This week I speak with Congressman Jamie Raskin, one of the strongest voices and advocates for democracy and truth, about movements, democracy, and nonviolence. He represents Maryland’s 8th Con. District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Raskin was previously a state senator in Maryland where he helped abolish the death penalty and gain marriage equality. Before that, he was a professor of constitutional law at American University for more than 25 years.

He has authored several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People, the acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and About America’s Students, and the New York Times #1 best-seller Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy, about the death of his beloved son Tommy, followed two weeks later by the Jan. 6th insurrection led by Trump.

Jamie shares with us his harrowing story of hiding under a desk with his daughter and son-in-law sending what they thought were farewell texts while a violent mob was pounding on the door screaming death threats.

He was appointed to lead the 2nd impeachment trial of Donald Trump. It ended in the most sweeping bipartisan vote to convict an impeached president in history. He also served on the committee to investigate the Jan. 6th attack.

"We're in the fight of our lives and have been since the beginning of this nightmare,” he says at the start. “But people are galvanized and mobilizing all across the country."

Listen to this incredible leader of democracy and constitutional expert explain in his own words what democracy means to him and how we have to be a part of saving the country we live in.

“The whole Constitution is under attack, and we need the whole people to defend it. Democracy is the system that relies on nonviolent expression.”

Hear why he calls to us to "be the hope!”

https://raskin.house.gov

beatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with my friend, filmmaker and author Gerry Straub about his life making films about extreme poverty around the world, and then his move to Haiti where he founded the Santa Chiara Children’s Center, an orphanage for children in war-torn Port au Prince.

Last year, he had to flee Haiti because of the total violence and anarchy that has swept through the country. Since then, he’s been living in Florida and helping the orphanage online and via zoom.

He has now written a new book about his mythic journey from Hollywood, where he was once the director of the soap opera “General Hospital,” to Assisi, where he wrote his award- winning book about St. Francis called The Sun and the Moon Over Assisi, to his founding Pax Et Bonum Communications, where for twenty years he traveled into the poorest slums on the planet and made some 20 movies about extreme poverty.

All those films can now be watched for free online at www.paxetbonumcomm.org (including the film he made about my work for nonviolence, “The Narrow Path”).

“I was just trying to understand St Francis' love of the poor and poverty itself,” he tells me at the start. “I knew could put the power of film to the service of the poor.”

Gerry moved to Haiti himself and started the orphanage. His new spiritual memoir, The Cross of Love, The Pain of Poverty, (with a foreword by me) is available online and all proceeds go to the orphanage.

To learn about Santa Chiara, or offer a donation, please visit www.santachiaracc.org.

“We wanted the children to live a nonviolent life. In this horrible place of screaming kids and gun shots, something beautiful was created.”

Listen in and be inspired!

www.paxetbonumcomm.org

www.santachiaracc.org

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with long time social justice activist and church leader, Wes Granberg-Michaelson on his inspiring new book, The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action.

Wes Granberg-Michaelson is a writer, speaker, and global ecumenical leader who worked in the 1970s and 1980s as the assistant to progressive US Senator Mark Hatfield, then Sojourners magazine, and then the World Council of Churches.

During COVID, he reread the daily journal he kept for over 50 years, and discovered four key movements that transformed him over the course of his lifelong work for justice, which we discuss: self-sufficiency to belonging; rational certainty to spiritual connection; grandiosity to authenticity; and control to trust.

“Grandiosity is in the water in our culture, particularly our political culture,” he says. “It's so important to learn to keep asking ourselves, ‘Where am I discovering my true self, and really knowing that I'm beloved, not because of what I do, but because of God's action to love me?’”

He concludes by offering eight guideposts for activists. Check it out and be inspired to go deeper within so that your public work for justice and peace will be more rooted and grounded in God and God’s love.

www.wesgm.com

beatitudescenter.org