In 2024, Richmond Friends Meeting adopted a Minute making understanding and acting on issues related to race and racism “a strong, clear priority” for our community. That work began in earnest with the adoption of an action plan in early 2025. A newly created Racial Justice Team consisting of Plum Cluverius, Margaret Edds, and Levi Goren was charged with oversight. The action plan made clear that addressing racial issues is a communal commitment and responsibility. As the plan advises, “Each standing committee will make racial justice a priority in doing its work.”

In assessing the first year of action under the plan, the Race and Racial Justice Team believes that a commitment to racial justice became a stronger and more visible priority for Richmond Friends Meeting during 2025. Team members feel that the community has engaged broadly with the commitments made in 2024. Multiple committees have accepted the challenge to better understand racial differences and find ways of addressing racial injustice. (See Below) As recommended by the ad hoc Committee on Race and Racism, which developed the action plan, we have engaged with other faith communities doing similar work through the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. We have served less privileged children through a mentoring program at Redd Elementary School in South Richmond. And we have encouraged deeper personal growth through connection with Coming Together Virginia, a multi-racial group focused on better communication across race.

Meanwhile, the newly formed ad hoc Committee on Reparations to Indigenous Peoples has delved deeply into the history and current status of Virginia’s indigenous tribes. At their request, RFM expanded the ad hoc’s mission to one of seeking out ways to live in right relationship with those tribes. This is deep and ongoing work.

We welcome the enthusiasm and depth of commitment applied to these and other initiatives, even as discernment to find a right way forward sometimes entailed struggle and conflicting viewpoints. Ironically, we realize that RFM’s deeper connection to racial justice has occurred as much of the nation is dialing back on its commitment to equity and diversity, due to both pressure and coercion from the current administration in Washington. Awareness of that retrenchment deepens our resolve to spread Quaker messages of love and non-violence as we strive for a world freed of injustice and oppression.

Even as we celebrate progress on those aims, we remain attuned to unanswered questions: how deeply has the work saturated Meeting as a whole? Are we engaging with each other honestly and personally around issues of race, particularly when they involve members and attenders of our own Meeting? How do we confront racial wounding both within Richmond Friends Meeting and the larger community? What more might we be doing to address structural racism in our city and state? And, finally, how do more members of the Meeting community become engaged in this vital work?

We see that there is much work to be done in arriving at shared understandings and answers to these questions. We view our 2025 efforts as a beginning, far from an end. As one Friend put it, “We’ve started the conversation. We’ve lived into it, but I don’t think we’ve lived up to it completely.” We recognize that, as cruelty toward immigrants and migrants accelerates and anger flares, we will be challenged in new and difficult ways to follow the teaching, drawn from John Woolman, to “let love be the first motion.”

A two-day workshop (rescheduled to March 7 and 14), facilitated by Coming Together Virginia, will focus on having “Courageous Conversations in Multi-Racial Settings.”  The Racial Justice Team is heartened by garnering capacity sign-ups for the workshop and hopes that this event might kickstart a deeper focus on a communal, internal awareness of race-related matters in 2026, even as we continue to grow a more visible and engaged outward focus.

The team remains aware that the action plan approved by Meeting calls for programs related to Asian and Latino Americans. It is our intention to move forward with those programs once the Courageous Conversations workshop is complete.

A brief (and incomplete) overview of some of the race and racial-justice-related actions within Richmond Friends Meeting during 2025:

• A new page on Race and Racism was added to the website. It highlights extensive information (both visual and written) about the history of our Meeting as it relates to race. Also, it provides a vehicle for regular updates—visible to both ourselves and the broader Richmond community—on our race-related work.
• The Peace & Social Concerns Committee this year raised money for the Ramallah Friends School, the Health Brigade, Friends Association for Children, and the Healing Place–organizations grounded in deep concern for social justice. With Meeting backing, the committee directed donations to more than 30 local organizations which provide services to marginalized communities. Additionally, the committee publicized the NAACP Black Consumer Advisory, which encourages consumers to support businesses that uphold DEI values.
• The Religious Education Committee sponsored a well-attended workshop led by weighty Quaker Marcy Seitel on ridding ourselves and our families of racist behaviors and thoughts. The committee also guided teachers to include books and other material related to racial justice in lesson plans.
• In conjunction with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, our newly formed VICPP working group led us to approve congregational support for the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prisons and to become a 100 percent voting congregation in the 2025 elections. It has also led Meeting in collecting food for people served by Feedmore.
• Working with Communities in Schools, a newly formed volunteer group provided mentoring for more than half-a-dozen children at Redd Elementary School. The vast majority of children at Redd come from financially impoverished families, many of them immigrant.
• The Financial Stewardship Committee distributed more than $46,000 to an assortment of public service organizations, many of them doing work related to issues of racial justice. The committee joined Peace & Social Concerns in directing donations to Assisting Families of Inmates, Circles RVA, Friends Association for Children, HomeAgain (Emergency Shelter), the Virginia Poverty Law Center, and other justice-related groups.
•  Buildings & Grounds sought to be intentional in seeking out minority contractors when accepting bids for work projects.
• Several committees sought to keep race and racial justice as “top of mind” by beginning meetings with related queries.

This is an incomplete listing of race-related activities, but it suggests the depth of commitment within Richmond Friends Meeting to engaging with matters related to race and racial justice.  It is our hope and expectation that the work will expand and deepen as we move forward into 2026 and beyond. As Levi Goren departs to become Clerk of Meeting, we welcome Monti Datta to the Race and Racial Justice team.