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2000 years ago Jesus told us to stop killing each other. He said you must LOVE your enemy. It was a radical idea then and it still is today. Gandhi transformed the world by turning the other cheek and practicing non-violence. Martin Luther King Jr. said you cannot destroy hatred with hatred, darkness with darkness. Einstein recognized that love is more powerful than an atomic bomb.
Our country is torn apart. The media is insulting. Our government doesn’t care what we think. War, selfishness, greed and fear have turned the American Dream into the American Nightmare.
 The Love Your Enemy Tour is a group of artists dedicated to serving America and the world through music, art, theater and comedy. We travel by caravan to bring a message of joy and hope everywhere we go. We hope to open your mind and make you laugh. We try to tell it like it is and we don’t censor anything.
The Love Your Enemy Tour was co-founded by Pete Cassani and Amanda Stark, a couple of political artists who spent years rallying against the system using all the usual methods of protest and righteous indignation. On the night of the election 2004 they got to thinking that there had to be something better they could do. This tour is the result of that desire.
 The Love Your Enemy Tour will kick off October 2, 2005 and travel the west coast. The first tour will include The Peasants, t-reXXXa, Geoff Berner and Myshkin's Ruby Warblers. Spring 2006 we will take it to the East coast. Each year more dates will be added until 2008 when we hope to keep the caravan rolling throughout the country up until the election. As dates are confirmed they will be available on this site. We are producing and performing at other events with other organizations throughout the year.
Our philosophy is simple. Be the change you want to see in the world, just like Gandhi said. You want to live in a peaceful world? Then practice peace in your own life. The East and West, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, all of us, have to get it together if we are to survive. We have reached the critical turning point. A massive philosophical and spiritual shift needs to occur if we are to survive as a species.
Our thoughts, choices and actions impact the world directly every minute of every day. We cannot satiate every impulse, satisfy every craving and at the same time pretend we are working towards world peace or saving the earth. Gandhi said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone’s greed.” Fill your soul instead of your stomach, your gas tank or your wallet. It will last longer. You will last longer. It will be better for all the life on this planet, including your own. Shun the mall. Refuse to participate in the bottomless pit of consumption thrust upon you by this spiritually bankrupt society. It’s killing us. “We are driving into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour and all anyone is doing is arguing about who gets to drive,” to paraphrase David Suzuki.
Peace begins at home. We must attend to our physical and spiritual health. Attend to your own inner peace and see what happens to the world around you. Love leads to forgiveness and forgiveness is the key to peace.
Love your enemy. It’s easy to love your friends. But loving your enemy, refusing to fuel hate and fear, that will transform the world.
We don’t have money, guns or badges, just guitars and accordions. We don’t have laws, rules and propaganda machines, just songs. We are a small group of people who are making it our purpose to play music and travel in peace. We are choosing to practice love and non-violence in our daily lives.
“Select your purpose,” Gandhi challenged, “selfless, without any thought of personal pleasure or personal profit, and then use selfless means to attain your goal. Do not resort to violence even it seems at first to promise success; it can only contradict your purpose. Use the means of love and respect even if the result seems far off or uncertain. Then throw yourself heart and soul into the campaign, counting no price too high for working for the welfare of those around you, and every reverse, every defeat, will send you deeper into your deepest resources. Violence can never bring an end to violence; all it can do is provoke more violence. But if we adhere to complete nonviolence in thought, word and deed, freedom is assured.” |
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“Nonviolence is not some exalted regimen that can be practiced only by a monk or a master; it also pertains to the way one interacts with a child, vacuums a carpet, or waits in line. When ever we separate ourselves from a given situation (for example, through inattentiveness, negative judgments, or impatience), we “kill” something valuable...people, things, one’s own composure, the moment itself.... These small-scale incidences of violence accumulate relentlessly, are multiplied on a social level, and become a source of the large-scale violence that can sweep down upon us so suddenly.... One need not wait until war is declared and bullets are flying to work for peace.... A more constant and equally urgent battle must be waged each day against the forces of one's own anger, carelessness, and self-absorption.”
—Kenneth Kraft
“Disobedience to be civil must be sincere, respectful, restrained, never defiant, must be based upon some well—understood principle, must not be capricious and, above all, must have no ill will or hatred behind it.”
—Gandhi
“Be still as a mountain. Move like a great river.”
From the Tai Chi classics
“A nation that spends year after year more resources on the military than on social upkeep is approaching spiritual death.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.
“Human beings can attain a worthy and harmonious life only if they are able to rid themselves, within the limits of human nature, of the striving for the wish fulfillment of material kinds. The goal is to raise the spiritual values of society.”
—Einstein
“When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”
—Jesus
“One cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”
—Gandhi
“So, instead of loving whatever you think is peace,
Love others and Love God Above All.
And, instead of hating the people
you think are warmongers,
hate the appetite and disorder
in your own soul,
which are the causes of War.
If you Love Peace, then hate injustice
hate tyranny, hate greed
But hate these things in yourself,
not in another.”
—Thomas Merton
“I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure personages is the only thing that can lead us to find ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always irresistibly tempts its owner to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi with the moneybags of Carnegie?”
—Einstein
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