The Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards-Acton’s first civil disobedience arrest was in November 1987. As a UC Santa Barbara undergraduate, he was protesting the university inviting a CIA agent to be a guest lecturer in political science. Jaime was among 38 arrested for occupying the chancellor’s office.
Jaime told the story Sunday afternoon during an introductory course in nonviolent resistance at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena sponsored by Episcopal Sacred Resistance – Los Angeles, CLUE: Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Nefesh, and NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. Over 100 were present.
Pastor Mark Anthony Chase of All Saints got us started with a breathing and meditation exercise. Veteran activist Rabbi Aryeh Cohen offered a primer. Violence begets violence, he said, and nonviolence, nonviolence, but not without risk. He called it “putting your body on the spokes of the machine.” Folks just don’t protest for its own sake. He said Harvard’s Erica Chenoweth has shown that change almost always happens when 3.5% of a country’s population engages in nonviolent resistance, with people of faith usually playing an essential role.
NewGround’s Aziza Hasan talked about principles of nonviolence embodied in Islam. The Rev. Dr. Francisco Garcia, who co-convenes the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles Sacred Resistance ministry along with Jaime, the Rev. Canon Susan Russell, and the Rev. Dr. Gregory Kimura, listed, with the audience’s help, social advances to which civil resistance contributed, from ending child labor and extending voting rights to women and people of African descent to securing more funds for HIV-AIDS research and helping end apartheid.
Our hosts said we gathered in memory of beloved activist Ruth Beaglehoe, mother of Rabbi Susan Goldberg of Nefesh, whose memorial service was Thursday at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park, and the Rev. Canon Richard Estrada, whose sendoff was Saturday at St. John’s Cathedral. From their perches, they may have a better idea of what is ahead when it comes to federal policies and actions requiring Americans to put nonviolent resistance to the test. Better to be ready than not.
