Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.
 
BATTLE CREEK, MI — The 2016 presidential election was a turning point for Valarie Kaur, a Civil Rights activist, organizer, and attorney.
 
Deep divisions were sowed that year that continue to reap a bitter harvest of violence and hate speech throughout the United States and the world. It was through this lens that Kaur decided to focus on organizing around love instead of hate and birthed the Revolutionary Love Project (RLP) which comes to Battle Creek on Saturday, Oct. 12.
 
“We are in a time of relentless crises. We are witnessing the onslaught of an assault on our freedoms, cascades of climate change, the rise of authoritarianism, and genocide,” says Kaur, Founder and Executive Director of the Revolutionary Love Project “It’s easy to retreat into the smallest parts of ourselves and react to the trauma. We need to rest into a deep-seated wisdom and be called to a place of love.”
 
The stop is one of 45 on the Revolutionary Love Bus Tour organized by Kaur and her organization to provide the community with a space to immerse themselves in this wisdom and love. The gathering, which is free and open to anyone, takes place from 6-9 p.m. at W.K. Kellogg Auditorium in partnership with the Battle Creek Public Schools and Battle Creek Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (BCTRHT).
 
Kaur says Revolutionary love is when, “We are brave enough to look upon anyone around us and say, 'You are a part of me I do not yet know. I will let your story into my heart. I will let your grief into my heart, and I will fight for you when you are in harm’s way.'”
 
The 45-city bus tour began in New York City on September 10 and will already have been in states including Arizona, California, and Colorado before its Michigan stops in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, and Grand Rapids. It concludes on October 27 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
 
“We’ve chosen a lot of places that we have deep relationships with that have been sites of trauma and violence and we’re reclaiming those spaces as a space of memory and what can be possible,” Kaur says. “We really prioritize battleground states where election tension is happening. My role is to fortify and inspire.”
 
RLP’s relationship with Battle Creek began when her activist work caught the attention of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation which is providing the financial resources to make the Bus Tour possible.
 
“We actually found her through the work she had been doing in the community around racial equity and healing,” says Andrew M. Brower, WKKF Program Officer who is part of the Foundation’s Racial Equity Team.
 
He was asked to research the work that Kaur was doing and said, “It didn’t take me long to realize that she’d be an amazing fit with the work we’re doing around Racial Equity, Justice, and Healing.”
 
In 2021 Kaur joined WKKF’s Solidarity Council on Racial Equity (SCORE). This 20-plus member group includes leaders from throughout the United States and countries including Mexico and Guatemala who serve as advisors to La June Montgomery Tabron, President and CEO of WKKF.
 
“This is a really incredible group of leaders, thinkers, and activists who help us understand what’s going on in the country and the world,” Brower says.
 
As a whole, SCORE focuses on the creation of racial equity at the national and international levels. As part of this whole, RLP advocates the reclamation of love as a force for justice, healing, and transformation.
 
“They’re linking arms with us,” Kaur says of WKKF. “They’re our thought partners and sounding boards. Those kinds of bonds are re-thinking how philanthropy works.”
 
The efforts of Kaur and SCORE support WKKF’s mission to “support children, families, and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.”
 
“What we really care about are thriving children and families and equitable communities and sometimes to meet those goals there’s going to be very concrete things that we work on like healthy childhoods, quality of life, and access to healthy food. We also look at what the conditions are in the community and the pieces of wholeness in humanity that actually help provide those concrete things that people can enjoy and benefit from,” Brower says. “Our racial healing and equity efforts are focused on how people are supported and practice racial healing and equity in their lives.”
 
9-11 was the turning point
 
The murder in Mesa, AZ., of a “dear family friend”, Balbir Singh Sodhi, who Kaur calls “Uncle” turned her into an activist. Sodhi’s murder came four days after 9-11. Kaur was 20 years old at the time.
 
“He wore a turban and beard like my grandfather, as so many men do in the Sikh community. This turban, this beard, these articles of faith were meant to represent our commitment to love and justice, and yet it’s precisely these articles of faith that have turned us into targets for hate violence,” Kaur says.
 
During an appearance on the Today Show, she said the night of September 11, the man who fatally shot Sodhi, Frank Roque, told a waiter at Applebee's, “I’m going to go out and shoot some towel heads,” and “we should kill their children, too, because they’ll grow up to be like their parents.” 

Four days later, Roque drove to Sodhi's gas station in Mesa where Sodhi was planting crates of flowers in front of the store. Roque shot him five times in the back before moving on to other locations where he shot at more people.
 
On September 15, Mesa was the fifth stop on the bus tour.
 
“We told the story on that spot about the way he died and lived. In honor of him we were reimagining what it be like for all of us to live that way,” Kaur says.
 
Her activism since Sodhi’s death has focused on visionary campaigns to tell untold stories and change policy on issues ranging from hate crimes to solitary confinement to digital freedom. In 2021, she led the People’s Inauguration, inspiring millions of Americans to renew their role in building a healthy, multiracial democracy.
 
Like Sodhi, Kaur practices the Sikhi religion, the world’s fifth-largest religion.
 
