This is a recent interview and article published by Harmony for Humanity, please click the link below to read the rest of it.
David LaMotte: Making a Difference From the Heart
David LaMotte is being the change in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to keep up. LaMotte is an award-winning songwriter and peace activist. A veteran of ten CDs and 2000 concerts on four continents, he suspended his eighteen-year music career at its peak in 2008 to accept a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to study International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland in Australia.
In 2004, David and his wife, Deanna, founded PEG Partners, a small non-profit organization that supports schools and libraries in Guatemala. He continues to volunteer as the Program Director for PEG. LaMotte serves on the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Committee, which is responsible for selecting AFSC’s nomination each year. He is also a consultant on Peace and Justice at the North Carolina Council of Churches, an author, public speaker and workshop leader. Recently, David returned to limited touring, nationally and internationally. David spoke with us from the Greenbelt music festival in England.
HFH: You are involved in so many projects that make a difference in our world. What is your vision for your life from this point forward?
DL: I hope some of these projects are making a difference, and I believe that they are. Small changes matter. What’s exciting me most these days is just having the conversations, though. We have a lot of misguided mythology around how things change and how they don’t, and I’m enjoying challenging some of those ideas and questioning the assumptions of powerlessness that so many of us are plagued by. At this point, speaking invitations are at least as nourishing for me as concerts.
The main thing on my radar right now is finishing a book I’ve been working on, trying to get some of those ideas down on paper.
I’m glad you asked about vision and not “plans,” though, because plans are hard to nail down. I love the line in the John Gorka song, “I never had no plans, just dreams and vague directions.” That is how it’s always been for me. The driving vision for me, right now, is to remind others of their power to make the world a better place, and challenge the cynicism that dismisses that very phrase as naïve.
HFH: David, you took quite a leap of faith in 2008 when you suspended your successful music career to pursue peace work. Talk about that decision.
DL: Yes, it was a huge change after eighteen years of touring full-time as a singer/songwriter, but I had a strong sense that it was the right thing for me to do. My last concert in Asheville was quite an emotional event because it was like saying goodbye to a part of me that had been so important in my life, and it wasn’t completely rational to suspend my music career when things were going better than ever. Somehow it seemed…
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