Melting Guns, Planting Trees: Police Liaison for Lead to Life

Dear friend,

Thanks to you, movement roots are growing strong, and interlocking.

How do I know?

Last month I got the kind of collaborative call I dream about at BPF.

A call that lets me know we are moving in alignment with our purpose.

It was a call from a movement group called Lead to Life — lead as in the metal in bullets.

Co-Directed by the stunningly talented brontë velez and Kyle Lemle, Lead to Life creates "people's alchemy ceremonies" that melt down guns, forge them into shovels, and use the shovels to plant trees in honor of victims of gun violence. (Chills, right?)

I've long admired their work but we had never met in person, so I was surprised and delighted to hear from them directly, asking for assistance.

Lead to Life's ceremony — blending ritual, music, political education, and a 3,000-degree furnace spewing fire — required Kyle and brontë's undivided attention. They needed to focus on the mothers, families, and hundreds of community members honoring gun victims (including 2009 police shooting victim Oscar Grant) right in front of City Hall.

Top: in a greenhouse, brontë velez, brown skinned with braided hair, green windbreaker, and closed eyes, holds a Lead to Life shovel above her head in a meditative stance.

Second: metalworkers tend a furnace, throwing sparks, in front of a building visibly labeled City Hall.

Third: spiritual workers surround a robust altar, smoke wafting upward.

All images by Ayşe Gürsöz.

My role convening a small police liaison team that day, de-escalating any tension with law enforcement, allowed organizers to concentrate more attention on the healing task at hand.

Whether you call it concentration, mindfulness, or devotion — as Buddhists we know how powerful that full attention in the midst of action can be.

Kyle marveled afterward, debriefing over phở, that having us in the police liaison role utterly changed his experience. I knew his gratitude was serious when Lead to Life gifted me not only a thank-you card, but chocolate, home-baked sweets, and a small potted plant. (Comrade love is the best love!!!)

So thank you. Thank you for investing in BPF's nonviolent direct action training. Because of you, and movement tacticians who have invested in BPF's skills and experience in the past 7 years, I was prepared for this call, ready for the role, and able to assist Lead to Life's incredibly visionary movement ceremony — healing from gun violence, state violence, and anti-Blackness.

Thank you for insisting, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that "those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war."

Top: Kyle Lemle speaks to a circle of supporters surrounding a patterned wheel of shovels laid in the grass. In the middle, smoke rises from a ceremonial bowl.

Second: Lead to Life organizers smile as a young Black child wearing a puffy coat speaks into a microphone, with a passionate face and hand held out for emphasis.

Can you imagine how powerful our movements will grow, the more we collaborate? Not only Blocking violence, Building healing alternatives, and Being in alignment with our highest spiritual truths — but harmonizing all three together?

Patiently and persistently,* we're getting there.

Love, metta, and solidarity,

Katie Loncke

Co-Director,

Buddhist Peace Fellowship

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*Students of S.N. Goenkaji's 10-day silent Vipassana retreats might be familiar with this unforgettable phrase. :)

PS: Lead to Life is seriously amazing, and so much deeper than my words can do justice to, here. Please check them out and support their work!