Sander Hicks interviews organizer and activist Jane Nunn (FCNL and DSA), who will be speaking at the “Break the Chain!” free event on October 25th at the 15th Street Quaker Meeting. Ahead of the gathering, hear Jane discuss her organizing work with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) on the new episode of the Monks and Punks podcast.

The “Break the Chain” interfaith anti-war gathering calls for an arms embargo at New York City’s public airports, demanding immediate EMBARGO on weapons against Gaza passing through JFK.

Join the panel to explore faith-based anti-war traditions.

Go from theory to practice.

Turn prayer into pressure.

• Sunday, October 25th, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

at 15 Rutherford Place (15th Street Quaker Meeting). Free admission.

Childcare available, ADA accessible, free lunch at 12:30

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST INTERVIEW HERE

https://shows.acast.com/monks.../episodes/break-the-chain

RSVP FOR FREE EVENT TICKETS ON EVENTBRITE

https://www.eventbrite.com/.../break-the-chain-an... See less

See a YouTube Short Interview with Jane:

https://youtube.com/shorts/2O8Op1R0k04?feature=share

New York cannot pray for peace while weapons for Gaza pass through JFK.

We call for an arms embargo at JFK Airport—no weapons to Israel, no genocide in Gaza.

Break the Chain is an interfaith anti-war gathering for people of conscience ready to act. Our panel will explore anti-war traditions in faith and the Break the Chain campaign, which calls for an arms embargo at New York City’s public airports.

Come help turn prayer into pressure. Get inspired by the speakers and take action at the breakout group level.

Oct. 25, Sunday, 1-4 PM, at the 15th Street Quaker Meetinghouse, at 15 Rutherford Place in Manhattan.

Please RSVP on EventBrite:



Featuring:

Iskander Abbasi, Ph.D.

Scholar of Contemporary Islam, Islamic Liberation Theology, Environmental Ethics, Decolonial Theory, and Islamophobia Studies

Jane Nunn Advocacy Team Organizer for Friends Committee on National Legislation, where she mobilizes grassroots supporters, coordinates advocacy campaigns, and builds relationships with volunteers and coalition partners to advance FCNL’s legislative priorities against militarism and war

Ros Petchesky, Ph.D. Political scientist and a leading theorist on international reproductive rights, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center, and Member Leader of the NYC chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace

With music from Joe Dobkin, a New York artist and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Co-producer of “Lider Mit Palestine (Songs with Palestine): New Yiddish Songs of Grief, Fury, and Love.”

Panel moderated by lifelong peace activist and investigative journalist Sander Hicks

Opening prayer led by Reverend Jacob Smith, Rector of Calvary - St. George’s Church

Sponsored by DSA Anti-War, Break the Chain, and 15th Street Speaker Events Committee

ADA Accessible Space. Childcare available. Please RSVP on EventBrite:


More Info on the Campaign?

The Good Read of the Week:

“Not in Our Skies,” a new article by me, Sander Hicks in the Indypendent, summarizes the campaign, gives a history of international civil disobedience on this issue.

We break the news that Senator Jabari Brisport is planning to announce the “Not in Our Skies” legislation, soon.

https://indypendent.org/2026/09/not-in-our-skies-dsa-steps-up-campaign-to-stop-israel-arms-shipments-from-jfk-airport/

“Not In Our Skies”: DSA Steps Up Campaign to Stop Israel Arms Shipments from JFK Airport

NYC’s busiest airport has emerged as a key hub for shipping munitions to Israel.

In the Fall of 2025, three 23-year-old Irish activists in a Ford Transit van rammed the perimeter barrier at Shannon Airport, on Ireland’s rural west coast. Using a fire extinguisher converted into a homemade paint sprayer, they coated a US Navy 737 in green paint. Their direct action was to protest and expose how civilian airports move weapons to Israel. Later named the “Boeing 3”, they were stopped at gunpoint and charged with various crimes. One of them, Kaspar Cantwell Strattra, later told police, “the use of Shannon Airport by the US military breaks Irish neutrality. The US is a belligerent power complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.”

About one year ago, organizers with similar concerns started a campaign started inside New York City DSA. It’s called “Break the Chain.” The chain runs through Long Island/NYC-area logistics companies and a handful of local manufacturers who move bombs, ammunition, missile parts, guidance electronics, detonators, bomb-release mechanisms, fuzes, and tear gas toward Israel through JFK airport. In a show of unity, many DSA candidates who won their primaries in June spoke out in favor of Break the Chain in a recent video.

“We have been flyering workers every Sunday for the better part of the year,” said Bassel Al-Khalili from NYC Break the Chain. “We have also been working closely with dozens of JFK workers to expand our reach. We want to do a better job of meeting workers in the terminals and warehouses that keep this city and the world moving!”

Fifteen organizations have endorsed Break the Chain including three UAW union locals, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), NYC Educators for Palestine and CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

One year ago, Break the Chain didn’t have wide support inside DSA. This July, it won chapter-wide “priority campaign” status when 90% of the NYC chapter voted to support it. Priority status means that Break the Chain gets a representative on the chapter’s Socialists in Office Committee, which coordinates the chapter’s work with all of its electeds.

“New York City DSA has taken on more and more public-facing advocacy on Palestine,” said Ethan Eblaghie, the new campaign chair, after the landslide vote.

A Little-Known Arms Pipeline

Exposing the truth on this little-known arms pipeline started back in October 2023. An independent Irish outlet, The Ditch, began tracking how Challenge Airlines routes munitions flights from JFK, through Irish airspace, to Israel. Ireland is supposed to have the same kind of neutrality as Switzerland. It is not supposed to take sides in an armed conflict. But the U.S. war machine demanded a pitstop, a refueling station.

As the story broke, people took action. A precursor to Break the Chain was a pro-Palestine action on Van Wyck Expressway right outside JFK airport in December 2023. Using cars and their bodies, activists blockaded the route. Twenty six people were arrested.

Later, The Intercept, in May, 2025, broke the story that 14 tons of nitrocellulose was being shipped through JFK. Nitrocellulose is an inherently unstable explosive material. It was moving through active runways alongside commercial jet fuel, ground crews, and passenger traffic, with none of the containment protocols needed for handling explosives at that scale.

