Civil Rights Activist Valarie Kaur Keynotes Annual All Peoples MLK Celebration In San Diego

Speaker 1: 00:00 The annual Dr. Martin Luther King day. All people's breakfast was held in Balboa park this morning. The theme this year to honor dr King's life and legacy is be heard, be counted, belong. The keynote speaker at this year's event has certainly been heard. She's a civil rights lawyer, a filmmaker and author, and the creator of a Ted talk that went viral and it has been viewed almost 3 million times. Valerie Kaur joins me now and welcome. Speaker 2: 00:29 Thank you so much for having me, Marie. Speaker 1: 00:31 Now, the subject of that Ted talk that I just mentioned was about revolutionary love. Is that the message that you brought today to the all people's breakfast? Speaker 2: 00:41 Yes. Well, this morning it was so beautiful to see a thousand people gathering in honor of Dr. King and Dr. King. They knew that he had built an entire nonviolent movement for civil rights anchored in the ethic of love. And so I brought the message that I believe that the best way to honor Dr. King and his legacy is to reclaim love as a force for justice for a new time. Speaker 1: 01:04 How do you define revolutionary love? Speaker 2: 01:07 Uh, first of all, I F I define love as sweet labor, not just a rush of feeling, right? Love is labor, fierce, bloody, imperfect, life-giving. Um, it is, uh, it is a kind of labor that engages all of our emotions. You know, Joy's, the gift of love. Grief is the price of love, angers the force that protects that which is loved. And when we practice that kind of labor for others who do not look like us for our opponents and for ourselves, then love becomes revolutionary, becomes an ethic that can sustain social change. Speaker 1: 01:39 Now you're from California, central Valley where your family has lived for generations, but still you experienced hostility because of your family's sake. Faith. Did that experience start you on the path to your civil rights and social justice work? Speaker 2: 01:54 Yes. I became an activist shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, my, um, a man who I considered an uncle Balbir Singh. So D was the first person killed in a hate crime after nine 11. And I remember shortly after those attacks, I went and saw a presentation, um, of dr King's speeches. And it was sitting in the pews and looking at the Sloan black man who took the mic, it was an actor who was performing his speeches from the Vietnam war. And Dr. King was saying that our enemies are not individuals. Our real enemies are systems of oppression, poverty, militarism, racism. And so he really turned me into an activist hearing his voice come down to us through the ages. I joined my first protest. After that I became a lawyer. I became part of a generation, a new generation struggling for civil rights and human rights. Speaker 1: 02:46 You know, there's not that many people in politics or even in the social justice movement talking about love these days. Is it hard to introduce the topic now and still sound relevant? Speaker 2: 02:58 Yes. I think people Speaker 1: 03:00 are hungry for war rather than the language of love. And I've, and even I, I have to admit, you know, even after I became a lawyer, sort of that legal training made it so that every, anytime I saw someone's done on the stage and say love was the answer, I cringed. I rolled my eyes. Um, and it, and I realize it's because it's, it's not, the problem was not with love. It's the way that we have come to talk about it. We talk about love as a Russia feeling as thoughts and prayers that require no serious action, but it was going back to Dr. King and, and reading him. He says, power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love. Implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. [inaudible] Speaker 1: 03:48 Dr. King love was not just a moral imperative. It was strategic, it was pragmatic, it was how we won. And it's how I've come to understand that our goal is not just to remove bad actors from power. It is to reimagine institutions of power. So that one day our freedom won't just be ours. It will be everyone's, even our opponents. It seems that anger in the political and social sphere almost makes people happy these days. I saw a political commercial recently and it was all about sticking it to the other side. Nothing about policy but just I'll make the other side miserable if you vote for me. How would you confront that kind of rhetoric? Speaker 2: 04:28 Oh, it feels good in the short term, right? To seek revenge. Um, I think that in a moment like this, we must not become what we are fighting. Um, we must not become what we are resisting. And at the same time we ought to honor our rage. There is a role for rage and this is the feminist intervention. This is Audrey Lorde, the black feminist who said that our rage carries vital information. And so our goal is not to explode our rage as we've seen happen on both sides, on all sides or to suppress our rage, but to channel our rage and to creative redemptive action. And I think that's what we have started to do with this beautiful coalition of artists and activists and faith leaders rising up to reclaim love as revolutionary love for a new time. It seems almost Speaker 1: 05:15 possible to nurture that kind of righteous rage and also not projected upon anyone else. Speaker 2: 05:21 Yes, I talk about harboring our rage and safe containers processing our rage. And safe container so that we are allowed to explore our body's needs to defend itself to, to, to Harbor our animosity, but not let it consume us. You know, either off the playwright events or says that anger is a potion of a poison that you mixed for someone else but drink yourself. So how do you honor your rage but not let it kill you in the process? And I find that revolutionary love can only be practiced in community. That we have to, we can be each other's safe container to let out our, our anger and, and our rage and still take each other's hands and March in the streets and lift up the call to love. Um, and see, and it's, it's really the refusal to see our opponents as anything other but human that there is no such thing as monsters in this world. Only human beings that are wounded. And once we hear beneath the slogans and the soundbites and we hear our opponents stories, we can hear even their pain and know that our goal is not just to end the hem. It is to change the institutions and cultures that radicalize them, but authorize them to hurt us in the first place. It sounds as if Speaker 1: 06:26 dr King's legacy is something that viscerally feeds you and, and your, your motivation each and every day. Speaker 2: 06:33 It does. You know, last night I was, I'm kissing my son goodbye to come to San Diego for the event. And I said, I was coming to celebrate dr King's life. And my son said, um, is Dr. King still alive? And I said, no. And he said, but mommy, I talked to him on the phone and I remember that we went to the civil rights museum and he picked up one of those phones and her, Dr. King, speaking in his ear. My son is right. Dr. King is alive. He's alive and in us. And it is our responsibility to carry his message, to practice it, and to live it for a new time. Speaker 1: 07:03 I've been speaking with lawyer and civil rights activist. Valerie Kaur, who was the keynote speaker at today's all people's breakfast here in San Diego. Thank you so much. Thank you.