Reading “Staying Grounded in the Face of Voter Intimidation” in your Meeting and Community as we Preparatively Ready for the Elections
Rooted and Grounded: A Quaker Review of “Staying Grounded in the Face of Voter Intimidation” for the 2026 Midterms
For South Jersey Friends
As Friends in South Jersey prepare to hold our federal 2026 midterm elections in a Light of love, a recent article republished by Waging Nonviolence offers a timely and practical gift: “Staying Grounded in the Face of Voter Intimidation” (originally published by Truthout). Written by Quaker nonviolence trainers, the piece is part field guide, part spiritual memoir, and part summons to faithful, grounded action. It deserves a careful reading in our Meetings.
Core Message: Fear Is the Point—and the Antidote
The article by Eileen Flanagan begins with a moment of vulnerability: an ophthalmologist’s warning, a brace of the body, and her practice of intentional breathing. From there, author Eileen draws a direct line between personal grounding and political witness. “The forces of authoritarianism want us to feel knocked off center,” she writes, warning that fearful voters may stay home, while chaotic resistance may feed the narrative that “the left is the real threat”. The solution is not to suppress fear but to notice it, breathe through it, and then move forward to choose other responses that are both calm and courageous.
This is a deeply Quaker insight. It echoes our rooting in a testimony of integrity—the testedcall to wholeness that refuses to let fear dictate our actions—and the testimony of peace, which, for F/friends is not passive withdrawal but active, an encouraging disciplined love. As South Jersey Quakers have proclaimed, we are called to be “active mystics”—grounded in worship and moved to faithful action. This serious article is a manual for exactly that.
The Tool: Election Defense Scenarios
The article lifts up Daniel Hunter’s Election Defense Scenarios, a guide that sketches eighteen possible threats to the vote and what people can do about them. Hunter, a Quaker and co-founder of Choose Democracy, writes: “Illegal and unjust orders only work if people comply with them”. The guide is available as a free PDF from Freedom Trainers, and the article notes that a subtle theme is handling fear—ensuring that poll volunteers do not become “vectors of fear” by spreading unfounded rumors. These are easy to share resources for our readying the body and our faith and practice in human endeavor.
Link to Recent Article in The Philadelphia Citizen
The Practice: Grounding, Debriefing, and Liberation Listening
Eileen shares hard-won lessons from Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) and Philadelphia peacekeeping. She recounts a 2020 rumor that the Proud Boys were coming to a park. The unfounded rumor that led that crowd to chase a man into his car, producing a viral video that conservative media could exploit. The lesson here is not to ignore a real risk but to assess it together, grounding our shared experience in silent worship and mutual care. Flanagan names three learnings that stay in her: “Remember to breathe; don’t be afraid to ask for help; and always debrief with friends to name what you learned”.
This is liberation listening in practice – a Quaker discipline of listening for the truth in one another, refusing to let fear sever the bonds of community.
Honoring the Elders: Eileen Flanagan and George Lakey
The article stands in a rich stream of Quaker nonviolence. Eileen Flanagan, a Quaker activist and author, has written Common Ground: Stories of Resistance and Healing from the Movement to Protect the Earth (Seven Stories Press, 2025), a book that weaves together stories of hard-won successes in the climate movement and the coalitions that made them possible. Flanagan has also helped train tens of thousands of people in peacekeeping and nonviolent strategies through Choose Democracy. Her work is a living example of the testimony of community—the insistence that we are called to bear one another’s burdens and to build coalitions across difference. She is a medicine woman in a sense that her truth echos and is a windswept continuation.
George Lakey, a Quaker movement elder and longtime Waging Nonviolence columnist, has recently published his memoir Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice (Seven Stories Press, 2022). Lakey’s lifetime of nonviolent campaigning—from civil rights to LGBTQ liberation to climate justice—is a testament to the testimony of equality and the power of disciplined, joyful resistance. The article’s author, who trained with EQAT and learned from Lakey’s daughter Ingrid, is part of this living lineage.
A Review in Brief: Why do Meetings and Community Benefit from Reading and Studying Preparatively together?
Strengths: The article is accessible, honest, and deeply practical. It does not promise that grounding will eliminate danger; it promises that grounding will help us choose responses that build the movement for the long haul. Its emphasis on debriefing, mutual care, and risk assessment is a gift to any Meeting preparing for election season.
Limitations: The piece focuses primarily on individual and small-group preparation. Meetings may need to pair it with communal discernment and corporate action—the Quaker practice of seeking clearness together.
Recommendation: Read it in your Meeting. Use it as a springboard for a threshing session on how your community will hold the 2026 elections in the Light. Then act together.
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