Something New

A Legacy of Love – In Memory of Dr. Frederick D. Reese

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“No one can win the war individually, It takes the wisdom of the elders and young people’s energy”

– Glory from the Motion Picture Selma

 

Frederick D. Reese is a Legend. And although the acts throughout his life were incredibly courageous, his legacy of love for the next generation is what made him legendary to us.

The first conversation we had with Dr. Reese was in the midst of a battle. The forces of racism and oppression had come knocking at our door trying to stop a youth movement to bring unity to Selma. It seemed so intense at the time. With people calling the local government and threatening to pull funding from our school if we didn’t stop.  

But Dr. Reese had withstood many battles of his own. From being a part of the Courageous Eight who compelled Dr. King to come to Selma, to leading his fellow teachers time and time again to the steps of the Dallas County Courthouse. Yet, here he was talking to us because he believed wholeheartedly that we mattered. And that a march led by youth, no matter how it seemed to others, was worth marching again.

Months before, we had met with government officials to plan a unity dance with youth from all over Selma on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the infamous  Bloody Sunday occurred in 1965. As the date came closer, the city government was under a lot of pressure to pull support. When they told us we could no longer host the dance because “you can always do the dance somewhere else”,  it ignited a fire in everyone to protest the decision and march on the day we had planned to dance.

But we needed guidance. And when we asked to meet with Dr. Reese, he gave us his full support. Not because we had done everything right, but because he believed our cause was right. Time and time again, he would invite us to teach the dance to kids at his church or talk to his members about the project. It was incredible to be walking in step with one of Selma’s greatest heroes, but also be so understood and welcomed.

Dr. Reese, thank you for standing with us. For never turning a blind eye to injustice, no matter if that injustice took away the right to vote or the right to dance. You lived a legacy of love and we pray that we can carry that legacy forward for more generations.

May you rest in glory.

Ready for some “Real Talk” about Love?

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Love may be in the air for some right now, but there sure is a lot of other stuff in the air along with it!

On this day that the calendar celebrates love, we wanted to share something our New Way trainers have been working on about how to walk in the kind of love that transforms us and powers world-changing movements. It’s deeper than (and outlasts) a gift of chocolate and flowers. This kind of love will offer a kind word and a soft heart toward someone who has hurt or misjudged you. It will seek to understand a person whose views make you want to hide them from your Facebook feed. It’s the kind of love and fire Dr. King said no fire hose could put out. This kind of love does what nothing else does: it frees you to be the best you and gives us all a chance at achieving healing and reconciliation.

Our New Way trainers are working on a book with stories about their own daily journeys to walk this kind of love out. It includes the ways they’ve fallen on their faces as well as the ways they’ve learned to rise above their own internal struggles and contradictions to walk out the good things they believe in.

Each story provides an opportunity for you, the reader, to reflect on one of King’s nonviolence principles as well as a challenge about how to implement that principle into your own life. Right now. Today.

The full book will be available in April, but we want to give you a taste now because we really do believe that what the world needs right now is love, sweet love.

I hope you’ll join me, Ronald, and Barak in this transformational journey in the nonviolence lifestyle.

Download your free sample of our upcoming book HERE.

Taught to Hate, Taught to Love

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It has been said that you aren’t born to hate but taught to hate. I was born into a system that taught me to hate. I learned to hate the LGBTQ community, judge people that had less than me, and treat women like sex objects. Hate was subtly poured into me from an early age through fear of differences. I learned to dehumanize people and develop a strong hate towards the LGBTQ community, different religious groups, and people of color. This strong hate came from the way I felt about myself. I hated who I was. When I did try to confront it, people would justify it as that is just the way guys are–or even more recently, as locker room talk. It is bullshit and I am going to call bullshit. I was a participant. I was racist, full of hate and fear. I had so much hate in me towards gay people that I wanted to hurt them. I looked down on black people as less than me. I treated women as objects.

Perhaps the worst part is that we did all of this behind the “Christian” label. We were the holy ones, the righteous ones. It wasn’t until I fully realized how screwed up that I am, that I found God’s love. God is love, God made all people, God is bigger than our small minds can even come close to imagining. I must be willing to call out the system that taught me to be prejudice, to judge and to live in fear. I have learned that the same system that taught me to hate was also killing me. Hate does that, you cannot hate and love at the same time. I am sick and tired of the way this system oppresses people in an attempt to justify its own insecurities.

