Friends,
 This weekend, FOR staff are in Ferguson and St. Louis, Missouri, for Truth Telling Weekend. The event is the culmination of months of work organizing people from across the country to come together, share stories and learn about processes and practices of restoration and reconciliation, and shift the conversation toward the root causes of conflict.
The Truth Telling movement, like other movements in Ferguson, is committed to nonviolent social change. Unfortunately, late Wednesday night two police officers were shot by an unknown person near a nonviolent rally in Ferguson.
FOR Freeman Fellow Rev. Osagyefo Sekou spoke to Democracy Now about what happened:
"The reality is this is a no-win situation for anyone involved -- for Michael Brown's family, for the two officers who were shot, for a community that is grieving and who has been protesting peacefully and nonviolently for over some 200 days in the wake of a devastating Department of Justice report, which has confirmed the claims and cries of the protests."
Both protesters and police are in agreement that the shots did not come from the assembled protesters.
The Truth Telling Weekend is about building a nonviolent movement to confront the structural violence in our society often being carried out at the hands of police and a punitive legal system.
Grounded in a process of truth and reconciliation, organizers are sharing their stories as they move toward conflict transformation in Ferguson and across the country.
If anything, we think this process is more important now than ever.
FOR is one of a coalition of organizations convened by the Center for Education Equity and the Peace and Justice Studies Association who have worked together to make the Truth Telling Weekend possible.
Want to help support this ongoing nonviolence work for racial justice? Make a donation to FOR.
And if you'd like to follow along on social media this weekend, check out the FOR Facebook page or the #TruthTellingWeekend tag on Twitter.
 Rev. Kristin Stoneking
Executive Director
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Image: Marchers in Madison, WI, on March 12 (Flickr Creative Commons: Light Brigading). |
