Peace Out! Week Seventy-nine

Joining what is dubbed the "Strike for Black Lives", tens of thousands of fast-food, ride-share, nursing-home and airport workers in more than 25 US cities are planning to walk off the job on Monday, July 20, 2020 for a full-day strike. Support these efforts in your community, or inspire your own strike if there is not one planned. This is the work of EPF -- finding action and advocacy and making it happen to bring real Gospel change. Read the full story here.

Communications Committee: Support the communications strategy for EPF; provide new content for website , social media, and Constant Contact communications; consider adequacy of communications for our needs; help manage social media platforms and “comments”; blogging; volunteer to help with virtual office details. (NEC leadership: Bruce Freeman (OH), Jessica Jew (CA), Rob Burgess (MI))

Sustainability Committee: Develop a multi-year diversified development plan and goals for EPF; help with fundraising, budgeting, determining long range financial needs and campaigns; help consider how EPF money should be managed; determine electronic banking needs and look at bank investments to determine suitability for managing EPF’s money. (NEC leadership: Rev. Will Mebane (MA), Kathy McGregor (AR))

Membership Committee: Create the requirements and commitments for EPF membership for individuals; recruiting member initiatives; help look at donor and contact database management; chapter and peace partner recruiting. (NEC leadership: Rev. Richard Wineland (TN) , Rev. Bob Davidson (CO), Rt. Rev. Dan Edwards (CO))

Programming Committee: help with creation resources for missions of EPF (curriculum, materials, preacher's/speaker’s bureau, etc.) and pilgrimages (Year of Action and urban pilgrimages); consult on management of EPF virtual store; review and expand partnership with other peace organizations. (NEC leadership: Rev. Cody Maynus (SD), Bob Lotz (MI), Rev. John Floberg (ND); and Rev. Mike Wallens (TX))

Our Episcopal Bishops United Against Gun Violence group is sharing news that their partners at Brady launched a Democracy Access project with March for Our Lives ("MFOL") focused on voting rights in an effort to highlight the link between gun violence prevention and democracy.

We have backed many initiatives to end or at least reduce gun violence, only to see them voted down by NRA-purchased state and US legislators. When we support candidates pledged to the policies we need, they often lose because too few people have access to the most basic democratic right: the vote.

Gun violence prevention is an anti-racism movement. The suppression of voting rights is an act of racism meant to keep us in a Jim Crow world of White privilege and Black oppression. Poll taxes and literacy tests have been replaced by the closing of polling places in Black neighborhoods, purging of voter rolls, and lifelong disenfranchisement of felons in the age of mass incarceration. Even though a majority of our people support common-sense gun laws, voter suppression keeps many from being able to vote for them.

Brady, MFOL and Bishops United are highlighting four aspects of the battle for voting rights:

1. Vote-by-mail and absentee voting
2. Online and same-day voter registration
3. Early voting
4. Restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions

You can find the campaign website here:
https://www.bradyunited.org/program/democracy

JOHN NEVIN SAYRE AWARD
NOMINEES SOUGHT

Episcopal Peace Fellowship seeks nominations for its John Nevin Sayre Award. EPF established the Sayre award in 1979 to honor founding EPF member Rev. John Nevin Sayre for his lifetime of service waging the Gospel of Peace. Sayre was an Episcopal priest, pacifist, missionary, teacher and author who gained notoriety when he challenged President Woodrow Wilson to address the devastating events of World War I. Because of Sayre’s efforts, Wilson agreed recognizing conscientious objection as a legal alternative to military service. Sayre has been described as a peace apostle whose life was devoted to the waging of peace and opposition to war.

In 1979, two years after Sayre’s death, Episcopal Peace Fellowship honored his lifelong commitment to peace by establishing the John Nevin Sayre Award. The award is conferred every three years at General Convention for courageous witness in the cause of justice and peace to a recipient selected by the EPF National Executive Council. Through this award Episcopal Peace Fellowship publicly recognizes Episcopalians who are actively living their baptismal promises of striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. Like the person for whom the award is named, recipients have dedicated their life’s work to courageously promoting a culture of peace and nonviolence in the face of cultural opposition. Past recipients include Rev. Naim Ateek, Madeline Trichel, Mary Miller, Louis Crew, Newland Smith, Very Rev. Canon Patrick Augustine, Caroline Stevenson, and Patty and the late Rt. Rev. Ed Browning.

The 2021 John Nevin Sayre Award will be presented at the EPF General Convention reception on Tuesday, June 29, 2021. The Rev. Bob Davidson, chair of EPF’s National Executive Council, looks forward to EPF’s reception each Convention. “It isn’t often that we are witnesses to peacemakers of such magnitude living in our midst. These awards remind us that working among us are living, breathing models of God’s call to follow the Prince of Peace,” said Rev. Davidson.

Nominations should be emailed to EPF Executive Director Melanie Merkle Atha at epfactnow by November 1, 2020, including in the letter of nomination the ways in which the nominee has worked for peace and justice.