(RNS) — As the end of 2024 arrives, it may feel like we have witnessed more human suffering in the last 12 months than ever before. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine. Millions of people were forced to flee their homes by war and insecurity. Climate disasters devastated communities here in the U.S. and around the world. Gun violence ripped apart lives in a slow-moving, relentless massacre. Poverty, homelessness and hunger affected millions of children and families in the world’s richest nation and beyond.
It has been a hard year, to say the least.
But we also know that alongside all the pain of this past year, the work of building a more just, peaceful and resilient world persisted — and we made important strides forward. George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), said during his lifetime that he saw not only an ocean of darkness in the world, but also an ocean of light growing even greater alongside it. That is how we see 2024 through our advocacy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL).
Despite the many challenges our world has faced, and will continue to face in the years ahead, 2024 also brought progress. These small but important steps forward do not generate the headlines and attention that war and other tragedies often do. But they are certainly worth celebrating as we reflect on all that has happened this year.
The 118th Congress brought considerable challenges for advocates of a better world, but it also brought opportunities.
Overseas, mass atrocities and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza demanded our attention. Along with our partners, we pushed Congress to use all its leverage toward securing a ceasefire. Our members sent a historic 750,000 letters to their legislators on this issue alone. Thanks to this tireless advocacy, 94 members have now publicly called for a full ceasefire. That includes eight senators and 86 representatives. This, in turn and after much delay, nudged President Joe Biden to support a ceasefire as well. In November, the Senate, for the first time, voted to halt shipments of offensive weapons to Israel. While the vote did not succeed, it demonstrates a growing movement to end U.S. complicity.
Unfortunately, we continued transferring cluster munitions this year, including to Ukraine. These indiscriminate weapons kill civilians, including children, for years and years. We were able to increase the number of Congress members to vote in favor of preventing the transfer of such munitions to foreign countries. The total now stands at 220, including 107 Democrats and 114 Republicans. This is genuine bipartisan support to prevent cluster munition shipments in the future.
Closer to home and in partnership with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, we brought hundreds of young people from across the country to Washington to lobby their legislators on the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. They secured multiple co-sponsorships to the bipartisan bill, while raising awareness of the need to face the full truth of this tragic era in our country’s history and take concrete steps toward righting our relationship with Native peoples. After all this work, in the final days of 2024, the Senate passed the bill.
After publishing a paper outlining the extent of the gun violence epidemic, alongside proposed solutions, we convened our inaugural Violence Interrupter Symposium bringing both community leaders and violence interrupters to Washington to learn from one another and lobby Congress. This powerful gathering helped ensure the voices of those on the frontlines addressing gun violence are at the forefront of proposed solutions and sustain funding for community-based approaches.
After years of effort, our nationwide advocates helped ensure overwhelming bipartisan support in the House to pass an expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC). While this did not make it over the finish line in the Senate, we are now in a stronger position to get broader support for an expanded CTC in the new Congress.
As we reflect on the year past and restore ourselves for the year ahead, we are heartened by the successes we have had and reminded of the words of FCNL’s founding leader, E. Raymond Wilson: “We ought to be willing to work for causes which will not be won now, but cannot be won in the future unless the goals are staked out now and worked for energetically over time.”
So, in this turning of another year, let us rest and renew, reflect and restore. And as we prepare for the 119th Congress and the next administration, let us carry on with persistence, faith and hope, continuing the work to which we have been called — of trying what love can do to mend a broken world.
If not us, then who?
(Bridget Moix is general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and its associated Quaker hospitality center, Friends Place on Capitol Hill. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
