BY HEATHER DUBIN | It was a birthday present fit for a King,” said Reverend Jacqueline J. Lewis, senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village.
In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a worship service was held at the church on Sunday, followed by the transformation of a gun into a gardening tool, plus a teach-in.
Speaking this week, Lewis — who goes by Jacqui — explained where the idea came from to do a demonstration of making a Remington rifle into a mattock, a farming implement with a two-pronged rake at one end.
Last year for Martin Luther King Day, the church partnered with Auburn Theological Seminary, the Groundswell Movement and Pico, a Jesuit organization, for a national Anti-gun-violence Sabbath. There was shock and an upwelling of concern after several high-profile shootings in 2012, including in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people were killed at a movie theater; in Newtown, Connecticut, where 27 — including 20 children and seven adults — were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school; and in Sanford, Florida, where Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.
“This year for King Day, we wanted to keep that movement going,” Lewis said.
The organizers of this year’s event, Auburn Theological Seminary, the New York City Gray Panthers and Intersections International, located Mike Martin, the founder of RAWtools and a blacksmith’s apprentice, who turns guns into farming tools.
Martin, a Mennonite and former youth minister, took three hours to convert the Remington rifle, which was the same model weapon King was killed with, into the mattock.
Lewis said of the gun, “It could knock down a rhinoceros from where [the shooter of] King was standing, with 2,370 pounds of firepower coming out of the rifle.”
The Remington was donated by a community member, and Martin removed the firing pin and all the bullet-receiver parts before it was brought to the church.
About 420 people attended the worship service, and 100 stayed for the teach-in, which addressed five key issues currently confronting the nation: gun violence, poverty, education disparities, a need for comprehensive healthcare and incarceration rates.
“All of these disproportionately affect people of color,” Lewis noted.
These topics will continue in discussions at teach-ins at the church every third Sunday from February through May.
“We’re tired of the gun violence. We’re celebrating his birthday because of gun violence,” Lewis said. “We need to turn the tools for violence into the tools for life.”
Reverend Tricia Sheffield, an associate minister at the church, was part of the event’s planning team, and was pleased with the outcome on Sunday.
There were lectures, music and artistic readings of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During the teach-in, small groups broke down large topics, focusing on specific issues.
“It was a wonderful time of sharing,” Sheffield said. “When you talk about these oppressions, sometimes people can get lost and feel down. And in the end, people felt very hopeful about the actions we can take, and especially with the new administration in City Hall.”
Chad Tanaka Pack, another associate minister at the church, was sitting up close to the action when Martin worked on the Remington.
“I was quite blown away by both the symbolism and the significance of having the gun destroyed in our worship space,” he said.
When the sermon was over, Martin and Derrick Gregory, a member of The Simple Way, a partner organization, brought the gun up to the pulpit.
“They had an electric saw with them and it emitted a huge stream of sparks,” Pack said. “Metal against metal, it was a shower of golden sparks filling in the sanctuary. It was so powerful to see that, I was actually moved to tears in that moment.
“I think people connected with the transformational quality,” Pack added. “We’re not only trying to transform our society, but ourselves as well.”
In a telephone interview, Martin, 31, who lives in Colorado Springs, revealed his inspiration for altering weapons into pragmatic farming tools.
“I’d done some work with landscaping and family business, and focused on landscape recycling,” he said. “And I’ve been always drawn to the passages of Micah and Isaiah about turning swords into plowshares.”
After the shootings in Newtown and Aurora, Martin was encouraged by friends to get going on his innovative concept. He has been creating tools out of donated weapons since last February, and has converted a dozen so far. In the future, he wants to work with police departments to fashion confiscated weapons into garden-tool kits.
“One of the plans is to track each tool from the gun it was made from and vice versa,” Martin said. “You can look it up on a Web site, see what tools are made from it, who bought it, how they’re using it and check how many pounds of food they’re growing with it.”
His larger national vision is to establish a network where people can turn over their guns legally with the knowledge they would eventually become garden or hand tools.
“It would certainly take a lot of development to do that, but it’s a long-term goal,” he said.
Martin returned home to Colorado with pieces of the former Remington rifle, which can be made into a few more tools.
“There will be more stories attached to that farming tool,” Sheffield said.
The mattock from Sunday will be given to Mayor Bill de Blasio as a gift. He was unable to attend the event.
“We are still hoping to get him to Middle Collegiate Church to receive it,” Lewis said. “But in the end, we will take it to his office if he can’t get here.”
