George Lakey to tour UK

Leading US Quaker activist to start a speaking tour of England and Scotland

  A leading US Quaker activist is about to begin a speaking tour of England and Scotland. George Lakey, who has trained thousands of people in nonviolent direct action in five continents, will speak at ten venues in July.  In the 1960s, George Lakey joined the civil rights movement and the campaign against the Vietnam war. He was a founder member of the Movement for a New Society, which promoted revolutionary change through nonviolent means. He was later an unarmed bodyguard for human rights campaigners in Sri Lanka, and was smuggled across the border to work with activists in Burma.

Arrested for the first time at a sit-in in the 1960s, his most recent arrest took place at a Quaker protest against mountain top coal mining in 2010. He now works for Training for Change, which trains people in active nonviolence. He is also a visiting professor at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia.

The speaking tour will begin at Friends House in London on 16 July, with the topic ‘After the Arab Spring: Making nonviolent revolution’.

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