Martin Luther King, Jr. believed (paraphrased here) that if we don’t have something in our lives worth dying for, life is not worth living. That’s a pretty powerful statement… and in the world of social justice activism, you’ll often come across someone who says they’re willing to give their lives for a cause.

But we’re not asking you all to give your lives.  We’re asking you to LIVE your lives.  It is so much more powerful to LIVE FOR something.  This is the power of Proactive Nonviolence and the call of NonviolenceUnited.org – to do your part to proactively build a better world.

Integrity. This is one of the “tools” you’ll need to succeed with Nonviolence.  Integrity means following your heart and doing the right thing regardless of social pressures, of who’s around you, of what you’ve been told, and regardless of what you may have been doing your entire life.  It’s connecting with a core value inside you — justice driven by compassion — and living with integrity in your everyday choices in what you think, what you say, and what you do.  It’s being who you really are wherever you are.

Each of our choices in the past helped build the world we live in today.  And each of our choices, from this moment forward, will help build the world of tomorrow.  There is a way to build a better world – a world driven by the innate goodness of people and their shared values of justice, kindness, and compassion for other people, for the planet, and for animals.

Live your values, change the world.  It’s that simple.

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