In October 2025, an explosion at an armaments factory AES in Tennessee showed how badly things can go, in the mishandling of military-grade explosives. All 16 workers were killed instantly. The entire building was reduced to white dust.

In China, in 2015, dried Nitrocellulose set off a chain reaction of explosions in the port of Tianjin. The majority of the 173 deaths were firefighters.

JFK hosts 62 million passengers per year. Break the Chain is exposing a clear risk to public safety. Should a highly trafficked airport be subject to the risk of highly explosive materials? All this to support a genocidal war that most New Yorkers reject?

NYC hasn’t matched the Irish pro-Palestine movement in its constant cadence of creative civil disobedience. But some in this movement are planning something stronger. Our city leaders are pushing the movement forward by writing new laws, not just breaking them.

Legislative Allies

NYC Break the Chain has vocal supporters willing to propose serious changes. For example, State Senator Jabari Brisport, is building a coalition to support the “Not In Our Skies” law. (The choice of name clearly refers back to then-Assemblymember Mamdani’s proposed legislation, “Not on Our Dime” which attempted to target the non-profit status of any New York charity engaging in support for illegal West Bank settlements.)

As Ethan Elbhagie explains, the proposed law “would target the subsidies of airlines that are complicit in war crimes. They’re hoping it’ll be sort of like a regulatory lever that puts pressure on not only the airlines themselves, but the Port Authority, which controls airlines’ access to the airport and use of the land, to halt arms shipments going out of the airport.”

Air carriers that have transported munitions from JFK to Israel are Challenge Airlines, FedEx and Embracer Aviation International.

Back in Ireland, Shannon Airport has been the target of civil disobedience ever since a Catholic Worker action in 2003. To protest the Iraq War, the “Pitstop Ploughshares” activists first broke the barrier and damaged planes.

In an ironic twist of fate, all activists were acquitted, when they tried to argue the “Necessity Defense.”

The Irish Criminal Damage Act of 1991 says a person has a “lawful excuse” for damaging property, if the person believed, at the time of the act, that whoever was entitled to consent to the damage had consented, or would have consented had they known the true ethical stakes.

The Pitstop Ploughshares activists went free, thanks to their belief that their damage to planes prevented a greater harm. They heard a call to act. They put action for peace ahead of anything else.

Today, Break the Chain asks you this question: Are you going to just sit back and watch, as our airports move the tools of genocide?

Sander Hicks is a member of the Break the Chain campaign.

Take Action: Break the Chain invites you to our interfaith anti-war event, building peace by organizing! Faith communities are working with the democratic socialist left. Oct. 25, Sunday, 1-4 PM, at the 15th Street Quaker Meetinghouse, at 15 Rutherford Place in Manhattan. With: Jewish Voice for Peace, DSA Anti-War, FCNL and Quaker voices, plus live music by Joe Dobkin and his band.

Please RSVP on EventBrite

Sunday, September 6 • 1 PM - 4 PM

Hear the gist of this hearty invitation, with this video invite:

Two Quakers cast a critical eye on the official story around 9/11.

Special Guest: David Chandler, a member of Denver Friends, will join us via Zoom.

Hosted by Sander Hicks.

Les Jamieson, longtime truth seeker and spiritual leader, will follow our opening period of silence, with a special prayer/invocation which will set the tone of the event.

David Chandler — a physics teacher whose independent analysis of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 forced a public reckoning with the official record. Chandler’s frame-by-frame measurement of Building 7’s descent demonstrated a period of true free fall — physically impossible under NIST’s original “progressive collapse” account, since free fall means zero resistance from the structure below. His public comment on NIST’s 2008 draft report was substantial enough that NIST revised its final findings to concede a stage of free fall, a reversal NIST has never fully squared with its own model. Chandler will join us by Zoom for approximately 20 minutes, with a visual presentation and video, to walk through what changed and why it matters.

Sander Hicks will host the event and speak for approximately 20 minutes. Drawing on more than two decades of research and two books — The Big Wedding and Slingshot to the Juggernaut — Sander will trace the documented pretext for the wars that followed 9/11, from the Project for the New American Century’s 2000 call for a “new Pearl Harbor” through the CIA’s withholding of hijacker intelligence from the FBI at Alec Station, the Saudi intelligence network around two of the hijackers now at the center of a live federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, and the broader pattern of suppressed evidence — from Able Danger’s destroyed files to a Shreveport dentist’s ignored warnings — that runs beneath the official story. He’ll close by asking what it means that corporate media still flinches at this subject a quarter-century on, and where an honest reckoning with that pretext leaves us as peace activists in 2026.

Q&A and group discussion to follow. Bring questions. Bring an open mind.

This is a hybrid meeting and we invite you to come in person, or via Zoom. A complimentary lunch will be served at 12:30. Event starts at 1 PM.

15 Rutherford Place, enter through the courtyard at 15th Street and Rutherford.

NYC, NY 10003


1 PM Tomorrow, Direct Zoom Link
SAVE THIS:
Put it in your Google Calendar and Invite your MOM!
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86585201207?pwd=aSFqQlFnQjbwocmhAUybRrY1bg9fjk.1

In “Entry into the Realm of Reality,” a young pilgrim goes on a quest for enlightenment and is told, again and again, by king and beggar and sea-captain and child: I am not the whole path. Next, seek out another Good Friend.

We come from a tradition that already knows this. Quakers have called each other Friends for four hundred years — the Light is found not alone, but between us, in the meeting, in the friend who sends you further than they could take you themselves.

Come to Peaceful Lake, Powerful Mountain, the 4th Annual peace retreat for activists, world-changers, and future Buddhas — Friends.

We will study the secrets of the way. We will push each other past religion as we’ve inherited it. We will dare each other to become enlightening beings — not someday, for the sake of everyone alive.

We’ll use theater, improv, poetry, Zen, and meditation to burn the fog off our own minds. We will study the words of George Fox — and ancient Buddhist texts even older than his. We’ll swim in the pure land of Beecher Lake, which, for three days, is not a metaphor. You have every reason to come. Enter a reality where we share the light inside us.

October 9–11.
www.nonviolence.works

Hosted by Sander Hicks, with teachers Luisa Giugliano and Lo Nathamundi.

Here is my scrappy video invite, made this July in the Puget Sound - at the meditation shrine that we all built with driftwood -

this video is also quite good - Hear from people who came last year, what they found, what we found together:

Reply to this message and come with us on this quest.

