
On our Culture of Violence
Join us for a conversation on Dr. King’s call for a radical revolution in values against
Join us for a conversation on Dr. King’s call
for a radical revolution in values against
What does this revolution look like
today?
Tues. April 4, 2023, 7pm ET
EVENT SPEAKERS

Medea Benjamin
Medea Benjamin (CODEPINK) is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK. She is also co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange, the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, ACERE: The Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect, and the Nobel Peace Prize for Cuban Doctors Campaign. Medea has been an advocate for social justice for 50 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high-profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times.

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is an Affrilachian (Black Appalachian) woman from the working class. Born and raised in Southeast Tennessee, she is the first Black woman to serve as Co-Executive Director of the Highlander Research & Education Center in New Market, TN. As a member of multiple leadership teams in the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), Ash-Lee has thrown down on the Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. Ash-Lee has served on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, the advisory committee of the National Bailout Collective, and is an active leader of The Frontline. She is a long-time activist who has done work in movements fighting for workers, for reproductive justice, for LGBTQUIA+ folks, for environmental justice, and more.

Loretta Ross
Loretta J. Ross is an Associate Professor at Smith College and was recently named to the 2022 class of MacArthur Fellows. She is an activist, public intellectual, and a scholar. Her passion is in innovating creative imagining about global human rights and social justice issues. As the third director of the first rape crisis center in the country in the 1970s, she helped launch the movement to end violence against women that has evolved into today’s #MeToo movement. She also founded the first center in the U.S. to innovate creative human rights education for all people so that social justice issues are more collaborative and less divisive. She has also deprogrammed members of hate groups leading to conceptualizing and writing the first book on “Calling In the Calling Out Culture” to transform how people can overcome political differences to use empathy and respect to guide difficult conversations.

Rev. Alba Onofrio
Rev. Alba (aka Reverend Sex) is a Southern Appalachian First-Gen Latinx Queer Evangelical Femme Resister who lives and loves in la Lucha with QTPOC folks as a Spiritual Healer and Bruja Troublemaker to subvert systems of domination, combat spiritual terrorism, reclaim the Divine and the erotic, and eradicate shame and fear wherever they are found. They hold a Masters of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School, where their studies focused on the theologies of sex, embodiment of the Divine in the queer colonized body, and sexual ethics based in queer desire. Alba has also worked in the immigrants rights movement for over a decade, previously serving as the Executive Director of El Centro Hispano, the then-largest non-religiously affiliated grassroots community center in North Carolina. As the former spiritual strategist for Soulforce and co-founder of the Sexual Liberation Collective, Reverend Sex continues to work for Queer Liberation all over the place, but most fondly in the US South and in solidarity with the Global South.

