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My mind ponders the concept of pacifism creating change. With all of the turmoil of the last couple of years, can we create change in our community, towns, state, country and world through pacifism? My answer is yes. That’s just me. You decide for yourself.

It can be done. Before the 1960s, it started with people like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat. Later we saw it with the Civil Rights movement, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis demanded equality through peaceful protests. These brave and courageous individuals represented the best of us. Although they endured arrests, fire hoses, German Shepherds and billy clubs they stood up to pervasive racism with faith, courage, boycotts and peaceful marches. Did you catch the end adjective and noun in the previous sentence? With the murders of George Floyd, Brionna Taylor and Ahmad Aubry, the protests that followed weren’t always peaceful. One might say folks were angry. They ‘d had enough, they wanted to be heard.

It’s understandable, yet you take away from the cause of fighting for equality, justice and your willingness to end racism when you kill someone during a protest, burn down businesses, destroy property and write hate speech on walls. They hit first, you hit harder. Let’s choose to respond to oppression with resistance through protests enveloped with love and pacifism, yes, peace. Easy to say but not so easy to do always. We got to get help from above, the man we call Jesus, Our Heavenly Father.

We can get there because we’ve done it before and can do it again. Have you ever turned with both feet and moved in the opposite direction? It’s called walking away and you can do that when you have a disagreement. Agree to disagree but always fight against hate with peace and love.

There is a hope that exists in me that pacifism will continue to create change in whatever situation that arises whether in your communities, towns, state, country and world with solutions that can bring the desired outcome and pray that no blood be shed in the process.

Judy Moore is a tour guide at The Central High Museum, lives in Wylliesburg and can be reached at v5agabond2@gmail.com.