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Being Glad To Share Time On Earth With John Lewis
By Sally Dugman
John Lewis (in the foreground being beaten by state troopers March 7, 1965
I fiercely loved him and miss him as he epitomized the best that humanity has to offer to heal the world of its wrongs: Fixing the world:
Tikkun olam(Hebrew: תִּקּוּן עוֹלָם).
Some of us are born to be troublemakers, rebels, dissidents and breakers of wrong social systems and bad government patterns. John Lewis, certainly, was one of them as he strived throughout his whole life to serve improvements for the world in general and corrections for its unjust and unfair harms.
Moreover, he, surely, was willing to pay the price (as, thankfully, many of us are when it comes down to the wire) and even when he got beaten by government authorities when on a protest march with his friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., and got his skull fractured by a government operative.
He’d assumed that he’d wind up in jail and was surprised to find himself in a hospital instead.
As Pete Souza wrote, “On March 7, 1965, young activist John Lewis was beaten by State Troopers during a march for voting rights while attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. (AP photo from the National Archives.) Lewis suffered a skull fracture.
“It wasn’t until March 21, 1965–on their third attempt, with protection from the National Guard ordered by President Lyndon Johnson–that the activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. were able to march for five days from Selma to Montgomery. John Lewis was part of that march too, despite what had happened to him two weeks earlier.”
What I’ve learned is that certain people are predictable based on their values and idealistic visions of the ways that everyone in the entire world should be. Then, they, the proactive ones, go after trying to make it so while even knowing that they may fail. They do it anyway simply because it IS the right act to do and what would they do with their time else-wise?
As I. F. Stone stated, “The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.
Put another way:
“Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
- John Lewis
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'Being Glad To Share Time On Earth With John Lewis' by Sally Dugman
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