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Time Magazine
4 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
‘Good Trouble' Protests Against Trump Being Held Across U.S.
Demonstrators have taken to the streets across multiple states on Thursday to protest President Donald Trump's Administration in a day of action honoring the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, with more events planned across the country in the evening. 'We are facing the most brazen rollback of civil rights in generations,' reads the movement's website. 'Whether you're outraged by attacks on voting rights, the gutting of essential services, disappearances of our neighbors, or the assault on free speech and our right to protest—this movement is for you. Trump is trying to divide us, but we know the power of coming together.' 'Good Trouble Lives On is a national day of action to respond to the attacks on our civil and human rights by the Trump administration,' the website continues. 'Together, we'll remind them that in America, the power lies with the people.' The phrase 'Good Trouble,' coined by Lewis, refers to 'the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change,' according to the website. Lewis was a leader in the civil rights movement, traveling between states to challenge segregation as one of 13 original Freedom Riders and serving as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which he helped found. He went on to represent Georgia's 5th district in Congress for more than 30 years and became an outspoken Trump opponent during the President's first term. The day of action was set for Thursday, July 17—five years after Lewis died, at the age of 80, following a battle with pancreatic cancer. The events on Thursday included block parties, candlelight vigils, and peaceful protests in cities including New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago. The movement's website said that a 'core principle' behind the events is 'a commitment to nonviolent action,' adding that no weapons should be brought to the events. The 'Good Trouble' protests follow more than 1,500 'No Kings Day' demonstrations that were held across the country last month to protest the Trump Administration on the same day that the President held a military parade in Washington, D.C. They also come after Trump earlier in June mobilized the National Guard—against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom—to quell immigration-related protests in Los Angeles. Trump's actions sparked outrage from Democratic politicians, advocacy organizations, and legal experts, and protests spread across the country amid the outcry.
The Guardian
10-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sixty years after Bloody Sunday, civil rights leaders in Selma continue fight
What would John Lewis do today? On a Sunday morning 60 years ago, activists rewrote the story of the civil rights movement in their own blood on the streets of Selma, Alabama. State troopers turned their truncheons on a peaceful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the behest of Alabama's stridently and infamously racist governor George Wallace, protecting Alabama segregation and white supremacy. John Lewis, then the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later served in Congress – and as a moral force in American politics – for decades. He bore scars from the beating he took that day through the rest of his life. How should Americans meet today's challenges to civil rights and democracy? That question percolates among the activists and visitors crowding Selma's streets this weekend as the Trump administration wages an intense, wide-ranging war on America's anti-discrimination policies. 'We have a tyrant that's running the federal government,' said Delvone Michael, a political strategist from Maryland. Lewis would be going from campus to campus, mobilizing for a confrontation, he said. Michael described the moment as a stress test of American resolve that isn't being met with sufficient opposition either in Congress or the street. 'We don't see the people that are actually standing up like what happened here, where everyday people stood together and raged against the machine,' Michael said. 'You're not seeing that right in this moment, at the scale necessary to stop this guy.' Progressive congressional leaders are hearing this criticism. 'We've got to make sure that we're not normalizing this moment and stepping up and being unafraid, and I think we are still here playing by the same book when they don't follow one.' said congresswoman Nikema Williams as she walked up the bridge on Sunday afternoon. Williams serves in the Atlanta house seat vacated by Lewis's death in 2020. The moment today is designed to create chaos, she said. Activists say it should be answered with the kind of effort civil rights leaders of Lewis' era presented in the face of strident, violent opposition, if the gains of that generation are to be maintained. 'Don't get me wrong, the last 70 years have not brought us where we should be, but the last 70 years made significant progress in this country, and we have been the beneficiaries,' said Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and president of the National Urban League. 'What falls to us is to ensure that our children and children's children are not going to litigate the battles of our grandparents.' The election of Donald Trump has led the civil rights division of the justice department to end investigations of discrimination against racial minorities in cases like the 'goon squad' assaults in Mississippi and the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Trump fired two commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – in violation of the law – and its acting chairman has pledged to root out 'unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination' instead of its prior role protecting workers of color against race-based discrimination. 'I got a lot of folks saying, what are we going to do?' Morial said. 