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Activist Spreads King's Teachings on Nonviolence
WASHINGTON - Bernard LaFayette, beaten and arrested 27 times during the civil rights movement, has spent his life working toward a goal the movement's leader Martin Luther King shared with him hours before he was killed.
Bernard LaFayette recounts his experiences during the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama on January 10, 2009. LaFayette, beaten and arrested 27 times during the civil rights movement, has spent his life working toward a goal the movement's leader Martin Luther King shared with him hours before he was killed.
(Reuters/Pamela Zappardino/Handout/United States) "I devoted my life to fulfilling Martin Luther King's last request," said LaFayette, who said King had been gearing up to take his teachings on nonviolence around the world and ensure that became fully embedded in society.
King would have been heartened by the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first black U.S. president, but his dream was focused on a bigger goal of curing economic disparities and ending what he called "the curse of war," said LaFayette.
A trained minister and professor at Atlanta's Emory University, LaFayette said Obama's election underscored a desire for change at a time when the United States was again mired in an unpopular war and facing huge economic challenges.
"They didn't vote for him because he was black. They voted for him ... because they saw some hope and the possibility of change," he said, adding that Obama embodied King's principle of reaching out to one's enemies and seeking reconciliation.
"They wanted to be part of something," LaFayette added, remembering his own involvement as a young college student in peaceful sit-ins at white lunch counters, bus rides to integrate transportation in the segregated South, and later, voter drives to ensure all African-Americans could vote.
After King's assassination in April 1968, violence and riots in more than 125 cities left 46 people dead and 2,600 injured in an outpouring of African-American outrage that flew in the face of King's work on nonviolence, but made LaFayette even more determined to continue that mission.
Forty-one years later, LaFayette estimates he has trained and certified over 20,000 individuals in King's six principles of nonviolence, including 3,000 Miami police officers and hundreds of inmates in one of Colombia's most violent prisons.
He has helped set up 22 nonviolence centers in poor areas of the United States and places like Palestine and Nigeria,
"In the places where we've been able to institutionalize it, we've seen some dramatic results," he said, citing a bill introduced in the Colombian parliament that would mandate nonviolence training in all schools, from kindergarten on.
LaFayette also worked with prisoners to dramatically reduce violence at the Bellavista prison in Colombia where inmates once cut off a guard's head and played soccer with it.
In Miami, nonviolence training helped police avert riots in 1992 after an all-white jury acquitted four policemen accused of beating black motorist Rodney King, LaFayette said. By contrast, Los Angeles had its worst riots since 1965.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa)
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Show AllI heard Dr. LaFayette speak in east Jerusalem, Nov. 2008 at Sabeel's 7th International Conference:
The Ongoing NAKBA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1112&Itemid=212
He said he has seen many movements and he was witnessing another one through the work of Sabeel/Arabic for The Way.........
In the ‘60’s two black men in America; one a Christian and one a Muslim shared a similar dream with different philosophies and means to achieve them.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. had “a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed… that all men are created equal.”
Malcolm X’s radical creed was, “Anything you can think of that you want to change right now, the only way you can do it is with a ballot or a bullet. And if you’re not ready to get involved with either one of those, you are satisfied with the status quo. That means we’ll have to change you.”
Both men dreamed of a world freed from the bondage of prejudice and racism, a world in which their children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
While King consistently advocated for a brotherhood of all peoples and persisted in only nonviolent actions to achieve it; not until after a pilgrimage to Mecca, did X evolve in his spirituality and thus reject his separatist beliefs and begin to advocate for unity and a world wide brotherhood.
Both can be said to have fully understood that there are “truths that are self-evident: That all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights;…[and] that, to secure [those] rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”- The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
Both men engaged in the struggle to wake up good people whose ears were not ready to hear, whose eyes were not ready to see and whose hearts were not yet pierced to bleed for the least and oppressed of humanity. Both men were shot dead before either could see any of their dreams realized.
A few weeks before Rev. King bled to death on a patch of pavement in Memphis, he said:
“Peace for Israel means security, and we stand with all our might to protect its right to exist…I see Israel as one of the greatest outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy.”
King died ten months after the 40 years of Israel’s Military occupation of Palestine began.
On May 14, 1948, The Declaration of the establishment of Israel proclaimed:
“On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.”
The Hebrew prophet Amos prayed:
“Let JUSTICE roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”
I contend that if King and X had lived, they would have followed the call of Amos and would have called for an IMMEDIATE Bilateral ceasefire, free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and END to the Israeli Occupation and upholding of Universal Human Rights, upon which Israel’s statehood was CONTINGENT upon upholding.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.
In KEEP HOPE ALIVE,
I began with Chapter One:
THE MORNING AFTER APRIL 4, 1968:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1166&Itemid=214
Eileen Fleming, Author, Founder WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"