Greensboro Moments
The National Council of Elders held our annual Fall meeting in Greensboro North Carolina. The Council was formed in 2012 by human rights activists Rev. James Lawson, Rev. Phil Lawson, Ms. Dolores Huerta, Dr. Grace Lee Boggs and Dr. Vincent Harding. At the time of the founding, Dr. Harding described the motivation for bringing elders together saying, “We realized that human societies are at their best when youth and elders combine their gifts. We can serve, teach and inspire each other across generational lines as we carry out the never-ending work of ‘creating a more perfect union and a more compassionate world.’”
One of the first actions taken by the Council was to Issue a Greensboro Declaration. Grace Boggs summed it up saying, “This statement represents a new epoch, it calls on Americans to become engaged in a different kind of citizenship, one that transforms their souls in addition to asking them to go to the polls.”
The Declaration was issued in Greensboro as “the birthplace of the Sit-In Movement in 1960, to birth a movement that can share the torch of freedom, justice, peace, and non-violent action with those who have risen anew in the 21st century.”
The Declaration was compelled by “ a shared sense of national and global crisis and the resultant suffering being inflicted on millions of people in our nation and around the world.” It described the daily reality of our country as “gripped by an interlocking, multi-layered economic, educational, social, political, and moral crisis. This is part of a worldwide crisis that reflects the end of the industrial era.”
This time of transition is producing “narrow-minded, manipulative leadership,” that “breeds confusion, fear, and destructive re actions.” Thus, “we are challenged…to not only hold political and social leaders accountable, but we—the people— must strive, with love at the forefront, to forge more democratic, just and creative structures and ways of living that are consistent with the emerging era that affirms the dignity, worth and unrealized potential of all the people of our country.”
In the seven years since the day that declaration was issued, we have seen this crisis deepen. Those of us gathered this past week have seen the worst that America has to offer over the last Century. We have seen violence, inhumanity, death, and destruction. We have seen people we love deliberately killed. We have seen sacred places desecrated, and cruelties commonplace.
Understanding all that we have seen and done, we agreed that “we have never been in a time like this.” Each of us, coming from different parts of the country, experiencing crisis and contradictions in multiple ways, affirmed, “This is a moment like no other in our experience.”
We had returned to Greensboro to lend support to the 40th commemoration of the Greensboro Massacre. On the morning of November 3 1979, five union organizers were murdered by the combined forces of the KKK and the American Nazi Party with the complicity of the Greensboro Police Department. Over the next four decades Nelson and Joyce Johnson, along with the Beloved Community Center and courageous members of their community, have worked to confront this pain and transform it into a loving community.
Greensboro reminds us of the reality of violence and possibility of transformation. At the end of the first Declaration we concluded:
The reality picture we have painted is challenging and reflects a period of danger; it can be a cause for despair by many. We urge you, however, to believe with us that inherent in great danger is also great opportunity. Let us seize on the opportunity and in the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Lu- ther King Jr. “to hew out of this mountain of despair" stones of hope. History has given all of us – but especially the young generation of the 21st century, the opportunity to forge non-violent hearts, non-violent lives that will result in a caring, nonviolent society.
Never has the challenge to think and act in new, loving ways been more urgent.