It’s time to take on some big lies, and seek the truth.

We welcome a fellow peace activist, Dennis Kucinich, on Sunday, September 6, at a live event hosted by me, Sander Hicks, and the Speaker Events Committee, 15th Street Friends Meeting, NYC.

Sunday, September 6, 2026, 1:00–4:00 PM
15 Rutherford Place, Manhattan
Free.

The 9/11 official story is under real pressure now, with mainstream voices calling for a new inquiry. Dennis Kucinich is calling for a new Congressional investigation into 9/11, tracing how U.S. and Israeli officials fed each other’s talking points to falsely tie Iraq to the attacks — a fabrication that helped produce a million dead Iraqis, 5,000 dead U.S. troops, and trillions of dollars spent, with no one ever held accountable. He’s also pressing for a serious look at why World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed that day.

War is built on lies. That’s not a slogan; it’s a historical pattern, documented again and again, and 9/11 is no exception. The official story deserves the same scrutiny we’d apply to any other government account used to launch a war. Those who seek shall find.

The 9/11 truth movement itself has real problems — too much of it has drifted into right-wing framing, and too much slides from legitimate criticism of Israeli or U.S. state actors into open antisemitism. That’s bad research as much as it’s morally wrong: it substitutes ethnic scapegoating for the harder work of tracing actual government responsibility. Naming the CIA’s failures, naming specific Saudi state actors, naming the officials who blocked information sharing — that’s a completely different project from blaming a people or a religion.

What the Documented Record Shows

Kevin Fenton’s Disconnecting the Dots makes the case entirely from the public record: congressional testimony, inspector general reports, declassified cables. A small group of CIA officers, working out of a unit known as Alec Station, knew two future hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — were inside the United States, tracked them for over a year, and repeatedly withheld that from the FBI. Every officer with direct knowledge was promoted after 9/11. No one was ever charged.

And the man who ran the show, CIA Director George Tenet, was finally rewarded by President Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That ceremony was a slap in the face to basic common sense.

My own research adds another layer: journalist Joe Trento told me his intelligence sources identified al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi as Saudi intelligence assets. The Pentagon’s own data-mining program, Able Danger, tracked these same men but was blocked from sharing what it found. They lived for a time with an FBI informant in San Diego, and received funds traced to Saudi Princess Haifa, wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan — a man so close to the Bush family he was nicknamed “Bandar Bush.” There’s also the case of David Graham, a Louisiana whistleblower who documented contact between al-Hazmi and a U.S. military-connected handler — Graham died under unexplained circumstances shortly before he was set to publish his findings.

It’s rarely the intelligence insiders who tell the truth about 9/11. It’s the outsiders — journalists, whistleblowers, independent researchers working from public documents. A society that can’t tell the truth about something that happened 25 years ago has a problem worth naming.

Toward Something Better

Cataloguing government lies means nothing on its own, unless it’s in service of something larger: a genuinely different future. Nonviolence. Peace between nations. A world ordered around cooperation rather than domination. That’s the “so what” of this whole inquiry.

I hope you’ll join us on September 6th to talk this through together.

“9/11 at 25: Truth as a Path to Justice and Peace”
Featuring Dennis Kucinich. Hosted by Sander Hicks.
Sunday, September 6, 2026, 1:00–4:00 PM
Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting, 15 Rutherford Place, Manhattan
Free and open to the public

Short Bio: Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich
Former U.S. Congressman, Presidential Candidate — b. 1946

Dennis Kucinich became the youngest mayor of a major American city when Cleveland elected him at age 31 in 1977. He later served eight terms in the U.S. House representing Ohio, from 1997 to 2013, where he became one of the chamber’s most consistent voices against war. He delivered 341 floor speeches opposing the Iraq War and 155 more opposing war with Iran, and in 2007 introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney for manipulating intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. As a candidate for president in 2004 and 2008, he ran on a platform that included the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Peace. In 2003, the Religious Society of Friends-affiliated organization Promoting Enduring Peace gave him the Gandhi Peace Award; in 2010, the US Peace Memorial Foundation gave him its US Peace Prize for his national leadership to prevent and end wars.

“Mr. Speaker, we make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled on how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death, and a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires compassion, putting ourselves in the other person’s place, and all of their suffering and all of their hopes and to act from our heart’s capacity to love, not fear.”

Also: Save the Date for our following Speaker Event, which also ties into the anti-war theme.

We’re also organizing an October event in solidarity with the DSA Anti-War Working Group’s “Break the Chain” campaign, which opposes the use of JFK Airport as a transit point for weapons shipments to Israel. That gathering is confirmed for Sunday, October 25, 1:00–4:00 PM, also at 15 Rutherford Place, with speakers David Carl Olson (Unitarian Universalist minister), Esther Farmer (Jewish Voice for Peace-NYC), and music from Joe Dobkin.

Sander Hicks
sanderhicksdotcom {at} gmail.com

How do people live when the truth is suppressed? What gifts do we have?

One big hero in the film is Hugo - the character played with uncommon gravitas by Colman Domingo. (Hard to forget how great he was recently on film as socialist Quaker Bayard Rustin.)

Rustin is a kind of messenger for the aliens, who are trying to break through. Empathy is the message. “Listen” is the mantra.

The planet Earth is on the verge of World War III with Korea/Russia, and Hugo drops out from the system - rejects his job at for Wardex, a nefarious private government intelligence agency whose job it is to cover-up the US Government’s long history about alien visitations.

His best speech includes these words as he confronts his nemesis:

“There’s an essential need in all of us to believe. And an equal need to be believed. You’ve violated every standard of evidence. You’ve infantilized anyone who only wanted to understand what they — You’ve brutally stifled their questions, shouted them down, ridiculed and shamed and overridden them for the crime of simply being despotic. We believe the believers and then deny the world that we have to believe them to. But people keep thundering. Encountering the unknown, telling others of their experiences. They are starved for the truth. This 79-year terror campaign of obfuscation, lies, and cover-up has to end. We’re ready to show you a demonstration.”

When the lights came up, the first thing I told my wife is that this is the 25th Anniversary of 9/11, and I think this is why Spielberg made this film now. The 25 Year Terror Campaign of permanent wars, official story, propaganda, all invoking the false god of a cinematic fireworks show- a spectacle of exploding buildings and boogeyman scapegoats, none of which was adequately explained.

