December 5, 2018
Page 13
O
PINION
Unwavering Messenger of Hope and Justice
Lessons
in servant
leadership
m arian W right
e delman
This past month the Children’s
Defense Fund was blessed with
a visit from one of the greatest
nonviolence practitioners in our
nation and world, Rev. James
Lawson. He shared lessons in
leadership with our staff from our
greatest American prophet, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., who called
Rev. Lawson “the leading theorist
and strategist of nonviolence in
the world.”
In some of the recent elections
Americans once again reaffirmed
their desperate hope for positive,
principled leadership in times of
chaos, calamity, and confusion.
Rev. Lawson has long been an
example of exactly this kind of
leadership.
Rev. Lawson has been for me
and countless others a peerless
teacher, role model, and leader of
nonviolent direct action.
He guided Dr. King and thou-
sands of young leaders of all rac-
es and ages seeking racial and
economic justice. He is our living
embodiment of effective social
by
change and exemplifies and
taught us Christ’s and Gand-
hi’s nonviolent values and
strategies to combat our na-
tion’s recurring birth defects
of slavery, Native American
genocide, exclusion of wom-
en and non-propertied white
men from our political and eco-
nomic processes. And for 90 years
he has been a singular and unwav-
ering voice calling across genera-
tions for a nation and world where
every child of God is welcomed,
respected and empowered to real-
ize their God-given potential.
Rev. Lawson is the son and
grandson of Methodist ministers
and received his own ministry
license during his senior year of
high school. He was educated at
Ohio’s Baldwin-Wallace College,
Oberlin College and Vanderbilt
Divinity School, but he was also
schooled by the 13 months he
served in federal prison after be-
ing arrested for refusing to enter
the military when drafted—or
in his words, refusing to “put on
somebody’s military uniform for
the purpose of using arms against
other human beings.”
It was in prison that Rev. Law-
son reread the writings of Gandhi
and theologian Howard Thurman.
Afterwards he spent three years as
a Methodist missionary in India,
where he first read about Dr. King
and the Montgomery Bus Boy-
cott—a milestone in the move-
ment brewing at home in the Unit-
ed States that he would help lead.
Rev. Lawson and Dr. King
met in person in 1957 after Rev.
Lawson returned to the U.S. and
was studying at Oberlin’s Gradu-
ate School of Theology. Dr. King
urged him to come south to join
the Civil Rights Movement, argu-
ing that there was no other cler-
gyperson with his experience and
knowledge of nonviolence. Rev.
Lawson replied that he had been
thinking about it and would come
as soon as his studies were com-
plete, but Dr. King convinced him
to come immediately.
In January 1958 Rev. Lawson
moved to Nashville to nurture,
challenge and prepare the students
of the Nashville movement, pro-
ducing some of the great leaders
of the national Civil Rights Move-
ment including Congressman
John Lewis. Rev. Lawson served
as Director of Nonviolent Edu-
cation for the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. Rep. John
Lewis later wrote: “Jim Lawson
knew…that we were being trained
for a war unlike any this nation
had seen up to that time, a non-
violent struggle that would force
this country to face its conscience.
Lawson was arming us, preparing
us, planting in us a sense of right-
ness and righteousness.”
He has never stopped doing that
and our nation has never stopped
needing him and benefiting from
his unwavering nonviolent mor-
al voice. Rev. Lawson continues
to mentor and prepare communi-
ties for nonviolent struggle and
direct action organizing. He has
been part of the movements for
racial justice, reproductive choice,
a living wage, the rights of hotel
and other service industry work-
ers, undocumented immigrants
and those who are gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgender. He has
worked across our nation with
students, including the Dreamers
who pushed for the DREAM Act
to grant legal status to immigrant
children. And he is a role model
for me and generations of younger
servant leaders as he continues to
teach and preach and inspire.
I am so grateful for Jim Law-
son’s example, stamina, extraor-
dinary intellect and generosity of
spirit to so many and am so glad
to have him as friend, mentor and
teacher. He has been God’s un-
wavering messenger of hope and
justice for all of God’s children.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund
We Have 12 Years to Save — or Lose — Our Only Home
Consider this
your warning to
act now
o livia a lperstein
Pull on the seat-belt
in your gas-guzzling
car, folks, and strap in
for the worst ride of
our lives.
This fall, the United Nations In-
tergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) released a critical
report warning that humans have
about 12 years — until 2030 —
before global warming reaches a
catastrophic level.
The report concludes, fright-
eningly, that the world can’t al-
low global temperatures to warm
past 1.5 degrees Celsius, or there
will quite literally be hell to pay.
And unless we take drastic ac-
tion, we’re already all set to get
there.
Consider this your all-hands-
on-deck, siren-blaring warning
that we need to act comprehen-
sively to mitigate climate change
now — or forever hold our peace.
The IPCC predicts an increased
by
risk of devastating climate-related
risks to health, livelihoods, food,
water, security, and economic
growth.
As sea levels and global
temperatures rise, low-ly-
ing communities will dis-
appear and heat-related
deaths will increase, along
with diseases like dengue
fever and malaria. Areas
that cease to be inhabitable
by humans will fuel an accelerat-
ed refugee crisis, while resources
like agriculture and crops will be
decimated in key areas impacted
by climate change.
That’s just a few of the high-
lights of the Ten Plagues-like pun-
ishment we’ll get for endangering
our planet. We’re facing a pretty
grim future — and that’s even if
we manage to cap the rise at 1.5
degrees, which we’re not on track
to do.
For those of us who are pretty
young like me, our golden years
may be anything but.
Before you slip quietly into
your doomsday bunker or start
praying that someone invents in-
terstellar space travel, there’s an
urgent message of hope: We’ve
got a little bit of time to save the
only home planet we’ve got. And
it’s going to take all of us to do it.
While dire, the report also con-
tains some critically useful recom-
mendations.
Governments, companies, in-
digenous peoples, local commu-
nities, and individuals all have a
critical role to play to solve this
crisis. We can and must act quick-
ly and collaboratively on a local
and global scale before it’s too
late. Acting alone or failing to co-
operate, the IPCC report empha-
sizes, will fall short.
The Paris Climate Agree-
ment isn’t going to be enough
— we need massive, World War
Two-level mobilization. The vic-
tory will be that we get a living,
healthy planet.
The report also highlights the
need to consider justice and equity
as we consider solutions.
Some nations, like the Unit-
ed States, are leading contribu-
tors to greenhouse gas emissions
and other accelerants of climate
change. Others contribute less to
emissions but are more vulnerable
to catastrophic damage. A number
of low-lying nations (on whose
approval the Paris Agreement de-
pended) will literally be underwa-
ter if temperatures rise beyond the
IPCC’s limit.
The point being: The countries
that have contributed the most to
climate change need to contrib-
ute the most to fixing it — and to
helping those who suffer most to
adapt.
What can you do, right here,
right now, besides giving up
meat, your car, or plastic bags and
straws?
Urge your local or state gov-
ernment to commit to 100 percent
renewable energy in the next de-
cade. Get your community and
your state to ban the use of frack-
ing and other fossil fuel produc-
tion that will drive us to doomsday
that much quicker, not to mention
the other dangerous risks to peo-
ple’s health.
Call on the federal government
to implement the recommenda-
tions of the IPCC report, and com-
mit to working with the rest of the
world to act swiftly.
Olivia Alperstein is the Media
Relations Manager for Physicians
for Social Responsibility. Distrib-
uted by OtherWords.org.
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