John Lewis has left us. It’s up to us now.
John Lewis is gone, and I really have no idea what to say about it. We all knew he was ill. We all knew this was coming. We all had time to figure out what we were going to say when he passed away – and yet there are still no proper words. He’s a better man than I’ll ever hope to be. He changed the world for the better. We’re all infinitely in his debt. Now we owe it to him to finish what he started.
Yes, we need to honor John Lewis in every way possible. There should be statues of him at every turn. We must make sure that future generations know what all he courageously did in the name of civil rights. We owe it to him to make sure he gets the proper credit, now and in the future. But more importantly, we owe it to him to make sure that his work gets carried forward – and that means it’s on us to do the work now.
When he was young, John Lewis fought for his own civil rights. When he was older, he fought for LGBT rights. He was always fighting for somebody’s rights. He cared about equality, dignity, decency, humanity. Our nation is deep in the throes of those same battles right now. It’s up to us to ask ourselves what John Lewis would do, and then do it.
It’s time for the Edmund Pettus Bridge to become the John Lewis Bridge. But that’s the easy part, really. We have to put in the work on civil rights and equality going forward. It’s our time to make – as John Lewis called it – good trouble.