And yet, at the same time, it’s been a bittersweet month for me, writing many emails of the organizers of the big 9/11 Truth movement event, “Turning the Tide.” In their earlier announcements, they proudly announced that Ian Carroll, the holocaust denier, would be a featured speaker, at their upcoming conference in NYC.

I pointed out, with my face in my hands, that this would be a disaster for this movement that says it stands for truth, but always seems to shoot itself in the foot before it can get on the field.

I recently wrote these words to the Lawyer’s Committee on 9/11 Inquiry:

The US Deep State deserves far more legal scrutiny for 9/11 than any international Jewish cabal. …the documented record, including Kevin Fenton’s Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen (Trine Day, 2011), … traces the puppet strings of the hijackers directly back to Alec Station — the CIA’s bin Laden unit — concluding that critical intelligence information was repeatedly and deliberately withheld from the FBI to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States. That is where the evidence points. Carroll’s ethnic attribution framework points away from it. As a journalist and author, I know that to put opinion over fact shows you are not a serious investigator.

THE GOOD NEWS! Is that it worked - the Lawyers Committee recently responded that for whatever reason, Ian Carroll had been removed from the bill. Truth wins! And anti-fascism can use the power of the word, not the fist.

I call on all peace activists to contact me - how can we create a real alternative 25th Anniversary Event? We have the Quaker Meeting House reserved, 9/6/26, Sunday 1-4 PM. We have reached out to great speakers on this topic, like Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Let’s organize a great event.

Speaking of Quaker Organizing, I am excited about my friend Jackie, and her efforts with the “Summer of Ludd” urging people to let go of screens, technology, and engage in “Participatory Futures”

Her conference is coming up on Tuesday:

Summer of Ludd

https://event.newschool.edu/theludditeconference

The Luddite Conference on Participatory Futures

Tishman Auditorium, The New School 63 5th Avenue New York NY 10003

With companies like OpenAI taking Pentagon contracts and Elon Musk using government resources to scrape Americans’ data, it’s hard to feel that there are any tangible ways to resist the techno-fascist backslide. To regain a sense of social agency, we are convening a participatory conference inspired by the Luddite movement. We will tackle questions such as: What is the relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon? What are the social and political consequences of new AI technologies? And what can we do in response?

Please join us for a day of learning how Big Tech brought us to this existentially threatening moment, and how we can reclaim personal and collective agency for a participatory future.

Our speakers will include William Hartung (author of Trillion Dollar War Machine), Koohan Paik-Mander (co-founder of the Tech-Critics Network), and Juan Sebastian Pinto (Colorado People’s Caucus on AI).

Conference Schedule

Time: 10am to 3pm

Date: Tuesday, June 30th

Location: The New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Please register in advance. This conference is part of The Summer of Ludd, happening across NYC from June 28th to July 5th.

The Mayor is a friend of our local Quaker Meeting. He has been with us at previous Speaker Events. Our series continues this Sunday, with his coworkers in affordable housing.

Yesterday, he pledged to take aggressive legal action to remove negligent landlords — and transfer chronically neglected buildings to community land trusts, nonprofits, or the tenants themselves. The plan calls for 200,000 new affordable homes and preservation of another 200,000 over the next decade, backed by $22 billion in city capital investment over five years. [Source: AOLNew York City]

This is the moment we have been organizing toward. The political ground has shifted. The question now is: what do we do with it?

That question is exactly why you need to be at 15 Rutherford Place this Sunday.

Making Affordable Homes in NYC Today is a free micro-conference hosted by Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting (Quakers). Builders, activists, academics, organizers, and tenants in one room. Lunch provided. No cost. No barrier to entry.

Sunday, May 31. 1:00–4:00 PM. 15 Rutherford Place, Manhattan.

Featured speakers: Sumathy Kumar, Ben Warnke, and James DeFilippis, Ph.D.

Hosts: Sophie Gonick, and Sander Hicks

The questions on the table:

How do we make housing a practical human right in this city — not just a mayoral press release? How do we prevent displacement in the communities that are already losing ground? And what is the specific obligation of people of faith when the political moment is actually open?

Mamdani’s plan is real. It is also incomplete. It requires tenant power, community infrastructure, and organized faith communities to hold the line and push further. That infrastructure does not build itself.

Come Sunday. Bring someone who needs to be in that room.

RSVP here — seats are limited: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-human-right-to-housing-tickets-1988583412518

Friends -

I am happy to let you know that the video I made of the Quaker history talk (from this year’s Quakerism 101) is now up on YouTube.

We put a lot of work into it, trying to edit the video a little bit, and add some images for illustration, since the recording on 2/15/26 at 15th Street Meeting. Thanks to the support of Ministry and Worship, and everyone who gave guidance.

Link is here:

A few thoughts -

We Friends/Quakers really have a lot to contribute, as a ballast to all the times that Christians have waged war in a rage. Past and present times included. That is one of our many unique historical contributions — to rediscover the peace of the Gospels.

We have also consistently been ahead of our time in terms of pushing social progress: on equality, women’s equality, on fair treatment of the natives, on abolition, on women’s suffrage, and on civil rights. And of course, on conscientious objection, bringing us back around to the radical nonviolence at the heart of the teachings of Jesus….and Fox, Fell, Woolman, Hicks, et. al.

So….as Fox would put it — “What Canst Thou Say?”

Where do you stand in the long contradiction between the teachings of Jesus and the violence carried out in his name? When we speak of the Inner Light, do you mean that as a private comfort — or can it be a force that confronts kings, churches, and systems of domination?

The Lamb’s War: A Quaker History by Sander Hicks, Historian, 15th Street Meeting

This Quaker history begins in the furnace of civil war. George Fox emerged in a world where Christians were killing Christians and every faction claimed divine authority. He rejected the sword, rejected priestly mediation, and declared that Christ had come to teach his people himself. From that claim flowed silent worship, plain speech, refusal of oaths, and a radical insistence on equality.

Friends carried that witness into government with William Penn, into abolition through Lay and Woolman, into schism with Elias Hicks, into women’s suffrage with Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, into civil rights with Bayard Rustin, and into war resistance through the Peace Testimony and the work of the American Friends Service Committee.

