Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Motown is Joe-Town!

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / “Good Trouble”: Rep. John Lewis, In Memoriam

“Good Trouble”: Rep. John Lewis, In Memoriam

by | 30 Comments

This post is in: ,

People paid great heed to John Lewis for much of his life in the civil rights movement. But at the very beginning — when he was just a kid wanting to be a minister someday — his audience didn’t care much for what he had to say.

A son of Alabama sharecroppers, the young Lewis first preached moral righteousness to his family’s chickens. His place in the vanguard of the 1960s campaign for Black equality had its roots in that hardscrabble Alabama farm and all those clucks.

Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists who organized the 1963 March on Washington, and spoke shortly before the group’s leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to a vast sea of people.

If that speech marked a turning point in the civil rights era — or at least the most famous moment — the struggle was far from over. Two more hard years passed before truncheon-wielding state troopers beat Lewis bloody and fractured his skull as he led 600 protesters over Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge…

That bridge became a touchstone in Lewis’ life. He returned there often during his decades in Congress representing the Atlanta area, bringing lawmakers from both parties to see where “Bloody Sunday” went down.

More brutality would loom in his life’s last chapter. He wept watching the video of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minnesota. “I kept saying to myself: How many more? How many young Black men will be murdered?” he said last month.

Yet he declared, or at least dared to hope: “We’re one people, we’re one family. We all live in the same house, not just the American house but the world house.”…

He was a guiding voice for a young Illinois senator who became the first Black president.

“I told him that I stood on his shoulders,” Obama wrote in a statement marking Lewis’s death. “When I was elected President of the United States, I hugged him on the inauguration stand before I was sworn in and told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made.”…

He was a teenager when he first heard King, then a young minister from Atlanta, preach on the radio. They met after Lewis wrote him seeking support to become the first Black student at his local college. He ultimately attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University instead, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Soon, the young man King nicknamed “the boy from Troy” was organizing sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters and volunteering as a Freedom Rider, enduring beatings and arrests while challenging segregation around the South. Lewis helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to organize this effort, led the group from 1963 to 1966 and kept pursuing civil rights work and voter registration drives for years thereafter…

Lewis refused to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, saying he didn’t consider him a “legitimate president” because Russians had conspired to get him elected. When Trump later complained about immigrants from “s—hole countries,” Lewis declared, “I think he is a racist … we have to try to stand up and speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug.” …

Reader Interactions

30Comments

  1. 1.

    dr. bloor

    Being able to cosplay yourself at a ComicCon and not get dragged for it is pretty much the definition of a Total Fucking Boss.

    Rest In Strength, good sir.

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I could watch the “Happy” dance all day long.

    John Lewis was many amazing things, but the most lovable of those things is that he always carried with him a sense of joy.

  3. 3.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne: 
    John Lewis was a real human being. A course we should all aspire to, make the world a better place for all. He didn’t ask for special, he asked for equal. He didn’t hold himself above, he held himself at the same level. He didn’t expect more, he expected equal. And he was right, every step of the way.

  4. 4.

    H.E.Wolf

    Rep. Lewis wrote/co-wrote several books. My two favorites are “Walking in the Wind” (a full-length memoir, with a beautiful explanation of the title in the prologue) and “Across That Bridge” (a collection of short essays).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_(civil_rights_leader)#Biographies
    Of John Lewis’s central beliefs, the one that means the most to me is his commitment to radical nonviolence. May he rest in peace and power. May we honor his life by following in his footsteps.

  6. 6.

    JPL

    Several of the local reporters spoke about him so tenderly, while holding back tears.   He will be missed.

  7. 7.

    laura

    John Lewis lived a life dedicated to the promise of our nation with every fiber of his being, his mighty intellect, his beating heart and with a deep devotion to non-violence and hope. He did not do it for self, but for all. He’s earned a rest, his suffering is at end.

  8. 8.

    Ladyraxterinok

    Webpage rightwingwatch notes Lee Peterson, a black radio commentator who 2 or so yrs ago  ran as a republican for some statewide office in VA, called Lewis an ‘evil, evil man.’

    The hate of republicans for Lewis and for blacks being able to vote is appalling. I can’t fathom where Peterson is coming from.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    I love that John Lewis was appreciated in his lifetime. I love that he showed up on the BLM pavement in DC (visible from the air!) in a mask, dressed as sharply as ever, just weeks before he left us.

    I love that he left knowing that the wind is behind BLM’s back, and that he left us the template for resisting Trump and for resisting bad actions and policies of police departments. For standing up for dignity and the worth of each individual.

    I love that we have a better than even chance of passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Acts package, and that we can make it even more tamperproof by the Supreme Court.

    VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

  10. 10.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ladyraxterinok: 

    What’s so unfathomable about POC deciding that advocating for white supremacy is their ticket into elite society? There are plenty of examples. One sits on the Supreme Court, while another is EIC of the NY Times.

  13. 13.

    rikyrah

    I owe a debt to John Lewis that could never be repaid. His life made mine possible. Too many just don’t understand the world that Lewis was born into and that he changed. Whatever issues that still persist, fundamentally, as a Black woman, I understand that the life that I get TO LIVE today, is because of Lewis and his sacrifices and his work. Period.

  14. 14.

    JCJ

    Last night Colbert had a tribute.   He played part of an interview Jon Batiste did with Mr Lewis.

  15. 15.

    gkoutnik

    I was a delegate to the DNC in 2012, and Lewis’s  speech is the one that made me sit up and take notice, and write home to tell everyone to look it up and listen to it.  I’ve paid attention to him ever since.  Also, I want to dance like that when I’m 78.  And also have something to dance about.

