Constitution & Statement of Purpose · Ratified 2026

Quaker.Love

A founding document for a peace-forward, community-first, monthly event guide to Philadelphia — maintained by one person, grounded in Friends values, published as a simple file in a public repository.

quaker.love
Philadelphia, PA
☮ SPICES-informed
CC BY-SA 4.0
Simplicity · Peace · Integrity · Community · Equality · Stewardship
Preamble

Philadelphia was founded as a holy experiment — a city designed, from its first street grid, around the radical proposition that people of different faiths, backgrounds, and conditions could share a common life in peace. William Penn called it the City of Brotherly Love. That intention has never fully arrived, and never fully left.

quaker.love is a small act in that long experiment. A monthly list of what is worth your time in this city, offered freely, maintained honestly, and grounded in the belief that the best things Philadelphia has to offer are available to everyone — not just those who can afford them.

Article I
What This IsThe affirmative statement

quaker.love is a personal act of community stewardship. It is one person's curated monthly gift to Philadelphia — a deliberately selective list of cultural, community, and civic experiences in the city, prioritizing the free, the affordable, and the genuinely worthwhile.

It is a flat HTML file, tagged and released monthly via a public git repository. The simplicity is intentional. The technology serves the content, not the other way around.

It is secular in form and Friends-informed in spirit — shaped by Quaker values without claiming to represent any meeting, institution, or religious body.

I.i
quaker.love is a monthly publication, released as a tagged git commit. Each release is a complete, standalone document. The archive is the history.
I.ii
quaker.love is a curation, not a directory. Not everything in Philadelphia belongs here. Inclusion is an editorial act, not an entitlement.
I.iii
quaker.love is open source, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. It may be freely forked, adapted, and applied to other cities. The model should travel.
Article II
What This Is NotThe necessary limits

Clarity about what a thing is not is as important as clarity about what it is. These are not hedges — they are commitments.

II.i
Not a business. quaker.love carries no advertising, accepts no sponsorship, and promotes no commercial interest. It exists to serve readers, not to monetize them.
II.ii
Not a brand. quaker.love is not a product, a startup, or a platform. It is a document with a domain name.
II.iii
Not affiliated with any religious institution. The name honors William Penn's founding vision and the values of Friends practice. It does not represent, speak for, or claim association with any Quaker meeting, organization, or body.
II.iv
Partnered, Not Automated. quaker.love uses artificial intelligence as a labor-saving tool to scour local data, aggregate events, and draft initial content. However, no machine has the final say. Every inclusion, rejection, and description is reviewed, refined, and sanctioned by a human editor. The AI provides the scale; the human provides the discernment.
II.v
Not comprehensive. Philadelphia contains more worthy things than any list can hold. Omission is not a judgment against what is omitted. It is simply the nature of curation.
"There is something of God in every person." — George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, 1647. quaker.love proceeds from this premise: that every person in Philadelphia deserves access to the beauty, community, and culture this city holds.
— On the founding spirit
Article III
The Editorial StandardHow things get in

Inclusion in quaker.love requires meeting an honest threshold. The question is not is this interesting but is this worth someone's time and, where relevant, their money.

III.i
Free or genuinely affordable. The majority of entries are free. Paid entries must be accessible to a working Philadelphian on a modest budget. Price alone does not exclude — value does.
III.ii
Rooted in community rather than consumption. Preference is given to experiences that create connection — between people, between a person and a place, between a person and an idea — over experiences that are primarily transactional.
III.iii
Sourced and verifiable. Every entry links to a primary source. Dates, times, and details are verified at time of publication. Sources are listed publicly.
III.iv
The curator's judgment is final. quaker.love has one editor. That editor holds the discernment. Contributions may be proposed; acceptance is not guaranteed.
III.v
Removal is as important as inclusion. Entries that close, change character, or no longer meet the standard are removed without apology. The guide is only as useful as it is accurate.
Article IV
The ValuesSPICES as operating principles

The Quaker testimonies — Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship — are named here not as branding but as genuine operating principles. Each shapes how this project is built and maintained.

