JOE KENNEDY III
Iwish it were easy to change human nature. Fear motivates, but hope does too. One person who regularly activates that idea is John Lewis, representative for Georgia, our most optimistic member of Congress. There is not an elected official who has been let down more often by people than he has—people who should know better and have his best interests at heart. He’s been arrested over 40 times and beaten and nearly killed. Yet he has lived, seen, fought and bled for the ability of the United States to change and become a more perfect union. There is value in that fight and pursuit.
Lewis was at a memorial service for the Mother Emanuel church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, listening to family members who had lost loved ones speak, and he got up and talked about forgiveness. He said that our nation had learned to forgive, and he told a story about how, when he was 21, he was beaten by Ku Klux Klan members in South Carolina. Years later, a man came into his congressional office with his son and asked for him. He said that he was one of the members of the Klan who had beaten him, and that he had come with his child to apologize. They hugged, and both cried.
To continue to get up and fight and to always say, “Hello, brother,” the way he does, shows that we are human, we are fallible and we make mistakes. We have the capacity to resist fear and be strong. We as individuals have a choice to make, and our country’s history shows that in those real times of crisis, we do try to be big and bold. When our Founding Fathers wrote that all men were equal, they meant rich, white Protestant men. We have worked to expand that. To help people like the poor migrants who come here seeking a better life, as my family did when we first got here.
When faced with someone speaking out of fear, call it out. Speak up. Ask the fundamental question, “Why do you feel that way?” Listen to those answers to expose the fallacy of their argument, so that you can address that underlying fear. If people are willing to have an honest conversation around, say, immigration, they might say, “We can’t afford it,” or “It’s going to displace us.” Those are statements you can engage in. Be tenacious enough to not let the argument die.
Countering alternative realities with facts is hard. But it isn’t any harder than it was for African-americans in the civil rights movement or for the women who fought for suffrage.