Monday, March 12, 2007

 

IPJ Films Series

 
“A Force More Powerful: The Way of Dr. King & Gandhi”

 7:00 p.m.
IPJ Theatre

 

The acclaimed documentary series, “A Force More Powerful,” explores one of the 20th century’s most important but least-understood stories—how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule all over the world. Narrated by Ben Kingsley, it premiered on PBS in September 2000.

 

Erik Olson Fernández, director of the San Diego field office of the California School Employees Association (CSEA), has focused his career on organizing people for nonviolent social change. He has received nonviolence training from Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr. and Rev. James Lawson, both of whom were confidants and key strategists for Dr. King; as well as from the Industrial Areas Foundation and the Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO).  Olson Fernández spoke on the principles and methods of nonviolence, interspersing his lecture with clips from, “A Force More Powerful.” 

  

“The Gandhian and Kingian movements have provided a seedbed for social ferment and revolutionary change across the planet, providing a mighty impetus for human and social transformation. Mohandas Gandhi pioneered in developing the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. On the vast subcontinent of India, he led a colonial people to freedom through satyagraha or “soul force,” defeating what was at the time the greatest empire on earth, the British Raj. Not long after Gandhi’s death, Martin Luther King, Jr. found in the Mahatma’s philosophy the key he was searching for to move individualistic religion to a socially dynamic religious philosophy that propelled the civil rights movement into a nonviolent revolution that changed the course of U.S. history.”  Richard Deats, “The Global Spread of Active Nonviolence.”