JUSTICE ACTION GROUP                              (THIS GROUP HAS BEEN LAID DOWN.)

Incarceration is inhumane, ineffective, disproportionately imposed on marginalized groups and obstructs justice.  

JAG seeks to discern the underpinnings of incarceration and the carceral state

and to envision a world in which we are all free and in community.     

(JAG minutes, March 2019).

The Justice Action Group (JAG), under the care of the Peace and Social Justice Committee, grew from a concern for what has been referred to as the social justice testimony in Quakerism (Social Justice Testimony). It also grows from a concern for experimenting with Spirit in our lives, where our actions in the world reflect and help us discern our inward and collective experience.  

Since it was formed in 2018, JAG has investigated the cradle to prison pipeline and the criminalization of poverty, supported bail assistance, responded to the George Floyd murder, and argued for fundamental and systemic changes to policing and prisons. (See links below.) An earlier focus on defunding the police has evolved into establishing an unarmed response alternative in Ann Arbor, investment in care-based or community-building safety, and a call for police and prison abolition. 

For us, abolition is an action — the building and maintaining of structures and practices that help communities flourish.  It is the act of working together to lift up the quality of life, where the principle of life being precious helps people decide what to do and how to do it.  We are all related, impacted by our treatment of one another.  We challenge ourselves to be authentic and vulnerable in these relationships.  This call grows from our Quaker view of life as a gift and from our understanding that lifting up the quality of life is ongoing work of living a life of the Spirit.