John Dear, also a former member of the Society of Jesus, called on the black community in the US to continue to resist the culture of racism, police brutality and gun violence through non-violent means.

“We have no leadership now; our country is in a terrible crisis, but the roots of racism and violence, poverty and greed, are so deep,” he told the Tasnim news agency on the sidelines of an anti-war conference in Washington, DC.

Dear further said, “We are lacking leadership in the United States because the media does not allow this. They are not allowed to have anybody who is against is war and injustice…because the media now is controlled now by the Pentagon.”

Elsewhere in his comments, the American scholar said there are “peacemakers in the United States who want to change our country in the world”, adding that the whole world must help abolish war which means poverty and injustice.

“…non-violence always works… when you organize people through the methodologies, and strategies and principles of non-violence, just a no to violence in all its forms, we have a power that can eventually work. But if it is not working, it not being tried and it requires risks, it requires the willingness to give our lives not to kill.”

The situation is now so dire with the threat of nuclear war, so many wars on the planet, so much poverty and misery and catastrophic climate change that is bubbling and brewing, Dear said, stressing, “What we are not being told is that the movements are growing as well. What we need is that everybody in Iran, in the Middle East in the whole world to renounce war and violence…everybody now on the planet has to become non-violent and work for a non-violent world.”

Watch the video of Tasnim’s interview with John Dear below: