Today, we say goodbye to President Barack Obama and watch as President Donald Trump takes his oaths. Tomorrow, thousands will march across the country. As we reflect on the legacy of the first black president and on the means by which we protest, we can take a cue from our new leader and turn to the civil rights movement and U.S. Rep. John Lewis.
Trump first attacked Lewis after Lewis joined more than 60 other members of Congress not attending the inauguration and declared that he did not believe Trump to be legitimately elected. Trump fired back on Twitter, saying that Lewis’ district is “falling apart” and “crime infested.” While Trump’s claims about Lewis and the district he represents are just plain false, bringing up the legacy of a civil rights hero does give us some guidelines for how we should go about resistance to racism and sexism.
John Lewis doesn’t always make the U.S. history textbooks, but his role in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee illustrates what young people can do, even while in college. Lewis started small, organizing sit-ins at lunch counters and local bus boycotts while he was still in school. As the civil rights movement became more tumultuous, Lewis found himself in higher leadership roles and eventually helping to organize the March on Washington, where he was the youngest speaker, and the march to Selma, where he was nearly beaten to death.
Without the brave action of John Lewis and others in the civil rights movement, a court might not have forced UNC’s integration and we might not have elected a black president in 2008. The effects of the civil rights movement can be felt in nearly every aspect of modern American life. Innovative social justice campaigns of the civil rights movement brought about that change.
Those techniques — sit-ins, peaceful protest, marches — are the actions we need to take in response to the seemingly endless and inevitable blunders and deliberately racist, classist and sexist policy Trump and his cabinet of rich donors put forward.
The Women’s Marches across the country show the first step in creating a sustainable movement to oppose the Trump presidency. While there are problems of infighting and disagreements about specific policies, coming together and forming a peaceful, but strong, wall of opposition is the biggest cue we can take from the civil rights movement.
Organizing cannot stop with one day, though. If we truly want to hold Trump accountable, we must not become complacent. We must care about every person Trump taps for Cabinet positions, we must care about all the people he bullies and we must care about the people who will die from lack of health care when he and his Republican bedfellows repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement policy.
Even when Trump takes actions that do not directly affect us on a personal level, we must continue to fight and organize for the sake of those who will suffer and cannot have their voices heard. We further cannot “wait and see” how bad Trump will be or give him a chance. He has run out of chances.
As Lewis said in his speech at the March on Washington, “We must say: ‘Wake up America! Wake up!’ For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient.”
