United4Love

The website LAforLOVE.com responds to LAvsHATE, CAvsHATE, UNITED AGAINST HATE, with the hope to redirect ourselves towards a positive vision that humans have shared throughout history.

Love and soul showed us the way in the 1960s, Let’s join to continue the work.

UnitedAgainstHate initiatives across the USA, including LAvsHATE.org, CAvsHATE.org, UNITED AGAINST HATEweek.org, VS, AGAINST, may appeal to our emotions, but also evoke the vision of hate. Let’s try to redirect our vision.

First let’s say thank you LA, and USA, for reaching out to communities and expanding services and resources. Thank you for culture, arts, and sciences.

Now let’s look at ourselves and ask, what do we share and where are we going? We share our humanity, and we share a longing for a better world. But our country is divided. We are not going in the same direction. We are targeting each other. We look out for hate, and we point out that hate is rising. But, going forward, we need to look at ourselves and ask: what are WE doing wrong? and should we change our direction? To begin with, we need to reset our vision. We cannot focus on HATE. We do not want our children to grow up focused on a vision of hate. So let’s focus on what we share: our humanity and our LOVE. Love is a medium that will guide us to a shared vision. Secondly, we need to reset the direction of our mission. We cannot be AGAINST. To go forward we need to be FOR.

We placed LA vs HATE posters on our beaches.

We look at sand and waves, and we see: HATE

We look at children playing, and we see: HATE

Why are we doing this to ourselves. Why are we targeting each other? Why are we directing our vision towards hate?

The beach is a very special place where we connect with nature, relax and find peace and harmony.  It is a place for fun and play and togetherness. Like music and love it makes us feel in harmony with each other and unites us as human beings. It liberates our mind from the conflicts of the material world. It revitalizes us so that we can enjoy our life and engage in our daily activities with a positive mindset.

Please, Please, Let’s not dismantle the harmony of nature. Let’s not destroy what we share.

The HATE poster on the beach is a prime example of what we are doing wrong. Hopefully, we all realize that we should not disturb the beauty and harmony of nature with posters. Hopefully, we realize that we should also not dismantle the residual harmony of our daily life with targeted posters, messages and slogans. Let’s reassess our actions and reunite as a people.

We are launching campaigns to be UNITED AGAINST HATE, but we need to consider the consequences of our actions as they unfold in front of our eyes. What does it mean to  be united against? Being united against is intrinsically combative and divisive. Throughout history we were united against evil. We fought wars against evil and burned people to annihilate evil. Over and over we united against each other. Now we are again rallying ourselves to be united in our fight against hate. We expect that each one of us will join to fight “hate.” But we need to consider that at this moment in US history we are not really united. This means that each group of us is called upon to take a fighting stance against every other group of us. We are activating the worst among us to take on the fight against each other. It is up to us to turn away from being AGAINST.

And what does it mean to be activated against HATE? We cannot shoot or annihilate hate. We can only target the people we label as haters. So, in practice, we are urging each other to be on the lookout for haters, and to target the haters. We use terms like “identify”, “confront,” and “dismantle.” Are we asking students, workers, beachgoers, citizens, and people in the streets, to seek and call out the haters among us? Where will this lead us? When public campaigns urge us to be united against, we activate the extremes among us who are ready for the ultimate fight. We cannot extinguish hate. Only love can dispel hate. So let’s turn our backs to hate and face forward towards love and towards a positive vision that is worth living for. Let’s stop, look at where we are taking ourselves, and change our direction.

Going back to the HATE sign on the beach, we should ask if we want to see the HATE word in school, at work, and in all our daily activities. Where are we taking the HATE word? To ART? To Children? to our Schools? Is this our vision? Is this the vision that would inspire our children to love and create Art, and to acquire the knowledge and skills to make this a better world?

By targeting each other we are drawn into a spiral that generates hate. We are drawing the extremes among us to responses that violate our shared values. This is not where we want to go. We need to simply stop! Stop now and look forward.

Let’s stop using words and phrases that target millions of us against each other. This is a call to us all (including all participants in the media and education). Let’s edit what we write. Edit what we say. Pause and erase words and phrases that target any of us. Let’s Please stop now.

What should we turn to?

First we need to look around and say Thank You. Why say thank you? Because thank you changes our direction and our vision. We reboot and recognize the good in someone other than ourselves. We establish a common ground and kindle the drive to continue in a positive direction. In a sense, we go back to our creation. In the beginning there was chaos. Then there was light, and we said thank you for light, thank you for night and day, and thank you for the fruit of the earth. Then we realized that there was also a lot of hard work to be done, and we started to assume responsibility and work together. After saying thank you, we recognize the phenomenal progress that has been made by innumerable people before us, and we are ready to join and look forward.

Now, more than ever, we witness the tragic events of our human condition as they unfolds around the globe, and we are called upon to respond. In times of grief and pain, humans, before us, responded by sharing the pain with lament, experiencing sorrow and confusion, expressing spiritual longings, taking the leap to faith and uniting in songs. Songs of praise and songs of thanks. Our shared lament gives rise to the positive vision of where our efforts should go. This is the spirit that unites us and gives meaning to our lives. It opens our eyes to all the good that humans have accomplished and to all the work that remains to be done.

Saying Thank You, is turning our vision to the good among us. It unites us.

Let’s rejoice in the human work that made this a better world. Let’s open our eyes to the phenomenal progress that humans have made so far, and join the work that remains to be done. Let’s unite with joy to reach our dreams for the future. Let’s say Thank You.

Thank-you for light.

Thank-you for food.

Thank-you for shelter.

Thank-you for medicine.

Thank-you for transportation.

Thank-you for communication.

Thank-you for knowledge.

We humans have achieved the ideal of shared knowledge. This dream, that was so far-away, has become a shared reality. All of our knowledge is shared and is accessible to all peoples of the globe, so that all peoples can build their vision of home.

No emperor in history had the knowledge and tools that we have. But knowledge places a tremendous responsibility on each one of us: The responsibility to respect, to share, to learn, and to build. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.