Good Trouble Was Everywhere This Weekend
More than 600 communities honored John Lewis with marches, vigils, voter registration, and song. Here is what they built, and how to keep building it.
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On Friday evening, as the light faded over one of Brea, California’s busiest intersections, community members lit candles at the corner of Imperial Highway and State College Boulevard. So far, they’ve stood at that corner every Monday for more than a year. They stood with handmade signs, candlelight, and music, one small point of light at the start of a very big weekend.
From July 17 through 19, more than 600 communities gathered for Good Trouble Lives On, the sixth annual national weekend of nonviolent, nonpartisan action honoring Congressman John Lewis. Organizers built the weekend around three things, Teach, Reach, Preach, and centered this year’s actions on voter registration, civic education, and faith-based organizing. It was a weekend spent building people and relationships that will defend the vote this coming November and beyond.
The weekend was built to outlast the weekend
Organizers with the Transformative Justice Coalition and partners structured all three days around Teach, Reach, Preach. Friday was for teach-ins, vigils, and voter education. Saturday was for reaching people directly through registration drives and community gatherings. Sunday brought work into congregations, where clergy connected voting rights to moral responsibility.
Every official event carried a commitment to nonviolence, de-escalation, and lawful conduct. That discipline is the same discipline John Lewis practiced, and it’s what keeps our people safe
In New York, Friday brought a march and a dance party
In New York, Friday’s action began at Foley Square in Manhattan, where a coalition including the New York Immigration Coalition, Hands Off NYC, the Workers Circle, and partners held a rally and march defending Black voting power and immigrant New Yorkers, with a march toward Cadman Plaza and an outdoor dance party with Public Service NYC.
Lean into joy. This movement never asked anyone to choose between resistance and celebration and we really need both, and New York brought both.
In Santa Barbara, hundreds of people became more than a crowd
By 11 a.m. Saturday, nearly 300 people lined Cabrillo Boulevard near Stearns Wharf, the Santa Barbara Independent reported. Volunteers in yellow vests waved at honking drivers. Local groups recruited newcomers into postcard writing, phone banking, and text banking.
One affiliated group, Commit to Democracy, said its volunteers sent more than five million text messages during the last general election.
And in the places the cameras rarely go
In Fultondale, Alabama, high school students, artists, and faith leaders gathered at St. Luke A.M.E. Church on Sunday. In Huntsville, organizers described disrupting the system with joy. In Lynchburg, Virginia, the Lynchburg Voters League held its second annual Good Trouble weekend. In Chicago, a candlelight vigil near Buckingham Fountain opened a weekend of registration events across the city.
Some gatherings were large. Some filled a church or a single street corner. Every one of them makes a difference. Thank you to everyone who showed up or shared to help get the word out.
Why this year carries extra weight
This weekend took on new urgency amid a broader assault on voting rights, including the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which sharply narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge racial vote dilution in redistricting. Justice Elena Kagan warned in dissent that the decision renders Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” And according to the Brennan Center, at least 9 states enacted 12 restrictive voting laws this year, and nine of those laws are slated to be in effect for the November midterms.
None of this is inevitable, and more than 600 communities just spent three days proving it.
Every registration table, teach-in, congregation that took up the cause this weekend is a barrier answered with a person who now knows how to get through it.
What this weekend built
A college senior is building a campus organization that didn’t exist a month ago.
Congregations across the country preached democracy from the pulpit.
Strangers picked up lyric sheets and sang together.
Newcomers signed up for their first phone bank.
People who were frightened on Wednesday stood shoulder to shoulder with neighbors by Saturday.
Don’t let the weekend end here
Check your voter registration, especially if you’ve moved, changed your name, or skipped recent elections. If you hit a problem or a question, the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline is 866-OUR-VOTE.
Become dependable somewhere. Join a local group doing voter outreach and claim a recurring piece of the work: a phone bank shift or a registration table.
Sent in and written by Erika Berg, Click here to read: John Lewis | A Tribute
I wrote letters at the local Unitarian Universalist Church, with about 50 other people. If my calculations are correct, we probably wrote and addressed letters to about 1,000 people in Wisconsin, for VoteRiders Wisconsin. It was much more fun than writing 100 postcards alone on my couch! (And then paying for the stamps.) This time somebody else (the Church? VoteRiders?) picked up the tab for postage, so we all spent 2 happy hours accomplishing something worthwhile. A happy Sunday for me.
Great gathering in Tucson AZ on Friday for the evict Juan Ciscomani fiesta. We had about 250-400 folks party up in the desert heat. Juan is the regime's local puppet, who of course is not talking to his constuents while also taking $1.25 million from AIPAC.