At times, Friends shaped power. At times, they were shaped by it. At times, they failed and had to reckon with their complicity. But the thread remained: conscience over coercion.

This history is not past. It is alive in this Meeting. It is alive wherever equality is practiced, wherever violence is refused, wherever truth is spoken plainly. The question is not what Fox said. The question is: what we will say now.

Recommended Further Reading

Ambler, Rex. Truth of the Heart: An Anthology of George Fox (1624–1691). Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 2005.

Barbour, Hugh, J. William Frost, Arthur J. Worrall, and Paul M. Peucker, eds. Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Newman, Daisy. A Procession of Friends. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 2007.

Full Bibliography

Ambler, Rex. Truth of the Heart: An Anthology of George Fox (1624–1691). Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 2005.

Barbour, Hugh, J. William Frost, Arthur J. Worrall, and Paul M. Peucker, eds. Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist. New York: New York University Press, 1988.

Boulton, David. “Militant Seedbeds of Early Quakerism: Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Tradition.” Diggers.org. Accessed February 2026. https://www.diggers.org/quakers_and_d....

Brinton, Howard H. Friends for 350 Years: The History and Beliefs of the Society of Friends Since George Fox Started the Quaker Movement. Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 2002.

Cox, John, Jr. Quakerism in the City of New York, 1657–1930. Illustrated paperback ed. New York: Friends Historical Library / Quaker Press, 2011.

Densmore, Christopher. Quakers and the Underground Railroad: Myths and Realities. Commentary. Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. Accessed January 9, 2026.

Forbush, Bliss. Elias Hicks: Quaker Liberal. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956.

Foster, Richard J., and Emilie Griffin, eds. Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings on the Twelve Spiritual Disciplines. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000.

Fox, George. George Fox’s “Book of Miracles.” Edited by Henry J. Cadbury. Forewords by Rufus M. Jones, Jim Pym, and Paul Anderson. 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Friends General Conference; London: Quaker Home Service, 2000.

Fox, George. The Journal of George Fox. Edited by Norman Penney. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007.

Hicks, Rachel. Memoir of Rachel Hicks, Written by Herself; Together with Some Letters and a Memorial of Westbury Monthly Meeting. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1880.

Jones, Sabrina. Radical Jesus: A Graphic History of Faith. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2023.

Jones, T. Canby. George Fox’s Attitude Toward War: A Documentary Study. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1984.

New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Faith and Practice: The Book of Discipline of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Revised 2020 ed. New York: New York Yearly Meeting, 2020.

Newman, Daisy. A Procession of Friends. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 2007.

Velsor, Kathleen G. The Underground Railroad on Long Island: Friends in Freedom. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015.

Woolman, John. The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman. Edited by Phillips P. Moulton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

I had some downtime in Charlotte, NC last week, and I decided to give the Billy Graham Library a try. This is a holy site to evangelical, right-wing Christianity. I visited Graham’s grave. I wandered around. I was looking for Jesus.

Reverend Billy Graham was a super successful TV and radio evangelical preacher, who died at age 100 not too long ago. He was friends with 11 Presidents, and super close to the Bushes.

He is the personification of what goes wrong with Christianity when it gets too chummy with power. Graham never spoke out against the Vietnam War, or any war, or segregation.

Although I was pleased to learn he had a friendship with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. And Graham personally took down segregation barriers inside one of his tent revivals.

I did the entire Museum/Library tour, in a giant barn with a cross on it, but it was all about Graham, there were no pictures of Jesus at all. The bookshop was all right-wing stuff, and nothing about the radical truth about Jesus.

In many videos, Graham preached a simple message, a personal message, about you are a sinner, and you need to be saved. But what is missing?

That gospel needs to be applied to social sin. Look at our world, now, dominated by Christian nationalism, US military commanders twisting the Book of Revelation into an endorsement of carpet-bombing Iran.

The historical Jesus is a powerful teacher, a power and a peacefulness is there and it can change the course of history.

We are having a meeting on Sunday, of the Jesus Peace Project, to bring resistance to war and the truth about Jesus into the same sacred space.

Join us. Make History.

at the very First Meeting of the:

Jesus Peace Project 3/22
Sunday, the 22nd, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM, on Zoom.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jpp-first-organizing-meeting-of-jesus-peace-project-tickets-1984190266500?aff=oddtdtcreator

A report from our gathering
— and an invitation to what comes next.

With the new war on Iran, we witness pain and death rained down on a country that never attacked us. This is war waged by right-wing Christians. They have made Jesus a mascot for empire.

You are not alone in your outrage and your wonder. How can they do this? What can we do?

Join Us March 22

We are convening the first organizing meeting of the Jesus Peace Project — a new interfaith, intra-Christian coalition committed to disciplined nonviolence, theological clarity, and public courage.

Sunday, March 22 | 1:00–2:30 PM Eastern | Free on Zoom

This is not another panel. It is a working session. Come ready to take responsibility for a defined role. We will form three working groups — Theology, Nonviolent Action, and Organizing — and set 90-day objectives and a timeline for our first coordinated public action.

RSVP here — it takes 30 seconds, and it’s free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jpp-first-organizing-meeting-of-jesus-peace-project-tickets-1984190266500

REPORT BACK: What Happened on February 22

We began, as Friends do, in silence.

Then we got to work.

At Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting in Manhattan, roughly 80 people — in person and on Zoom — gathered for a public inquiry: Let Us Stand With Jesus Against Violent Power. The central question was simple and overdue: what did Jesus actually teach, and what happened to it?

My argument was this: over centuries, Jesus’s radical call was systematically neutralized. Communal sharing of goods was replaced by doctrine. Nonviolence was replaced by Just War Theory. The divinization of Jesus preserved him, as a symbol, but it defused the revolutionary implications of his life. Christian nationalism today rests on three legs — fear, power, and a misused Christ. Reclaim the historical Jesus, and that structure falls.

Rev. Dr. John Thatamanil (Union Theological Seminary) opened with Frederick Douglass:

“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.”

He reframed Christian nationalism not as an aberration but as a continuation of slaveholding religion — white supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchal nationalism dressed in theology. He asked what Christian nationalism feels like: nostalgia, economic precarity, humiliation, manufactured fear — emotional energies redirected into domination politics. His clearest line of the afternoon:

“The crucified Christ has nothing in common with the crusading Christ.”

