by Jeff Loiter
When Robert Snyder thinks about the 30-year history of the American Friends Service Committee in North Cambridge, he said he is convinced that it continues to be the right location for this Quaker service group.
He feels that Cambridge is a comfort zone for both the organization and the many AFSC employees who live in Cambridge, Snyder said.
Joseph Gerson (left) with Robert Snyder in front AFSC center at 2161 Massachusetts Ave.
The neighborhood and city has an abundance of progressive and liberal institutions, he said. “Look around at the non-profit community in Cambridge. We feel we belong here. It’s our kind of town.”
Although, Snyder jokingly said one drawback to living and working in famously liberal Cambridge is that he has no idea what is going on in the rest of the country.
Today, the AFSC location at 2161 Massachusetts Ave. serves as both the Regional Office and the organizer of local Boston-area programs, he said.
From its home-like office setting, AFSC supports a number of initiatives that exercise its principles of non-violence and justice.
More than 20 full- and part-time staff support programs on peace and economic security, urban youth, criminal justice, and local and international humanitarian aid. AFSC focuses most of this work on neighborhoods outside of Cambridge, such as Roxbury, he said.
Snyder said the AFSC clearly has the national political situation on its radar. In April, they hosted
“Hope and Hard Work,” a conference focused on teaching activists methods to challenge the Bush administration priorities that Quakers believe threaten, rather than strengthen, America’s national security.
“The goal of the meeting was to give the public a better understanding of where the Bush administration’s policies are taking us,” says Joseph Gerson, director of AFSC’s peace and economic security program.
More than 200 people attended the conference on the MIT campus to strategize and build campaigns addressing national security, access to medical care, and other issues, he said.
Gerson traveled to Hiroshima, Japan to deliver a speech Aug. 2 titled, “Nuclear Terrorism, Remembrance and Resistance” at the World Conference Against A & H Bombs.
One of the most important tools the AFSC has is the ability to bring people together, he said.
Whether by linking individual activists to national organizations or getting local groups to build coalitions, AFSC’s role is to facilitate interactions among people, he said.
Snyder said he shares Gerson’s emphasis on bringing people together.
When he first moved to Cambridge from New York City in 1969, he said his new city’s smallness made him nervous.
In Manhattan, one never sees anybody they know or even recognize, he said.
Now, he and his wife cannot imagine living anywhere else, he said. “Cambridge is a very compatible city. We realized that the most important thing in our lives is our friends, and they are all here.”
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