June 18-19
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” MLK
Introduction to
KINGIAN NONVIOLENCE CONFLICT RECONCILIATION
Certified Course
Total hours: 16
Facilitator: Ruth K Henry
Cost: $60
Course Description:
In this introductory course, participants will receive an overview of the life, work, and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King and will explore how his philosophy of nonviolence can be and has been applied in diverse settings across the globe to confront injustice and build towards beloved community. By learning and analyzing Dr. King’s Six Principles of Nonviolence as well as his six step methodology, students will become familiar with a viable, practical, and historically effective map for how to create lasting social change through nonviolent direct action and dig deep below conflicts to find true reconciliation. They will also be introduced to conflict dynamics, types, levels, and strategies for reconciliation. They will learn the salient points of major Civil Rights campaigns and reflect on the ingredients which made them successful. Social models for comprehensive change, such as Hausser’s Top-Down Bottom-Up and Aggression-Conciliation models, will serve as a further framework for understanding the complex relationships between groups of people across a given community and how to navigate through them towards justice. Using a variety of interactive techniques, participants will also reflect together on how to apply these teachings in our current environments.
Origin of Curriculum:
The curriculum for this course, designed by Dr. Bernard Lafayette, has been taught and implemented in countries around the world, such as Nigeria, Colombia, South Africa, Mexico, and the Middle East. Dr. Lafayette was a close friend and confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Civil Rights Movement activist, minister, and educator, co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , and director of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign. He is considered a global authority on the strategy of nonviolent social change and has created this course as a response to Dr. King’s mandate that the next step for his work was the institutionalization and internationalization of Nonviolence.
Facilitator:
The course will be conducted by Ruth Henry, who has been certified as a Kingian nonviolence trainer by Dr. Lafayette. Ruth is an artist, teacher, and activist who has worked in and across Boston organizations such as Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, Project Hip Hop, and Critical Breakdown to bring youth together across violent neighborhood conflicts through social justice education and the arts. She currently teaches at the University of Cartagena in Colombia and is the director of La Lengua de mi Barrio, a Hip Hop exchange program between Colombia and the United States which unites Hip Hop artists and activists through workshops, trainings, performances, recordings, binational exchanges and virtual communications in order to share strategies and join our communities’ nonviolent social justice work. As Hip Hop emcee, she is a member of Matriarkao, a Cartagena-based female Hip Hop collective also dedicated to nonviolence and social justice.
