The civil rights elder Ruby Sales was a teenager when she marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. She says she was motivated to join the Southern Freedom Movement not merely because she was angry about injustice but because she loved justice itself. Her orientation toward envisioning a more just and loving world has sustained her lifetime’s work of activism — and can offer inspiration for all of us:
“Most people begin their conversation with, ‘I hate this,’ but they never talk about what it is they love,” she says in her 2016 On Being conversation, …. “We have to begin to have a conversation that incorporates a vision of love with a vision of outrage. And I don’t see those things as being over and against each other. You can’t talk about injustice without talking about suffering. But the reason why I want to have justice is because I love everybody in my heart. And if I didn’t have that feeling, that sense, then there would be no struggle.”
The non-negotiability of love as a possibility between people was also a source of empowerment for John Lewis, who participated in the marches alongside Sales. “Love is strong. Love is powerful,” he says. “The [civil rights] movement created what I like to call a nonviolent revolution. It was love at its best. It’s one of the highest forms of love: that you beat me, you arrest me, you take me to jail, you almost kill me, but in spite of that, I’m going to still love you.”
Kristen Lin, Editor, The OnBeing Project
Continue reading . . .
