Carol Bragg's Fast for a 'Revolution in Values'

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The December 14 rampage that claimed the lives of 28 people, including 20 children, in Newtown, Conn., has prompted a vigorous new debate on gun violence in the United States and the emergence of a spate of legislative proposals that the president and Congress may broach sometime this year. While policies designed to outlaw or control guns are needed now more than ever, for many of us these efforts must be rooted in a larger imperative: coming to grips with the culture of violence that makes this kind of tragedy possible and seeing our way clear to an alternative.

It is this deeper prompting that compelled Carol Bragg to begin a 30-day fast on January 1 calling on the nation’s political leadership “to embrace the revolution in values and commitment to nonviolence that are part of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

A former staff person for the American Friends Service Committee who served on the National Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Bragg’s appeal calls for a National Day of Prayer and Reflection on individual and collective responsibility for violence, the appointment of a multidisciplinary National Advisory Commission on the Causes of Violence in America, the incorporation of nonviolence education into elementary and secondary school curricula, study by the academic community of the history and causes of violence, and a commitment by faith communities to teach their members and the larger world how to love unconditionally. She is also hoping to prompt a meeting between President Obama and civil rights movement veterans to discuss concrete ways these dimensions of a “revolution in values and commitment to nonviolence” can be promoted and applied.

“In the wake of the recent tragedy in Newtown,” Bragg says, “2013 is a year that cries out for national action.”