MONTE VISTA— Jesse Varner and Michael Mora believe that love is the answer. These “Warriors of Light” held the third annual Walk of Love in Monte Vista on Saturday, Feb. 18.
Beginning at Chapman Park and ending at Marsh Park several local citizens joined the organizers on the sunny afternoon to display signs encouraging unity and love through downtown.
Varner and Mora began the annual walk in 2015 in response to us vs. them mentalities that seem to be plaguing the nation. At that time fresh on everyone’s mind was the Michael Brown shooting by a police officer. “I was pretty upset about it. Jesse helped me and said, ‘no, there’s a better way to show love and fight against division.’ Since then we see it more and more. People don’t even try to be objective anymore. It’s always though situations have arisen because of racism. We want to show there’s a better way to respond and bring people together. For example cities where these types of things happen often get trashed, with windows broken, looted, and cars set on fire. That isn’t helping anything,” said Mora.
Mora and Varner said that their goal with the walks is to unite everyone and end divisions. “There’s no black lives, blue lives; we’re all in this together,” said Mora.
“There’s no such things as a separate life from something else. Everything is completely interconnected. Everything is the way it is because of other things that have influenced it. Everybody who is living is who we are because of everything and everyone we’ve ever come in to contact with. To say that we’re separate because of skin color or because of a job title or where we’re from is completely misinformed. It’s spurred out of fear. People fear things they don’t fully understand. From fear you get hate. The opposite of hate is love. Fear divides. Love unites,” said Varner.
To accomplish this unity the organizers invite everyone from every walk of life and circumstance to participate. They have people who have been in trouble with the law, law-abiding citizens, police officers, city councilors and more. “We invite everybody,” said Varner.  
Varner stated that another goal and viewpoint they try to convey is understanding. “I like to think that nobody is truly evil in what they do, they’re just completely misguided. The best way to guide them back is through love and understanding. There’s a Buddhist monk named Finch Sangha who said that understanding is love’s other name. Without understanding you can’t have love and without love you can’t understand. Our goal is to help everyone understand everyone and unite them,” said Varner.
The current political climate has also opened up more opportunities for Varner and Mora to show their passion for love and unity. “I think Trump’s election has opened up many people’s eyes to the separation that was there. It was already there but I guess people were blind to it… We are still trying to respond differently. If we go out there and show hate then we would be dividing. We’re trying to build that bridge instead of pushing people farther apart,” said Mora.
“It often takes a really dark night to show people that there’s a light. The human eye can see candlelight from 27 miles away if there’s no other outside light. If you can see that far away in the darkness, then all it takes is something as small as this to plant a little light and seed in people’s minds. It doesn’t matter what the political climate looks like though. There’s always going to be a need to unite and there’s always going to be those who want to divide. We’re here to give one more reason to unite,” said Varner.
Mora and Varner plan to continue the Walk of Love this year. For the first time they will also have a walk in Alamosa. It will take place on Saturday, March 4 at 1:00pm. The March will begin at Cole Park.