The man who talked to Martin: Blues plea for nonviolence: Cary Clack at TEDxSanAntonio 2013

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If we want more people to embrace nonviolence (not the same as pacifism) as a way of life and tool for social change we have to talk about it and break it down.

For me, nonviolence is as simple as being about how we treat one another without adding hatred, violence or unnecessary suffering. I want to talk about this by remembering a man I used to see at MLK's crypt during the summer of 1984 when I was a scholar-intern at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. He'd talk to Martin about the problems in the world, the violence and hatred and about his personal problems. It was a plea, a blues lament, a longing for people to be good to each other, about how we still needed King.

I wrote about him in columns but only in the last three years have I thought more deeply about what he was asking.