Moving at the Speed of Light

The current administration is operating at a whirlwind pace and sowing chaos as it goes. FCNL strives to operate at the speed of Light in our advocacy for peace, justice, and the environment.  

Friends may find peace in the steadiness of our work in this time of challenge and confusion. Here are three examples of how we are keeping the work going in this new era: 

• Through presidential administrations, the Friends Committee on National Legislation has our vision statement as our guiding principles: 
   

  We seek a world free of war and the threat of war. 
  We seek a society with equity and justice for all. 
  We seek a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled. 
  We seek an earth restored. 

   

  We also remain grounded in our mission and core values and our anti-racism, anti-bias, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion commitments. 
   

• Our policy work is not set by the political climate but through deep discernment with Friends and grounded in our policy statement, The World We Seek.  Our priorities for the 119th Congress were developed through the discernment of Quaker communities across the country and approved at our Annual Meeting. 

   

  These continue to guide our lobbying with Congress. Right now, we are leading on push back to the Trump foreign aid freeze, calling on Congress to speak up to protect those who need U.S. assistance. As Congress considers a new budget reconciliation, we are also working to make sure that it doesn’t fund mass deportation at the expense of families who need help with health care and food assistance. 
   

• We hold weekly Witness Wednesday Silent Reflection with F/friends around the country to ground our work in worship. Join us at this week! 

As we are grounded in consistent faithful witness, we also seek to be responsive to this moment, even when that means stretching outside of our typical advocacy work. Here are some ways we are responding in new ways to the needs we see before us: 

• We are joining with other faith leaders and coalition partners to push back on the administration’s overreach and urge Congress to uphold our democracy and reassert the constitutional balance of powers.  FCNL is joining with other faith partners every Wednesday in March to hold vigils on Capitol Hill to speak out against abuses of power by the administration and urge Congress to act. 
   

• For the first time our Advocacy Teams are taking up both an international issue focus and a domestic flex issue. Internationally, they are working on “Aid, Not Arms: Opening the Way to Peace in the Middle East” and domestically, they are seeking to protect the vital investments in clean energy from the Inflation Reduction Act. Learn more about these initiatives and the Advocacy Teams. 
   

• We have a new project, “Storytelling to Lift Immigrant Communities,” to support our advocacy work on behalf of just migration by changing the narrative about immigration.  In addition to our policy work on migration, we have also developed a “know your rights” resource around deportation defense. 

We do not have the capacity to focus on all of the issues in our policy statement. That is why we work in coalitions with those who are focusing on the issues that are not our priorities this year. We have developed a page with resources and partners on civil rights issues that may be on people’s hearts right now, from attacks on diversity initiatives to anti-trans legislation to reproductive health care being criminalized.  

We will be most powerful if you are involved in the important work that we are doing and if you stay grounded in our advocacy for justice. You can connect with us on social media (Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram, or Threads). You can sign up for our newsletters where we cover the news of the week or specific issue areas. Or you can take action with FCNL on something specific we are lobbying on. 

May we all lean into the words often attributed to Rabbi Tarfon: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”  

The work of peace and justice is all of ours to do together. Let us continue moving at the speed of Light.