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John Lewis, the Patron Saint of Standing Up - Ask yourself, what would John Lewis do?
John Lewis, the Patron Saint of Standing Up - Ask yourself, what would John Lewis do?
Maureen G - Jan 06, 2026
January 6. It’s a good day to remember civil rights giant John Lewis (1940-2020). During the holiday week I caught a rerun of the PBS Finding Your Roots episode profiling his family history.
The Apple.com home page on the weekend after John Lewis passed in 2020.
Lewis stood side-by-side with Martin Luther King, Jr., as a leader of the nonviolent movement that sought to restore and protect voting rights and achieve equality for minority communities. “Good trouble” in the 1950s and ‘60s meant conducting voter registration drives at the risk of life and limb.
January 6 is a good day to remember that the civil rights movement was led by people who were resolutely nonviolent. If there was going to be violence, it would be coming from the other side. Lewis and many others were threatened, physically attacked, and arrested numerous times, and some, including King, lost their lives in order to secure rights not just for minorities, but for everyone.
During the episode that first aired in 2012,1 host Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. presented Lewis with a bit of history that researchers had uncovered: documentary evidence that a formerly enslaved Lewis ancestor had registered and voted in Alabama in the immediate post-Civil War period, before Reconstruction and Jim Crow deployed the barriers that Lewis had to fight so hard to remove a hundred years later. In a powerful emotional moment, Lewis wept.
“The vote is the most powerful instrument, the most powerful nonviolent tool in a democratic society.” - John Lewis
Had I watched this episode when it was first aired in 2012, it would have been with the detachment of a member of the majority white community who had never had to question the personal availability of the right to vote. My point of view was that voter suppression is an issue for minorities, and in any event, people like John Lewis and MLK, Jr., made it a thing of the past, right?
Well that was then. This is now. If anyone thinks that their voting rights aren’t under serious threat in 2026 regardless of race, creed, or color, they aren’t paying attention.
In 2013, just a year after the John Lewis episode first aired, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the very legislation that John Lewis and others had sacrificed so much to pass. The opinion paved the way for a sustained Republican assault on voting rights - not just minority voting rights, but voting rights for all citizens.2
Chief Justice John Roberts in Shelby County v. Holder: We don’t need no stinkin’ voting rights laws anymore.
The purported justification for this assault is voter fraud. Since Shelby v. Holder, accusations of rampant voter fraud have gone from right-wing fringe movements to accepted Republican dogma. And now the Republican party has taken control of Congress, the White House and the Department of Justice and numerous state courts and legislatures, and has the assistance of a partisan majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the fact that claims of widespread voter fraud famously have never been substantiated3, they are now routinely used as justification for voter suppression and election control measures such as voter ID. These measures are directed not just at minority voters, but at likely Democrat voters in general. And Republicans are perfectly willing to throw Republican votes into the dustbin right after the Democrat and Independent votes, if they think that doing so will deliver a win.4
It’s important to understand the ultimate goal here — it is not merely tipping the scales on individual election contests through suppression of voter groups, but control of the entire election and certification process, to assure that control of government cannot return to Democrat hands. In this scenario, if gerrymandering and voter suppression measures don’t yield the desired outcome in a particular election contest, then post-election action will be taken to impede or negate the undesired result. If you think that the current VP will stand up the way Vice President Pence did, you are definitely having a senior moment.
And all of the above don’t do the trick, extra-legal action is on the menu.
This isn’t a dystopian fantasy, as we all have known since January 6, 2021. When Pence stood up and refused demands by then-POTUS 45 not to certify the electoral college results of the presidential election, POTUS inspired a violent mob to swarm the Capitol. This was a shocking event all by itself, but fast forward to 2025, when now-POTUS 47 pardoned the attackers, including those convicted of violent felonies and attacks on officers of the Capitol and D.C. Police.5 These pardons are a clear and a very intentional message to future conspirators that they can commit criminal acts with impunity if they are in support of POTUS 47.
These are some of the heroes who stood up for your voting rights on January 6, 2021, testifying before the January 6 Select Committee in July 2021.
The latest move in the “extra legal measures” category of interfering with election results is the order issued by POTUS 47 purporting to pardon Colorado clerk Tina Peters, a prolific election denier. She was convicted in 2024 by a Colorado state court jury of felony charges for election interference in the 2020 elections and received a nine-year sentence which she is currently serving in a Colorado state prison.6 The spurious pardon is just the latest of a series of moves that include a demand by the federal Bureau of Prisons to take custody of Peters (no doubt in order to facilitate her release). POTUS 47 publicly messaged in August of this year that “if she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”7 Colorado Governor Jared Polis stood up and refused. Right-wing mouthpieces have been loudly “predicting” that the prison will be stormed if she is not released.8 I do not believe that this is an idle threat.
As a sad coda to the John Lewis story, consider that the graphic above with Lewis’s famous “good trouble” quote was displayed on the Apple computer company web site as a tribute on the weekend after Lewis died in 2020.9 Lewis and Apple CEO Tim Cook were great friends, we’re told, and Apple took the moment to announce that the proceeds from Apple’s laudatory documentary on Lewis was being donated to “museums that honor his legacy.”10
That was then, this is now.
In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook, that great friend of John Lewis, presented a golden gift to POTUS 47 in an act of capitulation to his demand that Apple move manufacturing back to the U.S. This is the same president who months earlier declared that museums that focus on the kind of wrongs that John Lewis worked to remedy, constitute “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” that “deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.”11
As you can see in the photo, Tim Cook is not standing up.
What is standing up going to look like in this midterm elections year? It’s time to start thinking about action, not words, and what you, personally, will do in the face of having your vote thrown out or entire election results discounted and ignored. If you aren’t able or willing to grab a sign and join us on the corner, or engage in other kinds of direct advocacy, please consider supporting those who are in the fight now. See my suggestions in this footnote.12
Excerpt from the Finding Your Roots episode:
Shelby County v. Holder (U.S. 2013), see https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/7-years-gutting-voting-rights
Consider the strategy deployed by the Republicans in the Riggs-Griffin contest for Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. In a close election contest won by Democrat Riggs and upheld after two recounts (734 votes out of 5 million cast), Republican Griffin filed geographically selective protests alleging specific categories of votes were invalid on technical grounds. Although the protests would have invalidated votes cast by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike, the aim was to chip away at the small margin by invalidating more Riggs votes than Griffin votes. Griffin eventually conceded after six months of costly litigation. https://ncnewsline.com/briefs/jefferson-griffin-concedes-in-supreme-court-election/.
Testimony before the January 6 Select Committee on July 27, 2021: https://www.c-span.org/program/house-committee/january-6-committee-meeting-with-capitol-and-dc-police/596190
These “harsh measures” likely include the veto of bipartisan legislation that would have funded a clean water pipeline to the benefit of areas of Colorado that overwhelmingly voted for him in the 2024 election. POTUS 47 has similarly denied disaster funding for the state. https://www.cpr.org/2026/01/04/trump-defunds-projects-rural-republican-areas-colorado/
On the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200719001643/http://apple.com/
https://hyperallergic.com/trump-whitewashes-history-in-new-smithsonian-executive-order/
There are three organizations in particular that are feverishly working to protect your voting rights, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters. Another extremely important force in protection of elections is attorney Marc Elias, whose independent law firm is currently handling over 50 election related cases with many more expected. You can follow and support his work at Democracy Docket. He accepts no foundation or big money funding and relies entirely on support from individual people like you.
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