Then we walked back in the other direction, as another end of the house began to lift. From the kitchen to the front of the house we walked, the wind screaming outside, sheets of rain beating on the tin roof. Then she had us walk as a group to the corner of the room that was rising. “That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands. And then, a corner of the room began lifting up …. The wood plank flooring beneath us began to bend. The wind was howling now, and the house began to shake. “As the sky blackened and the wind grew stronger, she herded us all inside …. Lewis recalled one particular storm, which struck at a time when only one adult was around, his Aunt Seneva: His family and relatives lived in shacks that were so fragile, strong storms threatened to yank them from their foundations. He mentioned it in his ’98 book, “ Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.” Bear with me. John Lewis’ response is rooted in a tactic he was taught in childhood. Ten thousand gun murders a year, a river of blood that no other western nation can match, and the Republican response is a drink and a cigar. One exiting Republican yelled, “We’re going to have a drink and a cigar. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor John Lewis has exposed them for who and what they are. If they want to adjourn and traipse off for the holidays, refusing to even consider any votes for gun reform, then fine. If they want to look like useful idiots for the gun lobby, if they want to shut off the C-Span cameras (a futile act of censorship in the era of social media), then fine. House Speaker Paul Ryan called it a “stunt” - this, from the same guy who has endorsed a stunt candidate, a proto-fascist carnival barker, for the highest office in the land - but given the fact that Sandy Hook and Orlando and all the bloodbaths in between have failed to prompt Congress to do a blessed thing, it is no “stunt” to stop the clock and take a stand for sanity.Īnd if the Republicans prefer to thumb their nose at the American people - 90 percent of whom want to expand background checks 85 percent of whom want to bar the sale of guns to anyone on the terror watch and no-fly lists - then fine. As Lewis said in the early hours of his organized sit-in, “Sometimes you have to get in the way.” After you’ve put your life on the line in the pursuit of justice, you’ll hardly feel fear at the prospect of defying gun manufacturers and their Republican lackeys. So in a sense it was no big deal yesterday when the 76-year-old congressman brought House business as usual to a screeching halt. He was beaten to a pulp by racist cops in 1965 at the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He braved white hatred in 1960 when he sat at a segregated lunch counter in Nashville. John Lewis has long defied business as usual.
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