Economic justice
Meeting for Sufferings discussed an item of increasing concern
Economic justice was one of the major concerns raised at Meeting for Sufferings. Helen Drewery, general secretary of Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), talked about the work presently being done on the issue by staff at Friends House.
She referred to the recent, very well attended, one-day conference at Friends House and to the follow-up event to be held at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, in Birmingham, in November, to which fifty Area Meetings have appointed representatives.
She mentioned the economic issues programme of QPSW and urged Friends to make use of the resources that had been developed, such as the ‘Quakernomics’ blog (quaker.org.uk/quakernomics), and to become more informed and involved in the issue.
She also linked the theme of economic justice to a subject at the heart of Yearly Meeting Gathering – the commitment to become a low carbon, sustainable community – and mentioned the QPSW ‘Sustainability Toolkit’. She hoped it would be online soon and encouraged Friends to commit to the resolutions made in Canterbury.
‘We are doing this,’ she stressed, ‘for future generations and for the poor of the world.’ She said that a crucial word was ‘community’ and emphasised that Friends, by working together, could be a model of how to do it well and joyfully.
