Non-violence is not just a technique or tactic, but a way of life, Rep. John Lewis told students, faculty and other members of the AU community Monday night.
"War is obsolete as a tool of our foreign policy," Lewis, D-Ga., said in a speech at the Kay Spiritual Life Center. "We must lay down the tools of violence, including the tools of war."
Lewis, a prominent civil rights activist in the 1960s, spoke out against the current war in Iraq.
"We must stop spending our limited resources on bombs, on guns, on missiles, on killing," he said. "We must start spending our resources on healing."
After the speech, Daniel Potts, a freshman in the School of International Service, asked Lewis what students should do about the Iraq war, citing the lack of protests compared to the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.
Big changes should be on the way with the upcoming debates in Congress over the escalation, Lewis said.
Lewis told audience members to never give up on their ideals in the face of opposition, recalling his own experiences. Growing up as the son of Alabama sharecroppers in the 1940s, Lewis was forced to attend a segregated school for blacks. When he asked his parents why segregation and racism existed, they told him, "That's the way it is; don't get in the way, don't get in trouble."
Lewis said that as he got older he realized something had to be done. Inspired by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., Lewis began to study the philosophy of non-violence. He participated in lunch counter sit-ins where he was spit on, burned with cigarettes, scalded with hot water, beaten and arrested.
"I got in the way; I got in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble," Lewis said.
He went on to lead voter registration protests in Selma, Ala., and the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., which was intercepted by state troopers who beat and tear-gassed the protesters. Lewis became chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and spoke to the same crowd that heard Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.
Lewis' speech was the fifth annual R. Bruce Poynter Lecture, which was created to honor R. Bruce Poynter's 16 years of service as university chaplain and student affairs administrator. It was sponsored by the Office of the University Chaplain and the Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church in partnership with the Kennedy Political Union, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, the Community Action and Social Justice Coalition and Multicultural Affairs.