PG Watkins
PG is a facilitator, trainer, coach and consultant from Detroit. PG is an abolitionist who believes that a world is possible beyond jails, detention, surveillance, punitive punishment and advances these beliefs through organizing locally and as part of national networks. They are the Program Manager at BlackOUT Collective a part of the Center for Third World Organizing Hub and they train Black direct action practitioners, support the development of direct action strategy and coordinate a network of black direct action trainers and practitioners. They are a member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center.
PAST EVENTS: WATCH NOW
1000 people registered to watch our January 15th Webinar live and it was truly powerful
You can view the Meeting chat here. Join the Peace in Ukraine coalition.
Sign up at FORUSA.ORG to be part of the campaign we are building to conscientiously object to all forms of violence and hatred.
Connect with The Poor Peoples Campaign’s state coordinating committees by signing up online or texting MORAL at 38542.
Demand that President Biden used Executive Action to Cancel Student Debt. Organize local readings of Breaking the Silence.
You can find a toolkit here. Connect with organizations working on Transformative Justice in your community.
Listen to “The Nerve” podcast and discuss with friends. Join faith leaders from across New York on Feb 13th for Religion in a Time of Crisis.
Commit to collective actions nurturing a culture of peace. Create study circles to learn, nourish and support each other. Engage in intergenerational conversations. Remember: Another world is possible
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The Fierce Urgency of Now
Exactly one year before he was murdered, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave an historic sermon at New York’s Riverside Church on the profound connection between US militarism abroad with violence, racial repression, and widespread deprivation on the home front.
Over 50 years later, from Ukraine to Uvalde the crises of militarism, materialism, racism and the prospect of spiritual death that Dr. King warned us about are still very much with us. Not only does this militarism abroad continue to seed violence and poverty at home, it now aggravates the climate crisis and consumes vital resources that could alleviate climate-related suffering.
On what would be his 93rd birthday– Sunday, January 15 from 4-5:30 pm EST– we hosted a webinar, “Reimagining King’s Vision – The Fierce Urgency of Now” with an esteemed panel of presenters who discussed how King’s radical wisdom applies to our current moment.
Our presenters included Medea Benjamin (CODEPINK), Ash-Lee Henderson (Highlander Center), Tiffany Loftin (NAACP Youth), Rev. Liz Theoharis (Poor People’s Campaign), and Luis Rodriguez (Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore). (See biographies below.)
“Reimagining King’s Vision – The Fierce Urgency of Now” was sponsored by CODEPINK, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Highlander Center, The National Council of Elders and the King and Breaking Silence Coalition, in cooperation with other partner organizations.
OUR Jan. 15, 2023 Panel
Medea Benjamin (CODEPINK) is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK. She is also co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange, the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, ACERE: The Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect, and the Nobel Peace Prize for Cuban Doctors Campaign. Medea has been an advocate for social justice for 50 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high-profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times.
Luis J. Rodriguez (Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore) is a leading Chicano writer with 16 multi-genre books including a bestselling memoir, “Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.” and its sequel “It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions & Healing.” For 50 years he’s been active in urban peace, ending mass incarceration, and social justice struggles, including some 40 years of doing poetry readings, talks, healing circles, and creative writing workshops in prisons, jails, and juvenile lockups throughout the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. He’s founding editor of Tia Chucha Press, renowned for emerging voices in poetry, and cofounder with his wife Trini of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. He’s also active in Indigenous issues and Native spiritual practices, his teachers being from the Mexica (US and Mexico), Dine (Navajo), Lakota, Akimel O’odham, Pibil (El Salvador), Maya (Mexico and Guatemala), and Quechua (Peru). From 2014-2016, he served as Los Angeles Poet Laureate.
Tiffany D. Loftin (NAACP Youth) is a national labor, civil, and youth organizer. From managing national civic engagement campaigns, to stopping state violence, and organizing for education and labor, she is a student of the movement. She was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans in Higher Education. She is based in her hometown of Los Angeles, CA.
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is founding director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, at Union Theological Seminary. Ordained to ministry in the Presbyterian Church USA, Dr. Theoharis is highly respected scholar, author, and social critic who serves as Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.
In 2021 she was awarded the 30th Annual Freedom Award by the National Civil Rights Museum, the Hunger Leadership Award from the Congressional Hunger Center, and the Adela Dwyer-St. Thomas of Villanova Peace Award, each along with the Rev. Dr. William Barber II for their work with the Poor People’s Campaign. In 2020 she was named one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress. In 2019, she was a Selma “Bridge” Award recipient and named one of 11 Women Shaping the Church by Sojourners. In 2018, she gave the “Building a Moral Movement” TEDtalk at TEDWomen, was named one of the Politico 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics”, and was also named a Women of Faith Award recipient by the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is an Affrilachian (Black Appalachian) woman from the working class. Born and raised in Southeast Tennessee, she is the first Black woman to serve as Co-Executive Director of the Highlander Research & Education Center in New Market, TN. As a member of multiple leadership teams in the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), Ash-Lee has thrown down on the Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. Ash-Lee has served on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, the advisory committee of the National Bailout Collective, and is an active leader of The Frontline. She is a long-time activist who has done work in movements fighting for workers, for reproductive justice, for LGBTQUIA+ folks, for environmental justice, and more.