If Dems claim civil-rights mantle against Trump, they must be willing to make trouble | Opinion
The late Rep. John Lewis doesn’t need my exaltation. Opposing the same institution you’ve joined is rife with inherent contradictions. But, as a man arrested at least 45 times for his nonviolent political stances, one can fairly and dispassionately say the Georgia congressman was doggedly committed to the practice of what he called “good trouble,” civil disobedience for causes he believed in.
As Lewis neared the end of his political career, he maintained a foot in his activist upbringing. In his later days in office, he was arrested twice for protesting the genocide in Darfur, responded to Orlando’s 2016 gay nightclub shooting with a 26-hour sit-in in the House chambers to demand gun safety legislation. I am still awed by an elderly man who was beaten profusely by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge; who lost friends, allies and mentors — most notably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr — to the murderous schemes of racist whites and the governments who supported their terror and yet refused to let his spirit calcify in gray and sepia-toned photos.
Somewhat like a young Lewis organizing with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee decades before he entered Congress, the Democratic Party has little in the way of institutional power. Lacking the formal strength of a voting plurality in Congress, their preferred person in the executive branch, or ideological alignment among most Supreme Court justices, there is much they could stand to adopt from their former colleague’s legacy.
Yet, a scan of President Donald Trump’s address to Congress indicates a party unwilling to leverage the power it has. Where was the “good trouble”?
Consider first the trouble the party is seeing, a president who is transferring immigrants suspected of crossing the border illegally to Guantanamo Bay — often on the dubious grounds of having a tattoo — and constructing a taxpayer-funded prison with minimal oversight, accountability or disclosure of what goes on inside. When the White House isn’t promoting its very likely illegal imprisonments with hype videos featuring the sounds and images of shackled migrants, it’s threatening to criminalize the First Amendment by deporting student protesters critical of Israel’s genocide of Palestine, positioning transgender Americans as an existential threat to women, and stigmatizing diversity, equity and inclusion programs as a slur. One of Trump’s top surrogate. Charlie Kirk, has spent the last year trying to convince his Gen-Z followers that MLK was an “awful person” and the Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake.”
Politicians claiming the mantle of defending civil rights who have spent a decade campaigning and fundraising off liberal hysteria about Trump’s fascism have, if they choose, a bounty of ammunition. Consider then, that some Democrats took aim not at Trump, but at Rep. Al Green, the Houston lawmaker who, at 77, is one of the few old enough to remember the world Lewis risked his life to change.
Green is also the only member of Congress who exercised Lewis’ methods in the House chambers. By screaming “you have no mandate,” which he said was a protest against GOP proposals to cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, and breaking decorum by disputing the legitimacy of Trump’s governance, he provoked Speaker Mike Johnson to have him and his cane forcibly escorted from the House chambers. Green left the chambers without his party, completely alone.
The action was poignant because it may have been the only step taken by a Democrat to meet a moment that the party has, again, positioned as an existential crisis for about a decade. Yet somehow, Democrats joined the Republican Party — again, the party they told Americans were infiltrated by fascists and Nazis — to censure Green for his conduct. While the rest are reportedly infighting about how to approach this moment.
Some Democrats, I suspect, would condemn those in their party who joined Republicans in a censure but claim their demonstrations were radical and in concert with Green. They would point to singing “We Shall Overcome” as if they were marching on Washington. They would wave the signs they carried at the joint address, each roughly the size of a church fan, most with passive aggressive slogans. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico Democrat, held a sign that read “This Is Not Normal.” (Because subtlety is dead, a Republican ripped the sign from her hand and threw it on the ground without any resistance.)
Others resisted, and you can tell because they wore t-shirts that said “Resist.” Some pink was involved. A few reps ended their inoffensive walkout with a solemn-faced selfie — a fitting commemoration for an action that disrupted nothing. There was even a choreographed dance. Trump may not have noticed, but I’m sure Lin-Manuel Miranda was shaking in his boots.
That post-walkout selfie was, for me, the most memorably unmemorable action. Included in the picture was Rep. Nikema Williams, a Lewis-mentee handpicked from the state house for inheriting his safely blue seat. Winning Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District is as close as a democratically elected position can come to a lifetime appointment, a near-guarantee that she will spend the next half of her life with a well-compensated, taxpayer funded job. Williams posed in a tee that read “GOOD TROUBLE” in all caps. Williams has shown she is capable of more civil resistance than putting together a good fit. If that energy she flexed at the Georgia state Capitol is still present, she and her party should show it at the earliest opportunity.
What made Lewis’s brand of “good trouble” distinct was the part where he got in trouble. Still, I appreciate what the Democrats revealed about the inertia of their party. If our electeds promote a concept of “good trouble” able to fit a handheld sign, TikTok, or T-shirt, I applaud them for quietly leaving the House chambers.
But, don’t stop there. Swing by your office so you can pack the rest of your belongings. Let someone else get in the way.
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 2:58 PM with the headline "If Dems claim civil-rights mantle against Trump, they must be willing to make trouble | Opinion."
