Talk:American Friends Service Committee

Mary Ellen McNish

I was redirected to this page when I clicked a wikipedia link to "Mary Ellen McNish". She (Mary) used to be the General Secretary of American Friends Service Committee but now she is not, as a quick google search will reveal. She's the head of the Hunger Project now - redirect there or create a brief article about her? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Julianbrelsford (talk • contribs) 02:57, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Julian, I finally got around to fixing this. --Ahc (talk) 16:30, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Unprogrammed Friends

"Still, among many unprogrammed Friends, it has retained its appeal."

"Unprogrammed?" I don't know what that means, but it smells NPOV. There are legitimate criticisms of any organization, and just because you don't ally yourself with one doesn't make you somehow hypnotized.--Ben Applegate 18:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The term "Unprogrammed" Friends isn't a POV term in my opinion, it juxtaposed the reference to evangelical Friends earlier in the paragraph. It should probably be referenced over the Religious Society of Friends article to allow reader a chance to understand what the term means (granted there isn't a clear explanation of that term there because of clarity issues with that article). I don't share your concern about the phrasing here (although I agree any organization can be fairly criticized), nor do I see how removing the word "Unprogrammed" resolves your concern. I read here a general description that states that two (of the three) major sub-groups within the RSoF have chosen to take different views on the organization. I don't see the article as suggesting that one of those two groups is right. If there's are POV issue here, I see it in the more subtle point of leaving out the third major sub-group of Friends. For the time being I'm inclined to replace the removed term. --Ahc 17:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean now. You mean "unprogrammed" as in "not belonging to a program." I took "program" in its sense of "trained to respond in a certain way by propaganda." I've replaced the term with "unaffiliated" to remove the possibility for confusion.--Ben Applegate 12:46, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually still not quite right. Among Friends programmed or unprogrammed is a term used to refer to types of worship (whether or not their form of worship has a planned order or events). There are many other details about how Friends understand the world that generally track with the form of worship they choose. See Religious_Society_of_Friends#Quaker_worship for some background. As I said before it's not a perfect description, but you might find it helpful. In truth a better term should be found, but unprogrammed is one Friends would expect to see. We just need to find one that's more accessible to outsiders (We [the editors] should probably add something to the list of Quaker terminology. --Ahc 13:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, OK, I see. It's probably pretty obvious that I just wasn't familiar with the term. Sorry, and thanks for your patience.--Ben Applegate 15:16, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Logo

Can we use their logo like that? Seems like a possible copyright vio.

I made a similar image for the stub tag, which could be used instead with a caption perhaps?

Zach 14:12, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think using logos is fair use. Take a look at the logo article, and it's certainly common around Wikipedia. --Ahc 02:28, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

External Links

I'm wondering how many AFSC operated websites should be listed in this article. There are several already present, but many more missing (there are something like 30-40 sites that I know of). I try to keep from editing this article too much, since I have a conflict of interest, but I thought I'd throw this out there for consideration. I would personally suggest that it be kept down to just the main AFSC.org, and then the publications (like Street Spirit) but leave off individual programs (like the Northeast Ohio link). --Ahc 18:00, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Vietnam War

Can more be said about the organisation's role in the US-Vietnam war? The article does not at present reflect its prominence. I don't know enough detail to add it myself, but I do remember frequently hearing about the organisation's role at the time. Thanks. Itsmejudith 14:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

In terms of major criticism which isn't mentioned on this page, what about the article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 10/8/2007 called "Quaker charity sued over a doctor's legacy; The suit claims that the American Friends Service Committee used millions for purposes other than those specified in his will"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.28.161.159 (talk) 01:13, 30 November 2010 (UTC) Article doesn't mention that a lot of criticism it receives now is from Israel supporters... AnonMoos 15:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I am fairly certain that the article is in error citing a 1979 gathering of Friends General Conference in Richmond Indiana, as that is the home of Friends United Meeting and has only a small FGC Quaker population. Perhaps it was an FWCC gathering or something? Also I think in 1979 FGC was still holding its gatherings in Cape May, NJ. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.163.126.152 (talk) 19:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm on record as NPYM corporation member saying I find this page "silly" however I mostly like the CO part. In our neck of the woods, CO Doug Strain, student of Linus Pauling, was part of a whole subculture later known as the Silicon Forest, that opposed militarism and imperialism. Doug's ESI (a company) gave us both our Quaker meetinghouse and our AFSC offices. Just some local history. What I find silly is listing FBI surveillance under "criticism" with external links to monitoring by Pentagon and NSA. I think Friendly organizations are well accustomed to monitoring by central authorities, be they Royalist or Nationalist, and don't thresh about it unnecessarily, whereas more ordinary Protestant church groups, political liberals and/or conservatives, tend to be more up in arms (more paranoid) over such domestic spying. I wouldn't waste time on it were I writing this page, even though I do think we must fight for our civil liberties, including the right to organize, assemble, influence public opinion and so forth.Kirbyurner (talk) 01:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

