Kendra Gorlitsky
About the artist:
Kendra Fleagle Gorlitsky is medical director of Los Angeles’ Program for Torture Victims. She is a family physician, fellowship-trained in adolescent medicine, who serves primarily low-income, immigrant and homeless individuals in community clinics. She teaches physical diagnosis and “The Art of Service and Social Justice” at USC’s Keck School of Medicine and is the chair of bioethics at California Hospital Medical Center.
“In February 2017 my neighbors and friends (Christians, Jews and those of other persuasions) attended a rally in Los Angles at the Islamic Center, protesting the travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority nations. A three-year-old asked me to explain why, at one point, so many Muslims there had dropped onto bent knees, foreheads to the ground.
‘What are they doing?’ she asked.
‘That is how they pray,’ I explained.
Without missing a beat, she immediately did the same, first setting down the sign we carried that read, ‘We stand together in hope, understanding, compassion and peace.’ Her act reminded me how imporant reverence and tolerance are to the health of our world.”
Visuals editor:
Sara Kohrt
