Good trouble is protest rooted in philosophy

Rallies today are following the example of the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis.

By Brenda Jones

At a time in our nation’s history when democratic inclusion is under attack, it is encouraging to hear about demonstrations commemorating July 17—the fifth anniversary of Rep. John Lewis’s death. Activists are calling it the “Good Trouble Lives On National Day of Action.” It might be instructive to explore how Lewis derived the phrase “good trouble, necessary trouble” to offer some background to these protests.

Lewis often spoke about how people of conscience should be dissatisfied with the inhumanity of their time. To him, compliance with injustice was complicity that made people benign participants in their own oppression. He encouraged us to “stand up, speak up and speak out” as a “moral obligation” incumbent on every proponent in the “quest for human dignity” in America.

Protest was a very risky, dangerous action to take in the segregated 1950s and 60s, particularly in the Deep South. In many Southern cities, it was against the law for groups of more than three black people to congregate on a city street at any time. If they could not prove they were working, people could be arrested and jailed for loitering and be fined or sent to prison.

Parents of the time, including Lewis’s, would caution their children, “Don’t get in trouble. Don’t get in the way”—much like “the talk” Black parents still give their children today. In Lewis’s era, these anguished pleas came from parents who hoped to save their children from unspeakable terror. Once a child was perceived to have gotten “in the way,” he or she could be disappeared without a trace, and the perpetrator would face no consequences.

In fact, that did happen to Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy, just one year younger than Lewis, who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Money, Miss., after being accused of whistling at a white woman store owner. He never had a chance to tell his side of the story, but his family said he had a lisp that might have been misconstrued as a whistle.

Lewis’s parents were distraught when he got involved in the civil rights movement. They feared for his life. They, too, could have paid the price for his actions. They could be run off their farms, fired from their jobs, jailed, and worse because of his involvement in the movement. He purposely stayed away from home for their safety for several years.

However, despite the challenges, Lewis and hundreds of others like him made the conscious decision that the non-violent movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was “too right, too necessary” to allow personal comfort to be their main concern. “I decided to get in good trouble, necessary trouble to make a difference in our society,” Lewis said about his decision to move beyond his parent’s fear. These activists believed that together they could build a Beloved Community in America, “a society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.”

As people get in “good trouble” across America today, it is important to recognize that protest was only one aspect of the movement’s strategy.

“We did not just wake up one morning and decide to march,” Lewis said. “We studied the discipline and philosophy of non-violence” sometimes for more than a year before they took action. Lewis was involved in a literate, intellectual movement, steeped not only in the Christian arguments of King and the discourse of Mohandas Gandhi, but also on a series of texts by Thomas Merton, Walter Rauschenbush, Reinhold Niebuhr, Howard Thurman, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, and many other theologians and philosophers. One of the strategic initiatives of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which Lewis led, was to support the opening of bookstores in cities around the country so people could read these texts and philosophies for themselves. One such store in D.C., Drum & Spear, was situated very close to Howard University.

Learning, history, and philosophy were critical forces in the civil rights movement, as was sharing information with the unlearned and non-literate to propel them to exercise their voting power strategically. These actions were all part of a comprehensive strategy that combined legislative initiatives, lobbying, and judicial arguments that ultimately led to the transformative shift the movement made in our society.

This is a new era with similar and very different challenges. Activists must determine what the good and necessary trouble of today must be and which actions plainly demonstrate the problems our society is facing. To truly emulate the movement Lewis was a part of, activists should commit to organizing the unorganized, reading the history and philosophy of previous struggles for liberation and unity, and train each other in non-violent discipline.

Lewis trusted implicitly in the ability of young people to cut their own path and find their own truth. He would be honored to be used as an example, acknowledging the power of history to teach. He would suggest that each movement while learning from the past, must ultimately find its own way.

Brenda Jones is the former speechwriter for Rep. John Lewis and the president and founder of The John Lewis Institute of Peace.

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