'And they almost are looking for a one punch knockout. Isn't that one lawsuit? Isn't there one political move? This is a long trench warfare.' The US supreme court last year established a doctrine of absolute immunity for acts committed by a president 'within their core constitutional purview,' and at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility. The 6-3 ruling creates a predictable flash point in the conflict between an authoritarian government and American civil rights: a moment when Trump faces a court decision he doesn't like. 'We're going to fight in the courts wherever we can, and it's not going to be enough,' said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center. 'We're actually going to have to mobilize people around the country. There are a lot of people who are upset right now, but they're not standing up, they're not seeing themselves as protagonists of this story.' Caleb Jakes, 20, of Newark, described generational despair. 'Too many of us are stuck between fear and anxiety,' he said of other Black twentysomething looking at the world on fire. 'So many of us are paralyzed just from imagining that even if I went for it, it's not going to happen … The regular way of trying to get the system to work in my favor just aren't appealing enough anymore to merit the effort to stay after it.' People under 20 have known nothing except losses – economic crisis, civil rights rollbacks and political turmoil, added Donneio Perryman, 20, from Chicago. 'Most of us, if we are not stricken by poverty and trying to get out, are just trying to make a way for ourselves and our families right now as our main goals and not the entirety of our race.' Activists regularly suggest that Trump may be looking for a rationale to invoke the Insurrection Act, declare martial law and turn troops or police on protesters, tempering their enthusiasm for mass demonstrations. 'There are some of us who are going to be willing to bleed,' Huang said. 'Not everybody has to. We are not asking everyone to lay down their lives, but we are saying to everyone that this is your fight, and you have to be counted when the chips are down.' Sixty years ago, demonstrations that led to conflicts also led to progress. 'We went where we were called,' said Andrew Young, former ambassador to the United Nations and a contemporary of Martin Luther King and Lewis who marched in Selma in 1965. 'Amelia Boynton came to see Dr King just that before Christmas, and he told she told him that Jim Clark would not let them hold meetings in their churches because he said they were too political.' Boynton was a young Selma activist who organized the march from Selma to Montgomery after an Alabama state trooper killed Jimmie Lee Jackson while he tried to protect his mother from being beaten after an earlier protest. Selma was considered beyond salvation by civil rights activists at the time, but Jackson's murder and Boynton's plea drew marchers. King told Young not to go, Young said. 'We thought they would just turn us around,' Young said of the state troopers. 'They didn't even give them time to pray, or to discuss anything. They just immediately charged.' The beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge shocked the nation. Pictures of Lewis on the ground with a trooper looming over him, or of Boynton laying broken in the street amid tear gas and horses, ran on the front page of newspapers across the country. ABC News interrupted a documentary about Nazi war crimes as the attack unfolded, cutting to show the violence live in Selma. The metaphor was not lost on the public or lawmakers. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 five months later. What is the next Selma? 'I don't know. And I shouldn't know,' Young replied. 'I mean, there's nothing, yet I see all the signs. I see the things that people are saying.' The streets of Selma fill with marchers every year on this Sunday in March, commemorating the events of 1965. This year has drawn an unusually large crowd. Hotel rooms are full for 30 miles in every direction. Selma itself is caught in amber. Like many towns in Alabama's Black Belt, Selma has been losing population for decades. Many buildings downtown are a ruin, pock-marked by damage from a tornado in 2023 and unchanged since Bloody Sunday. The march has become a carefully stage-managed parade, with politicians jockeying with the scions of the movement for position at the front of the procession where they can be seen by throngs of photographers from across the country. The march was scheduled in waves, with thousands of people grouped in time slots by the hour for their chance to walk and be seen. 'I think part of the reason that so many of us came to Selma is because we really draw inspiration in people who had no reason really to believe that they could get freedom,' said Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. 'They were facing what may have looked like an all-powerful force, but they had a faith and desire to work for something bigger and better, and I think we're here because we have that same spirit.' The memorial of Bloody Sunday gives the city an economic boost, but after the crowds leave, little changes, said Gary Ransom, a Selma photographer pushing for redevelopment. 'We've always been in the spotlight because of all the historic things that happened here,' Ransom said. But between the hurricane and a growing gun violence problem, Selma has been bleeding population, 'because the kids don't have nowhere to go or nothing to do.' For Bernard Lafayette, a civil rights leader and attorney who marched in Selma on Bloody Sunday, the answer is to build a Black economic fortress that can withstand attack. 'We're still commemorating Bloody Sunday 60 years later,' he said. 'It's time to make a paradigm shift.' Lafayette has been raising capital to build a factory to manufacture solar panels in Selma. Asked what a 20-year-old activist like Lewis might be expected to do today, Layfayette's answer was blunt. 'They should be saying, 'To hell with them and focus on manufacturing,' Lafayette said. 'Focus on our resources. Focus on the $2tn per year that we generate. White folks are never going to help us. They enslaved us. We have to come to our own rescue. We have to save ourselves, and we can only do that by using our resources for our people.'
