Sikh Activists to Make Love A Force For Social Justice

Valarie Kaur wants to unite a deeply polarized America

Valarie Kaur, an experienced interfaith organizer and a lawyer by profession, holds the belief that love can be more than a personal and intense feeling. She says that other than bonding two humans together, it is also a potent force for delivering social justice. To buttress her argument, Kaur shows the examples of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. She claimed that all three utilized love to fuel their social movements.

Sikh Activists to Make Love A Force For Social Justice[/tweetthis]

The campaign of #ReclaimLove. Kaur claims is “cultural intervention”. The purpose of this action is to unite a fractured America. She said that 2017 was a year of executive orders given without thought. There were bans on Muslims, hate crimes, pipelines, border walls, and cuts to the budget. For people who love justice, this is the time to exhibit resistance through love. If no resistance is given, then loving peaceful Americans will either burn out or be the same thing which they want to resist in the first place.

For Kaur, her activism began a number of years ago. She experienced deep personal pain when Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed in the course of a hate crime after the terrorist attacks on September 11. Sodhi was a close family friend. This injustice pushed the California native Kaur to find out ways of increasing solidarity and interfaith understanding.

Kaur on February 14 teamed up with a number of other like-minded activists to start a particular social media effort. She hopes that this will encourage individuals to get back love and use it as a good resource in an increasingly polarized world. She has taken the assistance of others who like her wants to subdue to a horrific rise of hate and white nationalism during the Trump presidency. Prominent individuals in this group include Van Jones, the CNN host who also founded #LoveArmy, the activist organization, the Women’s March, and the Our Three Winners. The last is a foundation made in honor of three Muslim students shot dead during a Chapel Hill shooting spree in North Carolina, 2015.

Kaur’s efforts have found lots of support in Social Media. The hashtag #ReclaimLove has been posted with art, pictures, videos, and music. It has only one everything override topic: how can love be reclaimed as a public ethics? If this is done, love becomes a revolutionary force. New sign-ups are being sent as a social media kit.

Resources

• Huffington Post
• Courage Renewal

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