To honor Martin Luther King Day 2019, Lead to Life: A People’s Alchemy for Regeneration, collaborated with James Brenner to co-produce a live alchemy ceremony where guns were transformed into shovels that were then used for ceremonial tree planting. This ceremony sustained a prayer cast in Atlanta, GA in April 2018 where 50 guns were transformed into 50 shovels to plant 50 trees to honor the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. James Brenner worked with Lead to Life to co-produce the ceremony in Oakland. The guns were donated by Lead to Life's partners the Robby Poblete Foundation & United Playas, who collected them from volunteer gun buy back days across the Bay Area.
The Oakland ceremony followed the annual Reclaim King march - and invited Bay Area residents to step into a speculative future where Dr. King’s vision was realized 50 years after he was gunned down. The community gathered in prayer, in grief, in praise, and in creative action to reimagine violence and to decompose White Supremacy in our city, our country, and our world. Community members from the Oakland area, directly impacted by gun violence, were invited to offer disabled weapons into the fire to be transformed. Other community members were invited to gather in solidarity and prayer to bear witness. The shovels made together were used in tree planting ceremonies in honor of Earth Day, April 2019, where 50 trees were planted at sites impacted by violence, and other sacred sites across Oakland.
“I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that [they] will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more.” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Christmas Sermon on Peace”