Her vision is deeply inspired by her Sikh faith. A daughter of Punjabi farmers, she grew up on the farmlands of California, where her family has lived for more than a century. Her grandfather gave her Sikh wisdom through stories and songs that showed the way of the sant-sipahi (sage-warrior). The sage loves; the warrior fights — it is a path of revolutionary love.
 
She holds degrees from Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School, in addition to several honorary doctorates. She also has written four books. Her first one — “A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love” — was a Los Angeles Times Number One bestseller.
 
“I was a college kid when my Uncle’s murder happened and his murder was drowned out in this anthem of social media. So, I grabbed my camera, took a leave of absence from college, and was going from home to home and city to city because I thought people's stories could be a starting point,” Kaur says.
 
What began as activist organizing around hate, pivoted to organizing around love following the 2016 election. Kaur says she will spend the rest of her life focusing on creating spaces for revolutionary love to flourish.
 
“From my perspective and how we think about things right now, I feel like our differences are what’s being accentuated and enhanced. What Valarie is doing is creating a shared experience,” Brower says. “She’s creating this shared experience in those values that we all have anchored in love and community.”
 
The Bus Tour stops begin with one hour of music provided by Sonny Singh a trumpet and dhol (a double-sided barrel drum) player, singer, songwriter, and educator-activist based in Brooklyn, NY. His music shares space with stories from the Sikh tradition told by Kaur.
 
“Then we open it up to a revolutionary love compass and what does this mean for you to be a Safe Warrior,” Kaur says. “We walk them through a meditative experience with a compass which focuses on what do you need — a space to rage, breathe, find acceptance? Then they receive letters written by people on the tour stop before theirs hear stories from special guests and write their own stories.”
 
Those who attend RLT’s Battle Creek gathering will also write letters that will be distributed at the next tour stop in Detroit. Eventually, these letters and thoughts captured by partner organizations at each stop along with a video will be available online.
 
“We have a few hundred people every night and at some point in the program they’re invited to open up and read letters and then write their own letters,” Kaur says.
 
The most basic of human emotions become revolutionary.
 
“Love is labor that begins in wonder. It doesn’t have to begin with empathy, and it doesn’t have to begin with compassion. Those things can come later,” Kaur said in an interview with the Sounds True Foundation. “Simply the act of wondering about your opponent is the first step to seeing their humanity, to hearing their story, and then to imagine what it might be to include even them in your circle of care.”
 
But, Revolutionary Love is also dangerous. Kaur highlights the millions of people throughout the centuries and generations who have died or lost everything for daring to lift the idea that all humans can love without limit.
 
“I think of all of the spiritual teachers and the social reformers throughout history who have given their lives for this ethic. It’s always been dangerous because our society is dominated by institutions that cling to hierarchies of human value, the idea that one group of people deserve more than others, and are worth more than others. We tell stories to preserve those institutions. Here on US soil, the story of white supremacy is the oldest and most insidious story, tricking us into seeing whiteness as the default, as normal, as better.”
 
“When we start to lift up the call to love, it is inherently anti-racist and inherently disruptive because it’s saying, “No, all of us have inherent dignity and worth.” Love is not just a feeling; love is labor. It’s fierce. It’s bloody. It’s imperfect. It’s life-giving. It’s a choice we make over and over again. If I am to labor for those who are in harm’s way in this country, then that ignites the work of justice. That’s how it’s dangerous.”
 
The Revolutionary Love Bus tour, which is free and open to anyone, takes place from 6-9 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12 at W.K. Kellogg Auditorium .Dismantling these hierarchies and creating a nation with a multiracial democracy is critical, Kaur says.
 
New census population projections confirm the importance of racial minorities as the primary demographic engine of the nation’s future growth, countering an aging, slow-growing, and soon-to-be-declining white population. The new statistics project that the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. During that year, whites will comprise 49.7 percent of the population in contrast to 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 13.1 percent for blacks, 7.9 percent for Asians, and 3.8 percent for multiracial populations.”
 
“What if we believe we have agency to weave the world around approach our opponents with the ethic of love,” Kaur asks. “Only then will we transition the world into a planet where human beings learn to live sustainably. It is an invitation for us to believe more and love more. We need sound government and sound leaders, but we have to find a way to live together and figure out how to love each other.”
 
The next phase of RLP’s work is thinking about what the movement needs. It has not been uncommon for participants in stops made by the Bus Tour to form groups to continue the work and the conversations. This happened with a group of students in Colorado Springs, Colo.
 
Partnering with local organizations at each stop creates a relationship that will continue, Brower says.
 
“They can take what they learn from her and keep the momentum going,” he says. “I like that because it activates a space that’s already there and brings learning and experiential experiences to the community. You can be a host and continue these practices forward.”
 
This is what Kaur wants. She shares a young son and daughter with her husband, Sharat Raju, a director and writer, and asks how “we raise a new generation with Revolutionary Love as their compass.”
 
“The world will call you unsafe for believing in love,” she says. “When I started this eight years ago people were not ready for such a clear message about love. People can only run on the fumes of hostility for so long.”