“Then will your words, lives, and conversations preach and manifest, that ye serve God in the new life.”

—, epistle 200 Let Your Life Speak Profiles in waging peace Dear Friend,

This year, the American Friends Service Committee celebrates its Centennial. For 100 years, AFSC has been working faithfully for Let your life speak— social change, putting Quaker testimonies into practice around the world. AFSC and Friends need each other in this moment when support AFSC and witness for peace, equality, and community is all the more essential. Featured here are five stories from AFSC staff, partners and in our shared work supporters who are following the leadings of Spirit into work for justice, peace, and love. We have included only short excerpts of each person’s story. Read more at afsc.org/LetYourLifeSpeak. afsc.org/FriendsDonate Go We encourage you to use these stories and the queries that follow as guides for reflection and sharing in meeting for worship, with your family, or with a committee or other group from your meeting. How is Spirit moving you to respond? If you would like to participate in one of the many ways we support Friends in working for lasting peace with justice, visit the other ways to give Friends Engage webpage, afsc.org/FriendsEngage, for more infor- mation about programs of action and accompaniment. Help us begin our next century by contributing to AFSC’s  Call our Donor Services team at: programs around the world, as well as AFSC-supported organizing 1-888-588-2372 efforts among Friends. Go to afsc.org/FriendsDonate to give to these shared efforts today.  Mail a donation to:

In the Spirit, AFSC Development 1501 Cherry St. , PA 19102 Please make checks payable to “AFSC” Lucy Duncan Director of Friends Relations Linda Lewis

“So that’s one thing we’re working for—positive engagement. You can’t have peace if you won’t talk to people, if you don’t take that first step of trying to find a common ground.”

Linda Lewis is the China and North Korea country representative for AFSC. She has worked in the Korean peninsula since she was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1970. Linda administers a program to build positive relation- ships between the U.S. and North Korean citizens through education and sustainable agriculture programs with co-operative farms in North Korea. In 2007, a group of AFSC’s partner farmers traveled to China to observe and learn about rice farming techniques. After their visit, the North Korean farmers implement- ed the techniques on their own farms with AFSC’s help, and increased rice production 10-to-20 percent. Linda is hopeful that the technique will spread widely in North Korea and help stabilize the country’s food supply.

: How are you engaging people with whom you disagree? Dustin Washington

“Anger cannot fundamentally be what produces the world we want to see, it has to be a deep, deep love, agape.”

Dustin Washington is the program director for the Community Justice Program in Seattle, Washington. Dustin helped develop the AFSC Tyree Scott Freedom School and Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) projects, which were designed to empower young people and harness their innate curiosity and critical thinking through anti-racism and community leadership training. In Seattle, Dustin and the Community Justice Program also support the Ending the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC) youth organizing project. For three years, EPIC urged King County officials to address the racial dispar- ity in youth detention rates and stop the construction of a new youth detention center. Officials responded with significant steps to downsize the planned detention cen- ter. Youth also successfully advocated for a resolution to reduce juvenile detention in the city to zero, which passed Seattle’s City Council unanimously in 2015.

query: How do you move from anger to love, from love to action? Lauren Brownlee

“There is often a fear of proselytizing that makes [Quakers] not willing to show the world who we are. My hope would be that people in the Quaker community feel comfortable owning who we are and what we do so that then we can all work together.”

Lauren Brownlee is a member of Bethesda Friends Meeting in Maryland and the Quaker Palestine Israel Network. After Lauren’s meeting decided to publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement, she volunteered to design a flyer explaining how Quaker principles informed the meeting’s decision. Some members were concerned that the Quaker principles would distract or confuse the wider community, but Lauren and others insisted it was a vital component of the message. As meeting members handed out the flyers in downtown Bethesda, they were met with rage and anger from some, but gratitude and love from others. Their action created an opening for dialogue with their community.

query: How do you share the light of your Quaker convictions with the wider world? Lis-Marie Alvarado

“A lot of people feel inspired by the youth, but we get inspired by our elders who have led the way for us to even be there.”

Lis-Marie Alvarado is a community organizer in AFSC’s Miami, Florida office. She immigrated to the U.S. from Nicaragua with her family when she was 12. She has worked on both labor and migrant rights organizing throughout her life. In a rural town south of Miami, Lis-Marie worked with a group of immigrant women who were unable to find jobs. They developed an informal workers’ co-op, making a traditional Salvadoran street food to sell to neighbors and splitting the money among the women. Because of Lis-Marie’s focus on grassroots relationship-building, many of the women’s children are now participating in AFSC programs to celebrate their culture and anti- immigrant attitudes.

query: How do you hear the wisdom and passion of every person in your life, regardless of their age? George Lakey

“Fear is not there to be enjoyed, it’s there to turn into excitement and then proceed as needed.” Lakey George Lakey is a Quaker, activist, author, and teacher. photo He participated in an AFSC summer program as a young adult, where he clarified his calling to live a prophetic life. While working as the chair of A Quaker Action Group in the late 1960s, George was “clobbered” with a leading to participate in an anti-war service mission the group was organizing. Despite having to leave his family and job, George sailed to with seven other activists to deliver medical supplies to civilians caught in the conflict. U.S. and Vietnamese military forces tried to intimidate the sailors into giving up their mission, but the peace crew was undeterred. Since his safe return to the U.S., George has continued to work on innumerable projects for peace and the liberation of all peoples, from Training for Change to the Earth Quaker Action Team.

query: What are you afraid of? Why? How could you turn that fear into excitement?