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50 weapons are being transformed into 50 shovels to hold ceremonial tree plantings at sites impacted by violence to honor the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. The intention is to disrupt environmental racism and reimagine violence.
While hundreds of thousands gathered to “March for Our Lives” in cities around the world this weekend, artists, community leaders and activists are preparing for Lead to Life: A People’s Alchemy for Regeneration, a radical response to the proliferation of gun violence and systemic injustice in the US. Just as people across the country are asking how they can liberate themselves from their own weapons, Lead to Life is launching a “National Call to Disarm & Transform” on April 4th, 2018, the 50th Anniversary of Dr. King’s Assassination.
With every gun received, Lead to Life and RawTools’ Swords to Plows program will transform it into a garden tool and plant one tree. Leveraging a network of metal artists and civic partners across the US and the #oneless campaign, Lead to Life & RawTools will help people across the country disable their weapons, and send them in to be transformed into garden tools. Lead to Life is sending a call to action to millions to reimagine artifacts of violence into artifacts of peace and ecological regeneration.
“Since our national government is unable to move forward on gun control policy, we the people are taking matters into our own hands. We are ready to disarm and reimagine. We see how guns tear apart our communities and desecrate our world. We are ready to commit to being peace with each other and with the whole Earth.” – Kyle Lemle, Co-Founder & Program Director, Lead to Life.
This national disarmament campaign is being launched with a Week of Healing Justice in Atlanta, GA, April 4th – 9th, as part of The King Center’s MLK50 Forward commemorative campaign. The partnership aims to honor the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination while interrupting the larger impacts of gun violence reverberating throughout the country.
“We extend the invitation to folks across Atlanta, across imagined borders, across differences designed by the myth of separation, to join us in decomposing environmental racism, reimagining violence, seeding food security, exploring what ecological restoration as restorative justice looks like, and trusting that when we support the healing of the most marginalized (in the human world and the more-than-human world), we all get free.” – brontë velez, Co-Founder & Creative Director, Lead to Life.