The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change recently hosted BE LOVE Day 2024, introducing an inspired new initiative encouraging courageous acts to bring about change and overcome injustice and hatred in the U.S. and around the world.
Following an impressive red carpet event that included, Dr. Berneice King, singing sensation and four-time Grammy nominee Mickey Guyton, movie director John Viscount and City of South Fulton mayor Khalid Kamau, King Center officials screened the acclaimed short film The Principle, which features Guyton in her first acting role. The poignant film at the Yolanda D. King theater delves into the issue of cyberbullying in the digital age and the damage wrought by online assaults and cowardice.
Based on the tenets of Dr. King’s Beloved Community, the Be Love movement expands King’s charge that “Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
During the event, King’s daughter, Dr. Berneice King spoke with participants about the importance of the Be Love movement. “When you look at the world we’re with all of the wars and the violence, the injustices and the inequities … I’m talking about poverty and the unhoused being criminalized for being outdoors, we need something that moves us to a more compassionate and powerful place which love is,” explained the King Center CEO. “A lot of people think love is a weakness, but Daddy showed us the power of love in action through the nonviolence movement. Nonviolence is love in action. It’s powerful and it resists injustice, it just does not destroy injured people in the process. So Be Love is trying to elevate our consciousness so that we will begin to think differently and speak differently and engage differently in society to solve all of these issues that are trying to overtake us and our humanity,” she added.
Much like Dr. King’s Beloved Community, Be Love is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth.
“I want people to start thinking twice. Every day when you wake up think before you speak and act. If I am a vessel of love, if I operate from a love-centered place is what I am about to say or do love-centered? Does it reflect that these individuals, these persons are a part of my human family? … We are connected in this world … so we have to find alternatives to dealing with conflict and ideological differences and injustice,” King explained.
Following the movie’s premiere an informative panel discussion featuring Malcolm Jamal Warner, Mickey Guyton, John Viscount provided participants with an opportunity to learn more about the movie and the film.
“Daddy said it best, ‘they can’t drive our hate, and darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that (sic).’ I would say the only thing that can overcome hate, injustice, fear, insecurity, and ignorance is the power of love. When everything that’s left standing is love,” King said.
Be Love 2024 also included hybrid, interactive, family-oriented events such as trainings, panel discussions, food trucks, live music, games and one-on-one networking.
For those interested in becoming a part of this historic movement, Be Love advocates four simple action items:
- Register or verify your voting status via headcount.com: https://www.headcount.org/verify-voter-registration/
- Join the movement to stop bullying. Learn how to identify bullying and stand up to it safely: https://www.StopBullying.gov
- Connect with Everytown and the organization’s plan to end #GunViolence: https://www.everytown.org/
- Share why and how you will commit to Be Love today and for the next 365 days – tag #TheKingCenter and #BeLoveDay.
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