The Knoxville Beloved Community Circle (KBCC) has their own website! Check it out here, or read more below.

KBCC was founded in spring 2024 by several members of the Mountain Solid, Water Reflecting Sangha in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. KBCC believes effective social action requires sharing our victories, mistakes, and feelings of exhaustion in order to maintain our well-being and ability to keep on advocating for justice. We meet monthly to meditate, share deeply, plan, and engage in one social action together.

Our first action involved marching in Knoxville’s Juneteenth/Martin Luther King, Jr. parade in 2024, now a joyous annual tradition. In 2025, we organized with Ridgeline Voices, a grassroots organization in East Tennessee dedicated to stopping the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) gas buildout and the proposed Enbridge Ridgeline gas pipeline, which will pollute officially designated wild and scenic rivers. As U.S. democratic principles and institutions have increasingly come under attack, our focus has shifted to actions such as the No Kings protests and volunteering to get out the vote for local elections. In the fall of 2026, we also plan to develop a training to offer to the activist community in Knoxville about how mindfulness can help avoid burnout.

Below are photos from some of these actions.

If you would like to learn more about KBCC, please contact:

Lynn Billingham, e-mail: yogalala57 [at] gmail [dot] com