AP News, January 20th, 2007
Descendants of Martin Luther King and Mohandas K. Gandhi joined others Friday in offering their thoughts on solving some of the world's most intractable problems.
King's daughter said the key to promoting racial harmony, delivering economic justice to the poor and fighting global terrorism was to think in terms of what people have in common, rather than why they oppose each other.
"My father would encourage people first to find common ground. Find issues and concerns that are shared, then you have a base to start from," Yolanda King said. She added that Gandhi was one of her father's greatest inspirations.
"Violence begets violence. Nonviolence is needed now as much as ever," she said.
The group, which also included the granddaughter of Yugoslavia's communist dictator Josip Broz Tito and the son of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, will meet hundreds of local students over the weekend, hoping to inspire them to affect change.
"It's small steps that will combine to make a great success," said Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of the Indian independence leader and apostle of nonviolence known as the mahatma, or great soul.
Asked what the first step would be to resolving global tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, Gandhi said one problem was the labels themselves. When Muslims are mentioned today "the first association often with terrorism," he said.
But a terrorist is made when "a cry for justice, for help, falls on deaf ears," he said. "Then it turns to rage. We need to hear that initial cry for help."
Nkosinathi Biko said everybody has a duty to try to improve the world.
"The harsh reality is, we can't choose not to choose. We're born into history. We have to think: what is the mandate of our generation?"
For South Africa, where blacks have won political freedom, the struggle for economic prosperity continues, he said.
"People forget the flip side of freedom is responsibility," he said. "We have the responsibility to promote social cohesion."
With Tito's debatable legacy, granddaughter Svetlana Broz seemed to be the odd person out. But she said lessons could be drawn from Yugoslavia's civil wars of the 1990s, in which the country disintegrated into ethnic enclaves.
She has written a book that collects stories of people who survived the war because they were helped or rescued by people who were supposed to be their enemies.
"We need to think about why people are not more prepared not to follow evil leaders, to disobey (their orders)," she said. "We need to show civil courage in resisting."
