The humbling example of John Lewis

Few life stories are as humbling as that of John Lewis, a civil rights icon and longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia who died Friday at age 80. Hoping to provoke this country to renounce the oppressive discrimination against Black Americans, he walked into certain confrontations with racist cops, Ku Klux Klansmen, hate-spewing citizens and unjust institutions, unarmed and armored only with the nobility of his cause.

And even after being beaten, jailed and threatened with worse, he did it again and again, determined to stay on the path of nonviolence and prove that hate could be overcome by love. of the Congress, which is why he was admired by so many of its members on both sides of the aisle.

Losing Lewis’ voice is particularly gutting now, as the country is confronting anew the poison that he spent his life trying to extract. George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer triggered a wave of protests about police brutality, but the demand for reckoning goes well beyond that. We are being called to confront the structural racism and institutional barriers that have kept a knee on the neck of generations of Black, Latino and other disempowered Americans.

Lewis put it this way in an op-ed for the Washington Post in 2011, on the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington: “Yes, we have come a great distance — but we still have a great distance to go.”

And sometimes it feels like we haven’t come that far after all. The scenes of police officers and federal agents in riot gear gassing and beating people during the Floyd protests are chillingly reminiscent of the 1960s and early 1970s, as are the calls from the Oval Office for “law and order” and a militarized response to the demonstrations.

Lewis’ faith in nonviolent protest was coupled with a firm belief in the transformative power of democracy. The march he helped lead over the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma galvanized support for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, overcoming entrenched opposition from powerful Southern Democrats.

Republicans across the country have used the myth of rampant voter fraud to engage in cynical voter suppression, buoyed by a disastrous 2013 Supreme Court ruling that allowed communities with histories of discrimination to adopt new voting rules without getting the Justice Department’s approval in advance.

The fight for justice and equality for all is never ending. Lewis liked to tell people, “Never give up, never give in, never give out.” The best way to honor his memory is to heed those words, especially when it comes time to vote.

Los Angeles Times