I have experienced freedom through love. Once you taste freedom, you want everyone to experience the same freedom. Freedom isn’t free; it requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is required to stand against a system that oppresses all people. I cannot sit by and watch our country, the world, operate under a dehumanizing system that judges people based on their color, sexual orientation, religion, outward appearance, money, etc.–not on the content of their character.

My challenge is to not become bitter at the people stuck in the system that oppressed me and continues to oppress so many others. This does no good except cause you to do the same thing that you came out of. You are still judging someone as less than you. You are putting yourself higher than someone else. That is the system. In order to be free from it, we have to let go of it. We must choose to operate in love– not a mushy love, but an unconditional love that chooses to see the person and not define them by the system they are a part of. We must fight the ideology that has created this system, not the people that are slaves to it. As true nonviolent practitioners, we must be willing to examine the areas in ourselves where we still follow the system.
In order to free others, we must become free.

I Love Donald Trump

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Yes, I love Donald Trump.

And yes, I am a 6’3” 250-pound black man from Selma, Alabama–the birthplace of the voting rights movement that gave much of our country the right to make our voices heard on election day.

Some people close to me who are activists for equality cringe when I say it. They ask, “Have you lost your mind?” or “How can you love someone who ran a campaign of hate and division  and offended muslims, women, blacks, Mexicans, the LGBTQ community, veterans and even war heroes?”

Yes, I understand that this statement would be very difficult to reconcile for many, especially  when what we’ve heard and seen from our president-elect has caused so much hurt and fear.

Let me give you some understanding about what I believe and what I practice.

Principle 3 of nonviolence says, ATTACK FORCES OF EVIL AND NOT THE PERSON DOING THE EVIL.

Dr. King preached a sermon on loving our enemy in 1957. His sermon highlighted this principle of nonviolence that he lived by–and one I strive to live by as well.

This principle has shaped my judgment and helps guide my anger  towards the forces of evil and not toward a person. This principle is not just words with no power. It is powered by a strong redemptive love toward all humanity, but has a dislike of all evil, wrongdoing and injustice. This love is self-sacrificing and seeks the greater good, even when evil is returned. Dr. King knew that his oppressors were just as oppressed as he was by the system of hate that they lived in.

Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr, the man who trained me in the art and skill of nonviolent direct action, uses a beautiful analogy to explain its depth. Jim Clark was the sheriff in Selma during the civil rights movement. He was a very hard, angry and aggressive man that used his billy club to beat many nonviolent protestors. Dr. Lafayette said that the billy club was an instrument used by Jim Clark to beat people and it would be crazy to be angry at the billy club. It was just the instrument used.

Donald Trump is the billy club that is being used by a system to cause and inflict pain. The systems of Jim Crow and slavery were used to drive the behavior and justify the actions of many. I can’t be angry at Donald Trump for being the instrument of a system of oppression. He is oppressed by the same system of hate and division that he promotes.

I am angry at the system that conditions and damages so many with bad information.

How is it possible to love like this when I feel so much?

When we talk about this kind of love, it’s not a warm and fuzzy feeling the word “like” is. It is very difficult to love like this when we just don’t like someone. Like is a sentiment powered by emotions and feelings which can be unstable and ever changing. Principle 3 says to attack forces (ideologies, philosophies and wrong thinking) and not the person.

I don’t like the hurtful and divisive things Donald Trump says. But it is our duty and responsibility to love all of humanity — this is how we attack the system and not the person. Loving Donald Trump is not about not fighting back. It’s about fighting with a different tool. That tool is love.

It’s the tool that worked for Dr. King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. It’s the most effective tool we have now. I must sacrifice what I feel, not about wrongdoing, but about the person(s) that are doing the wrongdoing, in order to live by this powerful principle.

Love keeps me free. It is what makes me different from the very systems I hate. If I don’t walk in love, I risk becoming the very thing that I hate.

We are not bound by our emotions, although they are a very real part of our everyday lives. But we are bound by a higher moral law of love. I have found that when I walk in this love, I am free of hate. I am free of anger. I am free of judgment. I AM FREE!

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Something New
1029 North Peachtree Parkway #268
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