    Elizabelle’s right.  Everyone votes.

  17. 17.

    Hildebrand

    @Ladyraxterinok: There was no shortage of left-wing types on twitter spouting nonsense about Rep. Lewis being a sell-out.  Unbelievable.  The ghastly horseshoe effect in evidence once again.

  18. 18.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JCJ: Watched that a couple of hours ago. It had me tearing up. And can’t find it now, but a couple of days ago I saw a clip of the people in SC’s audience crowd-surfing JL. That one didn’t have me tearing up; it had me laughing and cheering.

  19. 19.

    Kelly

    @Elizabelle: I love that we have a better than even chance of passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Acts package, and that we can make it even more tamperproof by the Supreme Court.

    I believe he would prefer this to a monument of stone.

  20. 20.

    Kent

    What leaves me in awe about these men/women and their movement was how, despite all the violence against them, they stuck to such a path of nonviolence and civil disobedience.   They are frankly far more patriotic than 90% of the white male population in this country who would have taken up arms and run around in cosplay fatigues after experiencing 1% of the violence and discrimination that they experienced daily.

    An armed black insurrection in the south would not have been successful, but they could have set the place on fire and burned it down like Northern Ireland, the Palestinian Intifada, Syria, ISIS, Chechnya, the Colombian civil war, etc. etc.  With hundreds of thousands of returning black GIs from WW2, Korea, and Vietnam there were certainly lots of military knowledge and thousands more would have flooded in from the north.

    We have to be eternally grateful that they were much better and more patriotic people than most of the white population would have been had the circumstances been reversed.

  21. 21.

    WereBear

    Over a series of moves I went from a place which was not overtly racist, because it was a Midwestern small town where everyone was white; to a bigger town in the South where the racism was loud and proud.

    As a natural academic, this led me to the library where there were some books explaining a lot of history I had missed, being too young.

    Even now, I remember being in awe of the courage it took to get dressed up and walk out, knowing what was ahead.

    Which, all by itself, negated any messages my culture tried to tell me to the contrary.

  22. 22.

    WereBear

    @Kent:

    We have to be eternally grateful that they were much better and more patriotic people than most of the white population would have been had the circumstances been reversed.

     
    I think it was first and best expressed in the classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, where the young enslaved woman pointed out the toxic effects were seen on the bodies of the slaves, but not seen on the souls of the ones who claimed to own them.

    It was an atmosphere which encouraged cruelty and fear, in deepening levels of feeding back on itself. Which is why the society built by the plantation owners borrowed so heavily from ancient sources like Greece and Rome.

    It was degenerative, not generative.

  24. 24.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kent:

    This is laid out very beautifully in the NYT 1619 Project. I know, I know, but they really did themselves proud with that one. It is an eye-opening traversal of U.S. history that leaves you realizing that it is Black Americans who have saved this country, time and time again.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @Hildebrand:

    Unfortunately, being a leftist is no protection against being a racist.  There is a distressingly large fraction of the left wing that hates minority voters for worrying about discrimination rather than focusing on M4A or free college or whatever. Those people are idiots, but unfortunately they do exist and we have to deal with them.

    FWIW, I don’t think this is evidence for a “horseshoe theory”.  What it really shows is that politics has more than two dimensions.  Groups that look coherent in dimensions we talk about can be incoherent in dimensions we tend to ignore (e.g. real disagreements in both parties on immigration), and groups that are far apart in dimensions we talk about can be close together in other dimensions (e.g. some leftists being just as racist as the extreme right).  Part of the reason Trump has thrown our politics into chaos is that he’s emphasized dimensions of political difference that we’ve tended to ignore and ignored ones we’ve tended to emphasize.

  26. 26.

    cain

    @Kent: What leaves me in awe about these men/women and their movement was how, despite all the violence against them, they stuck to such a path of nonviolence and civil disobedience. They are frankly far more patriotic than 90% of the white male population in this country who would have taken up arms and run around in cosplay fatigues after experiencing 1% of the violence and discrimination that they experienced daily.

    That is the power of Satyagraha – non-violence, non-cooperation. King was a big fan of Mahatma Gandhi. It’s such a powerful form of protest that 3 letter government agencies monitor those movements more than others.

    You literally have to overcome your own instincts towards violence and let it all go.

    If you watched the movie Gandhi, the scene with the salt march was extremely provoking – watching men and women going towards the police line and then getting beat up, but then keep coming back.

    Somewhat similar things is happening in Portland if you can have the discipline.

  27. 27.

    Kent

    @cain: Yes of course.   Alternative histories are difficult but I have to wonder how the future of Israel might have played out had the PLO taken a similar path against Israel and marshaled world opinion in their favor.

  28. 28.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kent: I am currently reading a book called This Non-Violent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. I am not yet far enough into it to tell how compellingly he makes his case, but the author’s argument is that a lot of the nonviolent protest was hedged round and made possible by African-Americans in the South  who took their 2nd Amendment rights very, very seriously.

  29. 29.

    Miss Bianca

    @WereBear: But in Greece and Rome, a slave had at least a chance of buying, or being outright granted, his or her freedom. Many of their slaves were prisoners of war, originally. Slavery wasn’t necessarily seen as a permanent state you and all your children were born into and died in, world without end, amen. Race-based permanent bondage seems to have been a Southern/Caribbean WASP planter creation. :/

  30. 30.

    waynel140

    Whenever I see or hear someone talk about the Rev Mr. Lewis, I tear up. What a great man.

    “I’m a troublemaker. Necessary trouble.”

Comments are closed.