Friends,
 Join Andrea Briggs, chairperson of FOR's National Council, at a special event honoring civil rights pioneer James Lawson with the Second Annual George F. Regas Courageous Peacemaker Award, hosted by Interfaith Communities United for Justice & Peace. Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center and a frequent collaborator with Rev. Lawson, will be a featured speaker.
The awards ceremony is free but requires reservations. A special reception greeting Rev. Lawson and his family, including refreshments, requires tickets.
Sunday, Sep. 9, 5:30-9:30 PM
Holman United Methodist Church
3320 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles (get directions)
I Feel Like Going On: Satyagraha, Equality, Liberty and Justice for All
Special reception, beginning at 5:30: Purchase tickets ($75)
Award program, beginning at 7:30: Free reservations required
View event on Facebook
Jim Lawson is a renowned nonviolence practitioner and teacher, a leader and veteran of the civil rights/freedom struggle, former FOR Field Secretary, cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, past chairperson of FOR's National Council and much more.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1928, Rev. Lawson came from a legacy of Methodist ministers: his father and grandfather both served the church as ministers. In 1947, he graduated high school and received his preacher's license. While attending college in Ohio, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the United States' oldest pacifist organization. Through FOR, he was exposed to the nonviolent teachings of Gandhi and fellow black minister Howard Thurman.
As a peace activist, Rev. Lawson became a draft resister during the Korean War, for which he was sentenced to three years in jail and paroled after 13 months. After receiving his bachelor's in 1952, he spent three years as a campus minister and teacher in Nagpur, India, where he would earnestly read about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the resistance movements in the United States.
 He returned to the United States in 1956, and in 1957, Lawson became active in changing things around him. He enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity School, opened a FOR field office in Nashville, and began training people in Gandhian tactics of nonviolent direct action. He drew upon Christ's example of suffering and taught growing numbers of young black and white activists how to organize in the face of oppressive conditions.
Rev. Lawson held fast that nonviolence "was deeply rooted in the spirituality of Jesus and the prophetic stories of the Hebrew Bible." He believed that the struggle for civil rights was not just about politics but "a moment in history when God saw fit to call America back from the depths of moral depravity and onto His path of righteousness."
This path of righteousness led Rev. Lawson to help coordinate the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the Meredith March in 1966. His contemporaries included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who stated that Lawson was "the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world." He moved to Los Angeles in 1974 to be the pastor of Holman Methodist Church. Since then, he has been standing for social justice and speaking about issues that affect marginalized communities, including standing against U.S. military interventions around the world and standing for worker's justice during the sanitation worker's strike in 1968 and the Janitors for Justice campaign.
Join us and the Rev. James Lawson at his home church, Holman Methodist Church, to honor this phenomenal leader!
Photos: FOR, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict |
