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I'm Quaker. The school historically attached to my church (that severed ties from us financially as it becme a bougie school for elite liberals) is trying to union bust the teachers on Trump-based "religious grounds." I gave $5 and I invite you to as well https://www.gofundme.com/f/bfs-union-strike-fund?utm_medium=email&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_email%2B5102-48hr-donor-share
There's been this pattern in the past couple of years where Quaker schools will become status symbol schools for the "elite" then push out the ideology and support for the congregations that their brand is based on. This is a similar story from 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/05/magazine/friends-new-york-quaker-school-ben-frisch-hitler-joke.html
For our church's school, the majority of people on the school board are not Quakers but "act under their beliefs." This includes people who work for malicious organizations such as Goldman Sachs. As an elite status school, this Quaker school is a lotus for capitalist power.
Quakerism is kind of a "brand" and has been for a long time. There is far higher stakes out there when it comes to cultural appropriation, but there is a pattern of corporate interests cannibalizing Radical Dogmatic Progressive Christianity for cash. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/nyregion/brooklyn-friends-quaker-union.html
I say "Quaker" and 95% of you think "oatmeal." The man behind Quaker Oats was not a Quaker, but instead an industrialist who wanted people to conflate Quaker values with his brand. And it was successful to the point that his brand consumed the meaning of "Quaker" in our culture.
And I think even when people are slightly familiar with Quakerism sometimes gives this reaction of nodding along & saying "oh, youre one of the GOOD Christians." But I think people mistake Quakerism as being friendly to (neo)liberalism when it's a pretty radical, leftist ideology
Quakerism drastically opposes the systemic order. From day one, it was a direct challenge to the rising capitalist class in England. It's abolitionist, vehemently pacifist. They've done a lot of destructive wrong in the past, but they're also not friends to "how things are."
Quakerism has a radical Christian imagination of what type of world is possible. For a school to union bust under the "Quaker" name is - without qualification - absolutely Unchristian. I'm joining these teachers in the picket line this Friday bc that's what the light of God asks
