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Civil rights activist, state senator discuss nonviolent action at inaugural lecture

State Sen. María Elena Durazo spoke at the first Lawson Lecture on Monday. The lecture series is named after Rev. James Lawson Jr., a nonviolent civil rights activist who won the UCLA Medal last year. (Christine Kao/Daily Bruin)

By Sabrina Huang

Nov. 26, 2019 2:23 a.m.

When Rev. James Lawson Jr. was four years old, he kicked a playmate who called him a racial epithet.

When Lawson was in fourth grade, he smacked a child who called him the N-word.

It wasn’t until his mother asked him what good this achieved that he decided at the age of eight to refrain from violence.

On Monday, over 80 years later, Lawson, a civil rights activist and leading theorist in the study and practice of nonviolence, spoke to a crowd of students and community members alongside State Sen. María Elena Durazo about the importance of using nonviolent direct action to create social change.

The event marked the inaugural lecture of the Lawson Lecture series, an annual event hosted by the Labor Studies Department and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment to celebrate Lawson’s legacy.

The event comes one year after Lawson was awarded the UCLA medal by Chancellor Gene Block for his commitment to nonviolent activism. The medal is given to individuals who exhibit the highest ideals of UCLA and it is the highest campus honor one can receive.

Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center and a professor of labor studies and Asian American studies, has taught alongside Lawson for the past 17 years.

“A lot of the students have learned about Rev. Lawson over the years, … so when (professor Abel Valenzuela and I) put together the program for the medal ceremony last year, we wanted it to go beyond being a one-shot event,” Wong said.

Lawson has been a seminal figure in the advancement of human rights over the past century, Wong said.

Nonviolent direct action is not always taught to students, Lawson said. Stories about workers’ struggles, such as the 1170 B.C. strike in ancient Egypt which may have marked the first ever labor strike, are often left out of mainstream history textbooks, he added.

“Our schools, our societies do not teach youth that (their) life is a magnificent gift beyond all of our imaginations,” Lawson said. “It’s … a gift of God, a gift of life itself.”

For both Lawson and Durazo, nonviolent civil discourse is primarily focused on empowering others to effect change.

Durazo, who now represents Senate District 24, was in her 20s when she became the first woman of color elected to lead the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 11, a union for hotel and food service employees in Los Angeles.

As union president, she noticed there was “something deeper and stronger” driving her union’s activism than fighting for higher wages or better contracts. Instead, what she saw was an issue of self-dignity and respect, she said.

This inspired her to contact Lawson for guidance. Together, they held trainings to educate workers on how to advocate for better labor protections both individually and collectively. It would be the start of a 30-year partnership that would help to establish a model that unions in LA and across the country would use.

“(You) do the most good for the most people when you empower them to (effect change) for themselves,” Durazo said.

As a senator in the California legislature, Durazo believes that there is still more work to do.

This sentiment is partially what inspired the creation of the inaugural Lawson Legacy scholarship. Awarded each year to three students who embody and apply Lawson’s teachings of nonviolence, this $2,500 scholarship promotes the principle of nonviolent action. Alice Lee, Manuel Cruz and Marcelo Clark were this year’s awardees and were honored at the event.

Cruz, a Chicana/o studies and gender studies student, was shocked to hear he was nominated for the scholarship by a faculty member.

“I never thought … I could be here 14 years ago,” said Cruz, who has sold fruit on the streets of LA for the past eight years to make a living. “It’s an honor for me.”

Cruz was recognized for his work as co-director of Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success, a student organization on campus that fights for the protections of undocumented students. For him, nonviolence is far more effective than violence.

“(Nonviolent) acts will get you to the point that you want,” Cruz said. “(Nonviolence) will (allow) you to sit in with the person that you want to talk (to) and start making negotiations.”

Lee, a fourth-year applied mathematics student, received the scholarship for her work as an organizer in the Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant community. She said it takes courage to use nonviolence in the face of violence.

Clark, a fourth-year sociology and African American studies student and the grandson of a union member, said he applies Lawson’s teachings of nonviolence to the advocacy work he does as an organizer with the Afrikan Student Union by prioritizing fellow members’ safety.

Students who attended the lecture said they found the stories of both Lawson and Durazo inspiring.

Ashley Michel, a third-year labor studies student, said Durazo’s story reminded her of her own background.

“My grandparents were farm workers (and) my grandpa was actually a community organizer himself,” Michel said. “So it was really inspiring to see someone who was from the Central Valley become … an important labor organizer and then a president of a labor union and now a senator.”

Even though Lawson started his lifetime of advocacy with violence, he firmly believes that nonviolence is the key to creating change.

“In working from the base of the strength of the gift of your life, you can make the changes in yourself and in others that you want to see be made,” Lawson said. “(This) way of creating justice creates a justice that will continue to effect change.”

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Sabrina Huang | Opinion editor
Huang is the 2021-2022 Opinion editor. She was previously a 2020-2021 assistant Opinion editor and an opinion columnist. She is also a third-year public affairs student at UCLA.
Huang is the 2021-2022 Opinion editor. She was previously a 2020-2021 assistant Opinion editor and an opinion columnist. She is also a third-year public affairs student at UCLA.
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