Our intentions are simple, torture must be stopped...
This site was last changed on June 19, 2007!
Our Presenters at our conference this year, June 2007, were
Alfred McCoy, Col. Dan Smith, Hector Aristizabal, Peggy Brick, Gretchen Ellis, Bonnie Kerness, and Jeanne Herrick-Stare
Click here for a Resource Book developed for the conference.
The weekend of October 6, 2007, a group of people interested in working on the future of QUIT will gather at Pendle Hill. If you're committed to helping move QUIT into the future and would like to attend the meeting, please send an email to franko@ix.netcom.com expressing your interest!
For information about joining the QUIT listserver, please click on the Contact Us link above!
To get a 2007 poster to distribute, click here.
Also, our Friends in Canada might want to check out http://quaker.ca/quit as our Canadian QUIT Friends are also putting on a conference!
Dear Friends,
QUIT is the spiritual work of Quakers to end torture.
There have been too many stories of American torture involving children and women, civilians and soldiers, abductions and disappearances, and the use of medical professionals to “improve” torture. These reports have brought North American Friends together to support a renewed effort to oppose torture as policy and practice in all places, at all times, for all peoples.
Minutes of support for this new work have come from numerous Monthly and Yearly Meetings to declare that torture is always immoral, illegal, and abhorrent. Our care for healing extends to all survivors and perpetrators as the practice of torture defiles all involved with the sickness of de-humanizing and the lasting memory of the worst humans can become.
The Quaker Initiative to End Torture (QUIT) begins in the United States where we have learned that much of the responsibility for torture around the world resides. We began with a conference held on June 2-4, 2006 at Guilford College Greensboro, North Carolina for education leading to action. These two intentions bring to bear a long history of good works among Friends in places of suffering and injustice. We continued with a second conference June 1-3 2007 at Guilford College Greensboro, North Carolina. A planning meeting to talk about further work will tentatively be held at Pendle Hill on October 6th, 2007.
Our greatest dangers are denial and inaction. The greatest good will come by being faithful to the Light that guides compassionate work and restores our frail humanity in the face of unimaginable pain and systemic illness.
We will begin in the silence of worship, waiting upon that leading to surrender our worldly obstacles, and continue in reverence, as the work is large and will take more than good intentions or a mere generation. We are hopeful because such work strengthens our spiritual muscles and disciplines our listening for the Divine in all.
In the Light,
John Calvi
Original Convenor (now on Sabbatical!)