At a moment when images of violence dominate the news cycle — abroad and at home — a group of nearly 90 community members, faith leaders, and civic organizers chose a different kind of gathering. On April 8th, just four days after the 58th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they came together at Center of Hope Community Church in Inglewood, California — not to protest, not to demonstrate, but to talk.
The occasion was part of Institute of Non-Violence Los Angeles (INVLA)’s Season of Nonviolence — an ongoing leadership dialogue series calling community leaders to examine and approach their work through the lens of nonviolence. Setting the tone, INVLA dialogue facilitator and host Sharon Sheldon grounded the room in the gravity of the occasion, underscoring what King demonstrated: that nonviolence is not a sentiment. It is a method.
The full idea is nonviolent direct action. It means seeing what needs to change, naming it, and demanding it — with the courage to stand in the discomfort of stepping out and the backlash that may follow. Nonviolence governs the response to that backlash with the refusal to retaliate and the resolve to absorb what comes without becoming what you are fighting against. King’s letter from a Birmingham jail cell to clergy who agreed with him in principle about injustice but urged him to wait for it to manifest— modeled in the very act of letter writing exactly what he was calling others to do. Unapologetically create change through nonviolence. That method worked against the British salt monopoly that burdened the poor in Gandhi’s India. It worked against Jim Crow in King’s America. It works now —because it is grounded in love. And love doesn’t have an expiration date.
In his book We Are the Leaders We Are Looking For, Dr. Eddie Glaude — Princeton professor of African American studies and religion — makes the case plainly: we cannot wait for another King. The leaders this moment demands are already here. We are them. And we need each other. Nonviolent direct action only works in community — because no single person has the full picture, and no single voice can name every form of harm or carry every call for change.
That is why dialogue matters. When diverse voices — generationally, racially, culturally, religiously —come together in the same room, something happens that cannot happen alone. People build on one another’s ideas. They name ills that might otherwise go unseen. They collaborate on solutions and identify what they are calling forward. They ensure that no part of the community is left out of the picture. The more complete the picture, the more honest and powerful the response.
INVLA creates that space. It is not the organization that marches or legislates — it creates the conditions that make those things possible. Whether corrective action needs to be directed inward toward community and the culture or outward toward institutions and systems, it must be rooted in collective awareness first. We cannot strategize around a problem the community hasn’t fully named. We cannot organize around an injustice the community hasn’t collectively seen.
The tools exist. The method has been proven. The leaders are already here.
That is what April 8th was building toward. Not the finish line. The starting point.