adopted a balanced budget that rigorously challenges FOR to a more sustainable model of organizing and outreach.
- We debated FOR's role in addressing root causes of violence, including mass incarceration, the death penalty, and U.S. militarism in Latin America and the Middle East; and we issued a statement on the continuing violence in Iraq and Syria and our hopes for the suffering peoples in those lands.
- We held enriching conversations with distinguished guests: Lucas Johnson, new IFOR international coordinator; Zoi Dethier, organizer for Agir Pour le Paix (IFOR branch in Belgium); Ciprian Iancu, past executive director of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York; and Turtle MacDermott of the Community of Living Traditions at Stony Point Center.
- We committed to active participationin the global celebration of FOR's centennial. This week at Seabeck, 200 of us will help to kick off this 100th anniversary celebration! Next month, an intergenerational cohort of FOR-USA representatives -- Executive Director Kristin Stoneking with Virginia Baron, Lili Baxter, Paul Dekar, Gretchen Honnold, and Gus Kaufman -- will travel to Konstanz, Germany for IFOR's commemoration event.
 Please join me today, on this "July FORth" holiday, by recommiting your support of FOR through a sustaining contribution to the Fellowship. With a donation of $100 or more this month, FOR will send you a copy of Dr. Vincent Harding's Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero.
In Peace,
Laurie Childers
Chair, National Council
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Photo: Lucas Johnson, Kristin Stoneking, Zoi Dethier, and Laurie Childers (left to right) on June 29, 2014.
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