By Carol Motsinger, Asheville Citizen-Times, May 20, 2014. Click here to read the original article.
Black Mountain-based singer, writer, public speaker and activist David LaMotte is adding another project to his list of accomplishments.
He plans to publish “Worldchanging 101: Challenging the Myth of Powerless” in August, with a book launch event at the White Horse in Black Mountain Aug. 23.
LaMotte is publishing the book independently, and started a Kickstarter campaign — a popular crowdsourcing outlet — to help fund production costs, and recently released a sample from the book here.
As of May 20, LaMotte had raised almost all of his $18,000 goal; he’s raised $17,756 from 299 backers (If he doesn’t reach his goal by May 26, he will not receive any of the funds).
“The book is a collection of ideas and stories that challenge a bigger story, a common narrative about how large-scale positive change happens,” according to the campaign. “It’s a book for people who care and want to contribute, but who are overwhelmed and suspect that what they do won’t really matter.
We base our lives on stories, on the stories we believe about who we are and about how the world works, stories like the hero narrative that underlies most of our movies and many of our history books,” it continues. “That narrative tells us that things change when someone who is special, different from the rest of us, shows up to do something dramatic in a moment of crisis, and that fixes things.”
After 18 years in music, LaMotte pressed pause at his peak in 2008 to accept a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to study International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
As part of that study, he also spent three months in rural Andhra Pradesh, India working with a Gandhian development organization, according to his website.
In 2004, LaMotte and his wife, Deanna, founded PEG Partners, a small nonprofit organization that supports schools and libraries in Guatemala. He continues to volunteer as the Director for PEG. He is also a consultant on Peace and Justice at the North Carolina Council of Churches.
“Worldchanging 101” is not his first book: LaMotte has published two illustrated children’s books. The first based on his award-winning children’s song “SS Bathtub” and the second, “White Flour,” which tells the true story of a creative and whimsical response to a Ku Klux Klan march in Knoxville, Tenn. by a group called the Coup Clutz Clowns.
LaMotte also serves as Clerk (Chair) of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Task Group, working with twelve people on three continents to determine the AFSC’s nomination each year. AFSC is qualified to make an annual nomination as a laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, having accepted the prize in 1947 on behalf of Quakers everywhere.
For more, visit his website.