Valarie Kaur: Faith is Inseparable from Social Justice
Early this year, Valarie Kaur began questioning the darkness she felt encompassing our nation.
As a lawyer, filmmaker and the founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, a nonprofit dedicated to combating hatred with love, Kaur has seen first hand millions of people politically awakened in ways she has never seen before.
“We are marching, protesting and organizing,” Kaur said. “In 2018, we will see mass mobilization – including marches, vigils and civil disobedience – by people of faith and moral conscious on a scale we haven’t seen since the civil rights era.”
Kaur became an activist in 2001 after a family friend, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was killed in a hate crime after September 11. She began producing films that shed light on the difficult lives of our most vulnerable families and demonstrate how to use love as a prophetic force of change.
Kaur believes that faith is inseparable from social justice: “Seva, or service, is the heart of Sikh practice.” This means standing up and fighting for the most vulnerable when no one else will. “Sikhi teaches us to become warrior-saints – a warrior fights, a saint loves, hence revolutionary love.”
Since then, she produced her award-winning film on hate violence in America, founded Groundswell Movement, founded the Yale Visual Law Project, co-founded Faithful Internet, and today she gives life to the Revolutionary Love Project.
This is where she puts her faith into action – in the fight for justice. This year on Valentine’s Day, The Revolutionary Love Project is launching a #ReclaimLove campaign with the Women’s March and Love Army “as a force for justice.”
“I envision a world where love is a public ethic, a shared practice that shows up in all the arenas of our life,” Kaur said.
With her law degree as her sword and her film camera as her shield, Valarie Kaur continues to galvanize movement builders across the nation through love and faith as a true social justice warrior.