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A Chance Meeting: How Speaking Truth to Power Can Be A Catalyst for Change

Excerpts from a letter to Rabbi Michael Lerner
by Susan R. Friedes

We’ve never met, yet you played an indirect role in my life through a meeting you may not even remember. I’m the daughter of the FBI agent who questioned you after you were involved in a student protest at the University of Washington many years ago. Until recently I didn’t know your name; in the past month, it has come to my attention in three distinct contexts. Allow me to explain.

While my brother and I were visiting a childhood friend in Rancho Santa Fe, she reminded us of the time my father quit the Bureau suddenly and unexpectedly. I still remember Dad telling me about it afterwards—how he had been assigned one day to question a young man who had been detained during a protest at the UW while they drove from campus down to the federal building in Seattle. He described the young man as intelligent and well-educated, respectful, articulate and sincere. They discussed the Vietnam war, which Dad opposed, the Nixon government, and the student protest movement. During their conversation, my dad began to question not only what his passenger was doing in that car, but what he was doing there as well. To this day I can still hear the emotion in his voice when he would recall that encounter, saying “That young man could have been my son.”

My dad, Dean Conrad Rolston, handed in his retirement from the FBI within a week of that meeting. Read more . . .

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How to Be an Activist

Spiritual activists bring spiritual and psychological wisdom and a commitment to healing and transforming the world to their activism. We practice empathy in word and deed, build beloved communities, and work transform consciousness. We help decode how things have gotten to this point and what is needed on a systemic level to turn things around.

Tips on how to be a spiritual activist:

Affirm the Humanity of Self and Others (even those with whom we do not agree and whose behavior we are challenging)
Advocate for a World Based on a New Bottom Line
Support a Sacred Relationship with the Earth and Celebrate the Awe and Wonder of the Universe
Honor Our Diversity of Faith, Belief, and Reason
Share a Vision of the World You Want (not simply what you’re against)
Be ‘Unrealistic’ (put forth proposals that are deemed ‘unrealistic’)
Engage in Non-Violent Action Grounded in the Above Values

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