S
Simplicity
A flat HTML file. No framework, no CMS, no database. The technology is as simple as the work requires and no simpler. Design serves readability.
P
Peace
This is a peace-forward guide. Philadelphia was founded as an experiment in peaceful coexistence. quaker.love operates in that spirit — welcoming, non-partisan, and oriented toward connection.
I
Integrity
Sources are cited. Errors are corrected publicly, in the git history. We are transparent about our tooling: AI assists in searching, coding, and drafting copy, but it operates strictly under human oversight. The editor does not accept payment to include or exclude anything. What you read is what the editor genuinely vouches for.
C
Community
The purpose is community — helping people find each other, find their city, find the experiences that make urban life worth living. The guide exists for readers, not for the editor's reputation.
E
Equality
The best Philadelphia has to offer is available to everyone. This guide prioritizes the free and the affordable not as a constraint but as a conviction: access to culture is a right, not a privilege.
S
Stewardship
Philadelphia's cultural life is a commons. quaker.love tends a small part of it. The guide is maintained with care, updated with honesty, and offered without expectation of return.
Article V
The TechnologyA choice, not a limitation

quaker.love is a single HTML file, hosted on GitLab Pages, published via tagged git releases, served at a parked domain. This is a considered choice.

V.i
GitLab over GitHub. GitLab is open-source at its core. For a values-based project, that alignment is meaningful. RSVP System, the calendar infrastructure this guide connects to, also lives on GitLab.
V.ii
Flat HTML over CMS. No database. No server-side rendering. No dependencies that can break. The file that renders in your browser is the file in the repository. What you see is what exists.
V.iii
Git as editorial record. The commit log is the changelog. Each monthly release is tagged vYYYY.MM. The message describes what changed and why. The history is public and permanent.
V.iv
Merge requests as community contribution. The repository is public. Anyone may propose an addition via merge request. The editor reviews, discerns, and decides. Not every proposal will be accepted. The process is open; the judgment is not collective.
V.v
RSVP System as calendar infrastructure. Events in quaker.love may link to an RSVP System instance for scheduling and community coordination. RSVP System is open-source calendar infrastructure built in Philadelphia. The relationship is disclosed, not hidden.
Article VI
The InvitationHow to contribute

quaker.love is maintained by one editor but is not closed to the world. The repository is public. The model is forkable. Contributions are welcome in the spirit in which they are offered.

VI.i
Propose an entry. Submit a merge request to the repository with a new card entry following the established format. Include a source URL. The editor will review it against the editorial standard in Article III.
VI.ii
Report an error. Open an issue in the repository. If an event has closed, changed, or been misdescribed, say so. Accuracy is a community act.
VI.iii
Fork it for your city. Take the model, the design, the structure, and apply it somewhere else. Pittsburgh.Love. Camden.Love. The license requires attribution and share-alike. The spirit requires honesty about what you're building.
VI.iv
Share it with someone. The simplest contribution. Tell a person about a thing they didn't know existed in their city. That is the entire point.
Ratification

This constitution was written in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 2026 — the year the city celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence signed a few blocks from where it was drafted. It was written by one person, guided by a lifelong commitment to these core values and a recent gravitation toward the Religious Society of Friends, shaped by twenty years of building community infrastructure in and for this city, and offered in the hope that it will be useful to someone.

It is a living document. It may be amended. Amendments will be made in the open, in the git history, with honest commit messages. Nothing will be changed quietly.

Curator & Editor
gluebox.com
Philadelphia, PA
First Published
May 2026
v2026.05
License
CC BY-SA 4.0
Share alike, freely
Repository
gitlab.com/
gluebox/quaker.love

On amendments: This constitution may be revised as the project grows and the editor's understanding deepens. All changes will be committed to the repository with a clear message explaining what changed and why. The full history of this document — including every revision — is preserved in the git log and available to anyone. Transparency is not a feature. It is the foundation.