Quaker Witness at Performance of "War Requiem"

The following is from San Francisco Meeting member Charles Martin:

Friends: Here is announcement for the public witness at the Davies Symphony Hall. The Symphony Hall administrators are aware of our intentions and wish us well but we are restricted to the public sidewalk. Please announce and or pass on to your mail lists.

Public Witness Against War
Saturday, 8/2/2008, 7-8 pm
at Davies Symphony Hall
Corner of Van Ness and Grove
San Francisco

The San Francisco Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends invites you to join with us in a public witness for peace outside of the Davies Symphony Hall on Saturday, 8/2/2008, between 7:00 and 8:00 PM.

The San Francisco Choral Society will be performing Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem at 8:00. We plan on holding some signs, distributing leaflets, and engaging with anyone who wants to speak with us about peace, the traditional Quaker opposition to war, and how we can work to create the conditions that would lead to peace.

Part of our desire for this public witness is to emphasize the spiritual nature of Peace. That is, that peace is something more than an absence of armed conflict. Britten's War Requiem is a universal denunciation of war, not any particular war, and we would like to encourage those attending the concert to meditate on that fact. We acknowledge that as Friends we are to deal with real problems and the Iraq & Afghanistan wars are the most pressing current concern we have. But we also need to realize that if both wars ended tomorrow that we would not be at peace in the world and that our society is organized around the use of force to exploit and suppress most of the rest of the world for our economic benefit.

There will be a meeting for worship starting at 5:30 at the San Francisco Quaker Meetinghouse preceding the public witness. We will walk to the Symphony Hall taking signs and leaflets to distribute around 6:30.

Anyone wishing to participate or help with the preparations should contact Charles Martin at charles -at- innerlightbooks -dot- com.