He also grounded his analysis in a concrete contemporary case. In Minneapolis, religious leaders helped prevent escalation during ICE operations specifically designed to provoke reactive violence — violence that would have justified invoking martial law. Disciplined nonviolence disrupted authoritarian strategy. That is not a metaphor. That is a tactic.

Amanda Daloisio, co-managing editor of The Catholic Worker, rooted the gathering in nearly ninety years of lived pacifist practice — from the Spanish Civil War to Hiroshima to 9/11. She recalled the failure of U.S. bishops after Charlottesville to explicitly name swastikas and nooses in their pastoral letter on racism. Euphemism, she argued, protects power. She did not use euphemism:

“Christian nationalism bears no resemblance to the teachings of Christ. I will name it: blasphemous and antichrist.”

Marah Sarji, speaking from her experience growing up in Nazareth and the West Bank, argued that evangelical Christianity in Palestine does not arrive as neutral faith. It arrives as part of a political and economic system — one that enforces conformity, reshapes gender norms, and detaches Christianity from land, feast, and shared memory.

The Q&A was direct and unresolved — as it should be. Participants wrestled with how to grapple honestly with sacred texts that include divine commands of destruction, while resisting their misuse in contemporary nationalist rhetoric. Several participants said the gathering made them feel less alone. That matters.

What We Are Building

The Jesus Peace Project is an interfaith, intra-Christian coalition. Our commitments are three:

Christianity can no longer use Jesus as a mascot for genocide, bombing, and empire. The real Christianity is an incubator for a world without war — a world where the garden's resources belong to everyone. That is the truth we are organizing around. We call all churches to a deeper reckoning with it.

March 22 is where we move from analysis to action. Be there.

RSVP free: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jpp-first-organizing-meeting-of-jesus-peace-project-tickets-1984190266500

— Sander Hicks, Founder, Jesus Peace Project

The people don’t want war, they want deep change. And here in our local neighborhood, we are doing everything we can.

Tonight, we’re hosting a house party in Highland Park (4 Van Siclen Ct.) to support Christian Celeste Tate for New York State Assembly, District 54.

This race directly affects our local community, and stands for a larger politics. We need your presence, or your donation, today!

If you live in in AD 54, you already know what’s at stake:

• Rising rents pushing families out
• Speculative landlords warehousing apartments
• Shrinking affordability
• Real public safety concerns that aren’t solved by slogans
• Working people stretched thin

Christian is a community organizer and democratic socialist running on a simple line:

Housing for people — not speculation.
Health care access.
Economic dignity.
Accountability in Albany.

This district can elect someone who answers to tenants, workers, and families — not real estate money.

Come meet Christian in person. Ask direct questions. Size him up yourself.

If you can’t attend, please consider making a donation:
Wow! It’s our own, personalized Act Blue!

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/sanderhicks4cct4nyc

Saturday, March 7 — 7 PM
4 Van Siclen Ct., Brooklyn

Snacks · Drinks ·
Live Music / Labor Songs Sing-A-Long - with White Collar Crime!

VIP Guest: Alan Gamboa (District Leader / State Committee candidate)

RSVP:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/support-christian-celeste-tate-for

This is a ground-level race. A few hundred votes can decide it. Cypress Hills turnout matters.

— Sander Hicks

Friends, CountryFolk, Comrades!

Do not give up! The Resistance is STILL alive!

The people don’t want war, they want deep change. And here in our local neighborhood, we are doing everything we can.

Tonight, we’re hosting a house party in Highland Park (4 Van Siclen Ct.) to support Christian Celeste Tate for New York State Assembly, District 54.

This race di…

Read more

Friends —

On March 7 at 7 PM, Sophie and I are opening our home in Highland Park to support a candidate who actually means what he says.

Christian Celeste Tate is running for New York State Assembly in District 54 — and this race will decide who Albany answers to: real estate money, or working families.

I wrote recently in The Indypendent about what’s at stake. The incumbent has taken major real estate industry money while childhood lead poisoning, displacement, and neglect continue in our district. Meanwhile, Christian is organizing in the neighborhoods most politicians only visit at election time.

He’s clear:

Housing for people — not speculation.
Health care access.
Real community safety through youth programs and mental health investment.
Protection for immigrant neighbors. - BAN ICE!

No triangulating. No hiding what he stands for.

Now it’s time to build momentum.

Join us:
Saturday, March 7 · 7:00 PM
On Van Siclen Ct., Brooklyn - RSVP for exact address.

Snacks. Drinks. Live music. Good conversation.
VIP guest: Alan Gamboa (District Leader / State Committee candidate)

RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/support-christian-celeste-tate-for-assembly-tickets-1984148302986?aff=oddtdtcreator

Can’t attend? Please donate directly:
https://www.cct4nyc.com/

Even $25 matters in a grassroots race.

If you want to understand why this race matters, read my full article here:
https://indypendent.org/2025/12/anti-poverty-activist-takes-on-real-estate-fat-cat-in-north-brooklyn-assembly-race/

Here’s a sexy excerpt of my snappy prose:

Christian Celeste Tate—known as “CCT”—is a 31-year-old anti-poverty activist. During Mamdani’s mayoral run, he led a team of more than 200 volunteers canvassing the eastern part of AD 54, where Mamdani struggled in the primary. Tate has received the coveted DSA endorsement, which guarantees an army of volunteers.

This district is winnable. The margin last cycle was razor thin. The old machine is vulnerable.

Let’s organize the Brooklyn we actually want.

Hope to see you March 7 —

Sander Hicks
Hosted with Sophie Gonick

Questions: sanderhicksdotcom@gmail.com

RSVP here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/support-christian-celeste-tate-for-assembly-tickets-1984148302986?aff=oddtdtcreator

New York apartments are not just small. They are vertically underused. Your bed gets in the way. It blocks your energy. It blocks YOU — at the knees!

With LoftBedsNYC.com, we provide a micro-form of affordable housing. We get you more living space where you already live. We help you not move.

I am a Rinzai Zen practitioner. I have heard a little about Feng Shui along the path. For over 20 years, I have been designing and building loft beds for working people in NYC. Moving the bed out of the way clears the energy in a room. People say, “Wow, there is so much more space now.” Don’t let your bed eat up your space. Loft UP the bed and the entire vibe of the apartment changes.

