{"id":27,"date":"2015-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calchurches.planetpov.com\/impact\/index.php\/2015\/05\/01\/book-launch-my-trip-to-the-land-of-gandhi-a-mexican-americans-journey-to-the-legacy-of-nonviolent-resistance\/"},"modified":"2015-05-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T00:00:00","slug":"book-launch-my-trip-to-the-land-of-gandhi-a-mexican-americans-journey-to-the-legacy-of-nonviolent-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/01\/book-launch-my-trip-to-the-land-of-gandhi-a-mexican-americans-journey-to-the-legacy-of-nonviolent-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Launch:\u00a0 My Trip to the Land of Gandhi: A Mexican-American\u2019s Journey to the Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Book Launch:\u00a0 My Trip to the Land of Gandhi:\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/strong>A Mexican-American\u2019s Journey to the Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance<\/span><\/em><\/font>
<\/span><\/em>
Watch Book Video Trailer:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YXEAJL9v-X8<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> SAN DIEGO \u2013 As we approach the end of the public school year and college graduations that leave students with thousands of dollars in student loan debt, it is important to remember where we stand as a country on the human right to education.\u00a0 On Sunday, May 17, 2015, the 61st anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the book My Trip to the Land of Gandhi: A Mexican-American<\/em><\/span>\u2019<\/span><\/em>s Journey to the Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance<\/span><\/em> will be launched as an eBook on www.smashwords.com<\/span><\/a> and as a print-on-demand book on www.thebookpatch.com<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 The book is a memoir about a Mexican mother\u2019s son growing up in poverty in America and his pursuit of the human right to education through the legacy of Gandhian nonviolence.\u00a0 In 1959, after the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King wrote an important article in Ebony<\/em> magazine about his journey to India to study the work and life of Gandhi and the Indian freedom struggle and how to apply those lessons back home to redeem America\u2019s democracy.\u00a0 The article was entitled \u201cMy Trip to the Land of Gandhi.\u201d\u00a0 In the article, King states, \u201cI left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> This book is about this young son\u2019s metaphoric \u201cTrip to the Land of Gandhi\u201d and how this journey helped him confront the great issues of today with this great legacy of nonviolence resistance.\u00a0 The first item on the agenda was the $90,000 in student loan debt that was handed to him along with his law school degree.\u00a0 Erik Olson Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s journey and his strategic insights are a call to action to finish the \u201cunfinished business\u201d of the 1960s with a nonviolent struggle for the human right to quality free public education in the Americas.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> Sadly, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board, public school students are still plagued by stark racial and economic segregation and misguided education reform efforts led by some of the wealthiest people on the planet.\u00a0 In California, for example, it\u2019s once proud, mostly white, public school system was the envy of the globe in the 1950s and 60s but it is now one of the worst in the country and criminally underfunded.\u00a0 In 2004, PBS made a film documentary on California\u2019s public schools appropriately entitled \u201cFrom First to Worst.\u201d (http:\/\/learningmatters.tv\/blog\/documentaries\/watch-first-to-worst\/651\/<\/a><\/span>)\u00a0 Education Week\u2019s Quality Counts 2014 report ranked California 49 out of 51 in its state rankings on per-pupil spending \u2013 below all the Southern states, including Mississippi.\u00a0 Black and Latino students today make up at least 59% of the student population in California.\u00a0 According to a February 4, 2015 article from Capital & Main<\/em> entitled \u201cThe California Chasm\u201d by Manuel Pastor and Dan Braun, California [\u2026] is the home to more super rich than anywhere else in the country \u2014 and it also exhibits the highest poverty rate in the nation, when cost of living is taken into account.\u00a0 Income disparities in the state of California are among the highest in the nation, outpacing such places as Georgia and Mississippi in terms of Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality.\u201d\u00a0 After much legislation, many public referendums, and high profile lawsuits, California\u2019s students are still denied their state constitutional right to a quality, free public education.\u00a0 The time has come to give life to lifeless laws with the great legacy of nonviolent resistance.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> All proceeds from the book will go to fight for the human right to education through Nuevo SNCC.\u00a0 Visit www.nuevosncc.net<\/a><\/span> for more details.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>

<\/span>
CONTACT INFORMATION:<\/span><\/u><\/strong>
<\/span> Erik Olson Fern\u00e1ndez<\/span>
<\/span> (619) 309-7111 cell<\/span>
<\/span> contact@nuevosncc.net<\/span><\/a><\/span>
<\/span> http:\/\/nuevosncc.net\/book.html<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n
ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/span><\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Erik Olson Fern\u00e1ndez has many years of experience organizing for nonviolent social change as a Community Organizer and in the labor movement as an Organizer, Labor Representative, and Field Director with public education and health care unions. \u00a0Motivated by the experiences of growing up with a single mother from Mexico, he has a long commitment to economic and social justice through nonviolent resistance. \u00a0Like Gandhi, Erik has a law degree but has instead focused and devoted his life to organizing workers and community residents for justice. \u00a0He is currently working to create Nuevo SNCC, the modern equivalent of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a project that seeks to revive SNCC\u2019s nonviolent legacy in the 1960s to challenge today\u2019s human rights violations around the right to education. \u00a0Erik holds a Bachelor of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning from Miami University and a Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law. \u00a0Erik is president of the\u00a0<\/a>Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity<\/a>\u00a0and a member of the\u00a0California Council of Churches IMPACT<\/a>\u00a0Board of Directors.<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Launch:\u00a0 My Trip to the Land of Gandhi:\u00a0A Mexican-American\u2019s Journey to the Legacy of Nonviolent ResistanceWatch Book Video Trailer:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YXEAJL9v-X8 SAN DIEGO \u2013 As … Read More ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}