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
14 Black women who proved they were the real architects of the Civil Rights Movement
As Ella Baker noted, women were the "backbone of the civil rights movement," yet their contributions were often overlooked or minimized in favor of male figures. From organizing boycotts to establishing citizenship schools, Black women were the driving force behind civil rights progress. They developed innovative organizing tactics, created educational programs and maintained the day-to-day work that sustained the struggle for justice. Risking everything to secure freedom, these Black women faced racism and sexism while building the infrastructure that made movement victories possible. Trending 13 facts about Betty Shabazz that highlight her revolutionary legacy 15 facts that show why Coretta Scott King was a true icon 15 things you should know about fashion killa Kollin Carter Whether leading from the front lines or working behind the scenes, their leadership shaped how movements organize and fight for change. Their stories remind us that revolution is about the persistent work of those who refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. As we continue the struggle for racial justice today, the legacy of these 14 Black women reminds us that true progress comes from the ground up, led by those who refuse to back down. Explore their impact on the Civil Rights Movement below. As the NAACP's director of branches, Baker revolutionized grassroots organizing by traveling thousands of miles across the South, establishing new branches and developing local leadership at great personal risk. In 1960, she founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, rejecting top-down leadership for a democratic approach that emphasized collective action. Her philosophy that "strong people don't need strong leaders" transformed how movements organize, inspiring generations of activists to prioritize grassroots power over individual charisma. After being fired from teaching for refusing to leave the NAACP, Septima Clark developed the Citizenship Education Program at Highlander Folk School, turning education into a weapon against Jim Crow laws. Her program taught literacy and civil rights, training over 25,000 teachers and helping register countless Black voters across the South. Despite facing constant threats and being overlooked by male leaders, Clark's educational model became so successful that Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference adopted it as their primary education program. When violence threatened to stop the Freedom Rides in Birmingham, Alabama, Diane Nash refused to let terror win, coordinating their continuation from Nashville, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. Her tactical leadership proved crucial to the rides' success, with MLK calling her the "driving spirit" behind lunch counter desegregation. Despite being pregnant during the height of the movement, Nash continued organizing, proving that nothing could stop a woman determined to secure freedom. After being fired for trying to register to vote, Fannie Lou Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, challenging the all-white Democratic delegation at the 1964 convention. Her powerful testimony about surviving police brutality forced the nation to confront Southern violence, famously declaring she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired." Despite facing threats and economic retaliation, Hamer continued organizing until her death, helping thousands of Black Mississippians register to vote. As the fourth president of the National Council of Negro Women, Dorothy Height was crucial to organizing the March on Washington, though her male peers in the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership denied her a speaking role because of her gender. She worked tirelessly to unite civil rights and women's organizations, creating coalitions that strengthened both movements. Her leadership style of "lifting as we climb" showed how women could build power even when denied public recognition. As leader of the Cambridge Movement in Maryland, Gloria Richardson rejected the strict nonviolence doctrine, defending her community's right to armed self-defense against white supremacist attacks. Her militant stance and famous photograph pushing away a National Guard bayonet earned her the title "Lady General of Civil Rights" from Ebony magazine. Richardson's leadership proved that women could be militant and effective, inspiring later movements to embrace diverse tactical approaches. As Arkansas' NAACP president, Daisy Bates orchestrated the integration of Little Rock Central High School, mentoring the Little Rock Nine while facing constant death threats and economic boycotts. She turned her home into a command center for the crisis, coordinating with lawyers, journalists and supporters while documenting every incident of harassment. Despite losing her newspaper business and facing financial ruin, Bates never wavered in her commitment to educational equality. After her husband Medgar Evers' assassination, Myrlie Evers-Williams spent three decades fighting for justice, finally securing conviction of his killer in 1994. She preserved crucial evidence, gave powerful testimony and kept public attention focused on the case while raising three children alone. Later becoming a NAACP chairwoman, she proved that the fight for justice requires both persistence and strategic patience. At just six years old, Ruby Bridges became the first Black child to integrate an elementary school in the South, facing angry mobs every day with remarkable courage. Despite being the only student in her class for a year due to white boycotts, she never missed a day of school. Her bravery inspired Norman Rockwell's famous painting "The Problem We All Live With," making her a symbol of children's role in the movement. After Emmett Till's brutal murder, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket funeral to "let the world see what they did to my boy." Her decision to publish the funeral photos in Jet magazine forced America to confront the reality of Southern violence. Her transformation of personal tragedy into activist momentum helped catalyze the modern Civil Rights Movement. Hours after Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson secretly printed and distributed 50,000 flyers calling for a bus boycott, using her access to Alabama State College's mimeograph machine. Her quick action and organizational skills transformed a single act of resistance into a year-long movement that broke segregation's back. An active member of the Women's Political Council, Robinson had been planning the boycott for years, proving that women were the strategic minds behind many movement victories. Nine months before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, becoming the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation. Despite facing ostracism and becoming a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, which desegregated Montgomery's buses, her contribution was overlooked because she was a pregnant teenager. Her courage proved that young women were often the first to challenge injustice, even when denied recognition. As the director of SCLC's Citizenship Education Program, Dorothy Cotton trained thousands of activists in nonviolent resistance and citizenship rights through. She traveled across the South conducting workshops, often in secret to build local leadership capacity. Cotton's work proved that education was essential to movement building, creating a model for activist training that continues today. Journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett began a campaign against lynching after three of her friends were lynched by a mob in 1892. Alongside continuing to expose the violence of the act in newspapers and journals, she spoke at and organized anti-lynching societies and also helped found several important organizations, including the NAACP and National Association of Colored Women. The Pulitzer Prize winner was also a strong figure in the movement for women's rights, founding one of the first Black women's suffrage groups, Chicago's Alpha Suffrage Club, in 1913. You Might Also Like 17 NBA players who made everyone scared to match up 21 times Beyoncé slayed a look