Look up in your room right now — there’s so much more space up there in the air. It’s called “Cubic Footage.” A 450 SF apartment with 9-foot ceilings contains more than 4,000 cubic feet of volume. Most layouts use only the bottom half. The rest sits above eye level, untouched.

The way building and design is going, new construction has higher ceilings. Heights are going UP. People want more headroom. Loft beds are getting more popular, built into new spaces. We have even built triple lofts for two boys in a small room with 18’ ceilings.

Most people design horizontally by habit. Bed against the wall. Dresser beside it. Desk wedged into a corner. Floor consumed. Circulation compromised.

Vertical design reclaims the most expensive footprint in the room. The sleeping plane moves upward. The active life of the apartment moves below. You gain usable workspace. You gain defined lounge space. You gain storage that disappears into structure instead of floating around the room. And with my company, we provide architectural design and 3D renderings as part of every job.

With our designs, the apartment begins to feel intentional instead of crowded.

There is a psychological shift. A raised sleeping platform creates separation. Up top is rest. Below is work, thinking, living. The eyeline changes. Sightlines open. Daylight travels further. Visual clutter drops because storage becomes integrated rather than additive.

Clients consistently report that they sleep more soundly. They have a new nest. The apartment feels larger after installation. Nothing expanded. The volume was simply used correctly.

Most loft beds in New York City are under-engineered. Big box corporate loft beds are rickety. Our loft beds do not move. They are anchored. They are built to last. If the structure does not make sense, we do not build it. We recently changed a project immediately when the building objected to the design. We went into the woodshop and came back the next day with large poplar braces, since suspension from the ceiling was not allowed. After 20 years, we have seen it all.

Vertical loft living works best for professionals working remotely, couples sharing one-bedroom layouts, parents optimizing children’s rooms, and renters planning to stay several years. It does not work when anchoring is prohibited or for short-term transitions. We say no when the math or the conditions do not support the design.

New York rewards intelligent density. Vertical design is an urban response to cost, space, and longevity. When done correctly, a custom loft system can serve a space for a decade or more.

Built correctly. Built once.

If you are considering a loft bed in New York City, start with two numbers: ceiling height and wall type. Send those dimensions. We will tell you quickly whether vertical living makes sense for your space.

Sander
Zenspacemakers.com
LoftBedsNYC.com

Stand With Jesus Against Violent Power

A half-day micro-conference rooted in the radical tradition of the historical Jesus, convened in the spirit of Friends.

At a moment of ongoing war, displacement, and moral confusion — when institutions still invoke Jesus to bless violence — we are asking a direct question: What would it mean, right now, to stand with Jesus against violent power?

Jesus did not deport people. He built a movement grounded in love.

He launched a poor people’s movement rooted in nonviolence, truth-telling, and solidarity with the oppressed. He taught creative resistance to empire — not submission to it.

That fire has been dimmed. Replaced by institutions that align with nationalism, militarism, and state power.

We are not here to admire Jesus.
We are here to take him seriously.

Not symbolically. Practically. Collectively.

We will:

• Confront Christianity’s entanglement with empire

• Reclaim Jesus as a nonviolent movement leader

• Explore how faith communities can organize with moral clarity in a time of genocide, militarism, and collapsing credibility

Speakers:

• Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil (Union Theological Seminary)

• Amanda Daloisio (Catholic Worker)

• Marah Sarji (Christians for a Free Palestine)

Short talks. Real discussion. Concrete next steps.

This is a live question. This is a live moment.

If you’ve felt the contradiction — between what Jesus taught and what is done in his name — this is where you face it.

If you want faith that acts, organizes, and resists — this is where you start.

Sunday, February 22 | 1–4 PM | Free
Lunch at 12:30 PM (Middle Eastern, complimentary)

15 Rutherford Place, NYC 10003
15th Street Monthly Meeting (Quakers)

Hosted by Sander Hicks, Clerk, Speaker Events Committee, 15th Street Friends

Zoom option and childcare available

RSVP NOW

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/let-us-stand-with-jesus-against-violent-power-tickets-1980704296871?aff=oddtdtcreator

Make plans to show up with joy!

Spread the word!

Consider sharing these conversations with our speakers and supporters:

Interview with Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil
A deep discussion on the historical Jesus, nonviolence, and reclaiming faith from empire.

Interview with Andrew Springer
A timely conversation on faith, public witness, and LGBTQ+ justice — including reflections connected to current debates around Stonewall and the politics of visibility.

If podcasts are easier, both interviews are also available on Monks and Punks:
https://shows.acast.com/monks-and-punks

We are stronger together.
We do not stand alone.

ZOOM:

This event is best attended in person, but it’s also an option to Join Online (Zoom)

You can join using the link below:

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87236183226?pwd=IdJqmcfDRTpD6362kq33OFXTS3dFZQ.1

Meeting ID: 872 3618 3226
Passcode: 749460

We look forward to gathering with you for this time of reflection, learning, and faithful witness. If you have any last-minute questions, feel free to reply to this email.

Our Co-Sponsors Include:

St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery

Christians for a Free Palestine

Disciples of Palestine
Palestine Justice Network/Episcopal Peace Fellowship
Veterans for Peace

and The Jesus Movement (Substack!)

The Queries:

Where do we stand in the long contradiction between the teachings of Jesus and the violence carried out in his name?

When we speak of the Inner Light, do we mean a private comfort — or a force that confronts kings, churches, and systems of domination?

If we inherit this history of refusal, reform, discipline, and dissent, what can we say now — and what will we do?

The Invite

Quaker history begins in the furnace of civil war. George Fox emerged in a world where Christians were killing Christians and every faction claimed divine authority. He rejected the sword, rejected priestly mediation, and declared that Christ had come to teach his people himself. From that claim flowed silent worship, plain speech, refusal of oaths, and a radical insistence on equality.

Friends carried that witness into government with William Penn, into abolition through Lay and Woolman, into schism with Elias Hicks, into women’s suffrage with Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, into civil rights with Bayard Rustin, and into war resistance through the Peace Testimony and the work of the American Friends Service Committee.

At times, Friends shaped power. At times, they were shaped by it. At times, they failed and had to reckon with their complicity. But the thread remained: conscience over coercion.

