A call for King-like courage, nonviolence
Martin Luther King Jr. publicly opposed the Vietnam War for the first time in 1967, straining his relationships with other civil rights leaders and President Lyndon Johnson.
And today, “we, too, must break our silence” when witnessing violence—whether physical or other unjust treatment—being perpetrated against others, a nonviolence activist said in Bluffton University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Forum on Jan. 20.
“Please stand up for the truth,” Sister Paulette Schroeder, a Sister of St. Francis and leader of Project Peace in Tiffin, Ohio, urged her largely student audience. “Stand up with courage.”
King knew he would make enemies, Schroeder said, by taking an anti-war stance in a sermon at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967—exactly one year before his assassination. But his conscience and relationship with God, she added, compelled him to speak against what he saw as a waste of lives, both American and Vietnamese, and a “descending spiral” of violence.
“I see this kind of descending spiral in any police brutality today, especially toward young black men, and in the treatment and detainment of most of the prisoners in Guantanamo,” said the Putnam County, Ohio, native. “All lives are equally valuable.”
She witnessed a similar spiral several years ago as a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams in Palestine, serving in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron—a “war zone” where violence is everywhere, she said. “They live with this day after day,” she noted, referring to Palestinian children who see Israeli military M16s pointed at them—as well as many acts of violence—and think, as a result, that every Israeli is evil. “Everyone becomes a potential terrorist.”
But she also cited efforts to break the cycle, including a town in Israel where about 50 Israeli and Palestinian families have been living together for more than 15 years—“and it’s not easy,” she allowed—and U.S. summer camps aimed at helping young Israeli and Palestinian campers understand each other.
“This is constructive nonviolence,” Schroeder said, mentioning Bluffton’s anti-racism and conflict resolution programs as other examples.
No matter an individual’s situation, “no one of us can afford to put aside the call to be a nonviolent person,” the former classroom teacher asserted. She recommended becoming “strong in nonviolent living” through such means as getting to know people outside one’s “comfort zone”; joining the global movement of nonviolence; and, on a local level, signing up to help Project Peace or another group to facilitate a heightened consciousness.
Schroeder also stressed the need for “informed intelligence” when answering a question about how to respond nonviolently to terrorism while living in a “revenge culture.” She suggested trying to dispel hate and revenge—and not succumbing to that impulse “takes some pondering,” she conceded—while also becoming informed, and speaking as such.
As one of the foremost proponents of nonviolence, “Martin Luther King stands as a beacon of light for our culture today,” Schroeder said. “He would urge us to look at our gifts and see if we’re using them well, and to look at our faith and see how our faith and our lives are connected.” And he wouldn’t be shy, she added, about emphasizing the need for everyone to see others as brothers and sisters.
“We need, each of us, to live a life of nonviolence,” she said.
