Rev. Barber: Its time to prepare for #MoralResistance

[deminks]

https://thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-its-time-to-prepare-for-moralresistance-bd261d6fe460#.9sytgiy4r

If Donald Trump ever planned, as he continually promised, to act “presidential,” this should have been the week. Yet even as grandstands went up along the inaugural parade route, Trump took to Twitter like a Kardashian to attack Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). Targeting the only surviving March on Washington speaker on the MLK holiday weekend, Trump made clear once more how little he knows about the America he has been elected to serve and the historical moment in which he takes office. By attacking the “Conscience of the Congress,” Trump has served notice to all people of conscience that the time to prepare for moral resistance is now.

(snip)

Arrested 24 times time in the struggle to save American democracy from its worst flaws, John Lewis bears in his body the marks of America’s struggle for multi-ethnic democracy. During a 1965 voting rights campaign, he and Hosea Williams led 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma. Alabama state troopers and mounted vigilantes with whips, bats and chains charged the march, cracking Lewis’s skull and badly injuring dozens of nonviolent demonstrators. Lewis escaped and spoke to the TV cameras, imploring President Lyndon Johnson to protect the rights of black citizens to vote, before he was hospitalized.

Elected to Congress in 1986, Lewis has been an enormously successful legislator and represents a thriving district in Atlanta, which has re-elected him 14 times, all but once by 70 percent or more of their ballots.

(snip)

Representative Lewis makes a good point: Donald Trump’s claim on legitimacy is shaky. Though he lost the popular vote by almost three million votes, Trump won election with the aid of a foreign government’s espionage — espionage that he publicly implored Russia to conduct against Hillary Clinton. His campaign benefited from the breathtaking intervention of the FBI director only days before the election, raising doubts about Clinton but reporting nothing significant. Trump openly advocated that his supporters commit violence against dissenters. He played on our nation’s worst fears and antagonisms. As president-elect, he has interfered with American foreign policy in violation of federal law: inserted himself in the tensions between the Obama administration and Israel; discussed matters of state with Vladimir Putin; and sent his national security advisor to discuss U.S. sanctions on Russia on the day they took effect. This is not a time for political courtesy, but for deepening our commitment to the tradition of nonviolent direct action that Rep. Lewis represents.

(snip)

Disruptive protest and civil disobedience are American traditions that preceded Dr. King and that the civil rights movement has passed down to us in our time. In any nonviolent campaign, Dr. King said there must be four basic steps: 1) gathering facts about injustice, 2) negotiation, 3) self-purification, and 4) direct action. In response to the real harms that our most vulnerable sisters and brothers have experienced since Trump’s election, I and over 10,000 other moral leaders and directly-impacted persons requested that Trump come down from his tower to meet with us. His only response has been a public attack against Lewis and other “enemies.” So we have dedicated Inauguration Day to to self-purification and preparation for nonviolent direct action.

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Rise up.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Kick, for one of the most important examples of how to resist the proto-fascists

we have today.