This history is not past. It is alive in this Meeting. It is alive wherever equality is practiced, wherever violence is refused, wherever truth is spoken plainly. The question is not what Fox said. The question is: what we will say now.

Please come to a talk on Quaker History, given by historian Sander Hicks, First Day, 2/15, at 1 PM at 15 Rutherford Place. Lunch will be served beforehand, in the social hall. Jack is bringing baklava for the occasion!

Zoom link will be also available - please email me for access.

We explore Jesus as a movement figure, not a mythic abstraction—and why that matters now. The conversation ranges from Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus and the Disinherited (Howard Thurman), liberation theology, and the moral stakes of faith in an age of empire, violence, and institutional collapse.

Thatamanil brings deep scholarship without jargon. The result is a genuine brain-stimulator for anyone serious about spirituality, justice, or history.

Listen here:
https://shows.acast.com/monks-and-punks/episodes/more-than-a-myth-a-brain-stimulating-look-at-the-historical

Hear Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil live—beyond the podcast—at the following event in NYC and on Zoom:

LIVE EVENT — February 22

Let Us Stand With Jesus Against Violent Power

A half-day micro-conference rooted in the radical tradition of the historical Jesus, convened in the spirit of Friends.

Jesus did not found an empire-friendly religion.
He launched a poor people’s movement grounded in nonviolence, truth-telling, solidarity with the oppressed, and resistance to imperial power.

That fire has been dimmed by institutions that bless war, nationalism, and state violence in his name.

This gathering asks a direct question:

What would it mean now to stand with Jesus against violent power—not symbolically, but practically and collectively?

Together we will:

• Examine Christianity’s entanglement with empire

• Reclaim Jesus as a nonviolent movement leader

• Explore how faith communities can organize with moral clarity amid genocide, militarism, and eroding credibility
  

Speakers

• Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil (Union Theological Seminary)

• Amanda Daloisio (Catholic Worker)

• Marah Sarji, Palestinian feminist liberation theologian, Christians for a Free Palestine

Short talks. Q&A. Small-group discussion. Activist sharing.

Sunday, February 22 | 1–4 PM
Free (NYC + Zoom)
Complimentary Middle Eastern lunch at 12:30 PM

Location
15 Rutherford Place, NYC 10003
15th Street Monthly Meeting (Quakers)

Please RSVP:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/let-us-stand-with-jesus-against-violent-power-tickets-1980704296871?aff=oddtdtcreator

We’ve been busy. Very busy.

While a lot of small shops are slowing down, Zen Space Makers has been doing what we do best:

Turning empty, broken, or under-used spaces into places where real life happens.

Here’s what that looks like right now:

🎶 Rain Delay Records — Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

A brand-new independent record store is opening at 1084 Bedford Avenue, and we built the entire space from the studs out.

We handled the full interior build-out — framing, lighting, paint — plus a custom walnut-and-cedar sales counter, hand-built birch plywood record cabinets, and modular wall displays designed for serious vinyl people. Everything was finished with solid hardwood edges (no tape), so it will still look good years from now.

Rain Delay opens in 2026. If you’re anywhere near Bed-Stuy, it’s going to be a cultural anchor — and we’re proud to have built it.

New Loft Bed at Tudor City!

We also just completed a custom loft bed in a city worker’s small one-bedroom at Tudor City — transforming a tight Midtown apartment into a comfortable, functional home where he can live happily with his young son. That’s what Zen does when every square foot matters.
Need a loft bed? We just renovated the Loft Beds website!

📘 The Affordable Housing Playbook

We’re not just building rooms — we’re thinking seriously about how housing should work.

Over the past year we’ve been developing our Affordable Housing Playbook — a builder-grounded proposal for:

• smarter zoning

• humane density

• micro-units and modular housing

• and real ways out of the housing crisis

This work is informed by our conversations with housing organizers, tenant advocates, and progressive political circles, including people in and around the Mamdani movement — but it remains an independent Zen Space Makers project, rooted in what we see on job sites and in real buildings.

Housing should be designed for people, not just for finance. That’s what this Playbook is about. (If you care about Affordable Housing, we are hosting a MicroConference on Housing, May 24, Sunday, 1-4 PM in Manhattan, at the 15th Street Quaker MeetingHouse!)

Now the honest part

Small businesses don’t survive on vibes.
They survive on work.

And the fastest way for us to grow is through referrals — from you.

So we’re making it simple:

If you refer someone who becomes a paying Zen Space Makers client, we will pay you $100 — by Zelle or in cash. No hoops. No nonsense.

Know someone who:

• needs a renovation?

• is opening a shop?

• wants custom furniture?

• has a cramped apartment that needs smart design?

• is rehabbing a building?

Send them to us. CC us. Forward this newsletter. Make the intro.

If it turns into real work, you get $100.

That’s it.

We build.
You connect.
Everybody wins.

—
Sander Hicks
Zen Space Makers
zen spacemakers dot com

DSA-endorsed Assembly candidate Christian Celeste Tate is an anti-poverty activist, and Mamdani campaign worker, and one of the good guys. That is clear in our new video interview.

He is taking on a long-time, corrupt, real estate fat cat, incumbent Erik Dilan, here in AD 54 (Bushwick and E. NY).

I really do hope all of my Substack readers will consider subscribing to my YouTube Channel, because as you can see from this link, we have some great stuff!

For example, well, this brand new video - check out my interview with this fresh young community leader. “CCT” plans to run on issues of housing, affordability, and community safety.

The Primary is in June, this district went heavily for Mamdani, and the race is on!

Your Host, me, Sander Hicks is a DSA member and veteran of the Marcela Mitaynes, Alexa Aviles, India Walton, AOC and Mamdani campaigns. He was a field lead for Claire Valdez.

We have seen it before, a strong incumbent who seems impregnable can be toppled if we can unite the people, and get the message out. It’s time for big money to go, it’s time for people power to come in, and build the people’s agenda, in Albany! It’s ON!

Background: See the “Case Against Dilan” laid out plain - with innovative investigative reporting - Dilan is among a whole gang of criminals ripping off NYC “affordable housing” programs. This POS has gotta GO!

Free lunch at 12:30, today, 11/23 and the event is 1 PM until about 3:30 PM. RSVP at EventBrite.