Rennie Davis

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Rennard Cordon Davis (born 1941) was a prominent American anti-Vietnam War protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven.

Davis was the National Director of community organizing programs (the Economic Research and Action Project, or ERAP, in Ann Arbor, Michigan), a project of Students for a Democratic Society. Davis, along with Tom Hayden, organized anti-war demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention for the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam ("the Mobe").

Later, in the early 1970s, he became the most celebrated follower of a spiritual leader known as Guru Maharaj Ji and his organization, which was then known as the Divine Light Mission. He was briefly one of its spokespersons was one of the speakers at the widely published Millennium '73 event in the Houston Astrodome. [1]He described the arrival of Guru Maharaj Ji as, "The greatest event in history...If we knew who he was we would crawl across America on our hands and knees to rest our heads at his feet." [2]He was ridiculed by the San Francisco Sunday Examiner. [3]

Davis later became a venture capitalist and lecturer on meditation and self-awareness. He has appeared on Larry King Live, Barbara Walters, and CNN and provided advice in business strategies for Fortune 500 companies. Davis is the founder of Ventures for Humanity[1], a technology development and venture capital company commercializing breakthrough technologies.

In an article published in the Iowa Source in 2005, Davis said:

If you were to do a survey of what causes misery on earth, it would tend to fall into three broad categories. One, we can call systems: the economy, AIDS, terrorism--things that are 'systems' in nature. The second would be a list of everybody to blame: Bush is the cause of my misery, my ex-wife, my boss. The third would be things that come utterly out of left field: a tornado through town, a tsunami, events that are not in our apparent control. What this huge list would have in common--something everybody would agree with--is that the cause of misery are things outside 'myself'. But the cause of our misery is absolutely, positively not at all what we believe it to be. This is not a new view. Certainly saints and philosophers in every generation have basically argued if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself.

His father was labor economist John C. Davis.

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[edit] References and footnotes

  1. ^ Kent, Stephen A. Dr. From slogans to mantras: social protest and religious conversion in the late Vietnam war era Syracuse University press ISBN 0-8156-2923-0 (2001)page 52
  2. ^ Davis, Rennie in the introdution of the book Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji? Edited by Charles Cameron November 1973 published by Bantam Books, Inc. ASIN B000AQEE24
  3. ^ Brown, Mick The Spiritual Tourist' Bloomsbury publishing ISBN 1-58234-034-X Chapter Her Master's Voice' page 197
    "His most celebrated devotee was Rennie Davis. [..]Davis described the arrival of Guru Maharaj Ji as, 'The greatest event in history...If we knew who he was we would crawl across America on our hands and knees to rest our heads at his feet.' The San Francisco Sunday Examiner publicly wondered whether Davis had undergone a lobotomy: 'If not,' an article on the op-ed page declared, 'maybe he should try one.'"

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[edit] Bibliography

  • Johns, Andrew L. Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, Journal of Cold War Studies - Volume 5, Number 2, Spring 2003, pp. 86-89
  • Chatfield, Charles, At the Hands of Historians: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era, 'Peace & Change', Volume 29 Issue 3-4 Page 483 - July 2004 PDF
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