More criticism

Would someone please take the time to fix the newly added external links? If others feel they are valid sources they really should be included in the criticism section, not as part of the external links. On other articles I would do so myself, but I have a conflict of interest here, so I leave this review and editing to others. --Ahc 03:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Mission in Germany after World War I

When the A.F.S.C. was active in Germany instead of the A.R.A. Children's Relief Fund from 1919 on, did they use a translation of their name (e.g. as YMCA is translated into CVJM)?----141.13.170.175 (talk) 18:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

In keeping with the COI Policy I am publicly stating that I am an employee of the American Friends Service Committee, and that I intend make edits to this page. I will make every effort to maintain a neutral point of view in those edits and defer to the community when conflict emerges. Please feel free to point out either here or on my talk page if you believe I have overstepped. --Ahc (talk) 15:25, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Edits to Criticism section

Since I do have a conflict of interest when editing this article, I figured it would be appropriate to note changes to sections that might raise concerns. Specifically I have just made several minor changes to the criticisms section. I tried to preserve the accusations listed and only edit for clarity, but others may wish to review the change. There are a couple places there that could use some additional citation, but I don't have good suggestions to offer there so I've left them as is.

I would appreciate feedback about how best to handle the fact that while some of the criticisms are real in that people make them, they are also baseless; I am thinking here mostly about the allegations of AFSC being a Communist organization. Through out AFSC's history the suggestion that it is communist has come from a variety of sources (you can see some of you review the FOIA documents referenced, and there are some similar Senate reports from the 1950's, as well as no shortage of conservative blogs that continue to make the suggestion), the only problem is that it has never been true (some of them are even down right funny, like the suggestion I read once that AFSC effectively runs Cuba). Can anyone provide some suggestions on useless ways to address frequent, but baseless criticism?

--Ahc (talk) 16:55, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree that when an organization like AFSC is subject to repeated baseless attacks, such as charges that they are Communist or anti-Semitic, we should (briefly) include the charges and the rebuttal. Some of the attacks seem to be giving credit to the charges, but we can (and should) edit the criticisms within Wikipedia style to make them neutral and objective. I don't believe that we should simply delete all criticism because it's wrong. A Wikipedia article should be a place to go for fact-checking -- to find false claims about a subject, and an explanation of why they're false. --Nbauman (talk) 13:46, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

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Vietnam War part two

I was a draft counselor for seven months during the Vietnam War, working with five other counselors in Ventura County, California, which is the next coastal county west of Los Angeles County in southern California. My stint was from about August, 1970, to February, 1971. I did not feel any "calling" whatsoever to be a counselor, I was Shanghaied, so to speak, when I was about to be drafted, and sought counseling to find out what my options were to legally avoid military service since I knew I had several physical problems that disqualified me. The senior counselor noticed I had a knack for talking to others who requested counseling, and "drafted" me into their service! The training I received was from mimeographed type-written pamphlets and word of mouth. Our one major guide was the United States Surgeon General's list of physical conditions, disabilities, and diseases that disqualified one from serving in the military. Things such as being too short, too tall, too underweight, too overweight, diabetic, hepatitis, blindness, colorblindness, deafness, missing limbs and digits, low intelligence, and many others. So, what we did was apprise those who came to see us of disqualifying conditions. Then there were things like conscientious objection to violence that was next to impossible to prove unless one was Amish, Mennonite, Quaker, a priest or in a seminary.

Then there were the young-looking FBI agents who came in, posing as guys who needed counseling to avoid the draft. These guys asked us if we could provide them with fake birth certificates from Sweden or Switzerland, or fake draft cards indicating they had completed military service, and a few other illegal things we would never consider doing since what we did was simply prevent Civil Rights violations and nothing more, not break the law! We could spot these government agents because they walked, talked, and looked like Marine Corps drill instructors, plus were arrogant.

Our headquarters was donated space in a church, and one evening when I came in to work, I noticed a second overhead phone cable from the telephone pole in the parking lot to the church. So, I called the minister and asked when the second phone had been installed, but was told the church still had just the one phone. I got one of the other counselors and we found a ladder to look up in the attic, and we saw where the new phone cable went, which was to the chandelier in the living room where we did our counseling sessions. We used the ladder and looked in the chandelier, where we found a microphone mounted up above the light bulbs so it wouldn't be found when changing a burned out light. We left the "bug" there and just didn't worry about it because we never said anything the FBI could use against us anyway.

Okay, you get the picture of what we did. But unfortunately, what I just wrote falls under "original research" and can't be used for this article. Somebody needs to interview me before too much time passes, of the six counselors at Ventura County, I think I'm the only one still alive, and I'm 70 (today, August 8, 2020). Linstrum (talk) 08:30, 8 August 2020 (UTC)