It may take time, but ‘good trouble’ yields great results | Sam Venable
The irony is jaw-dropping.
When the Tennessee General Assembly convenes Tuesday in Nashville, one of its newest members will be State Rep. Justin Jones, 26, of the 52nd District.
That’s the very same Justin Jones who was arrested multiple times for leading peaceful protests for social and racial equality at the very same building in which he will now serve as an elected official.
“I’ll still be fighting for voting rights, health care, police accountability and environmental justice,” Jones recently told me. “But now I’ll be doing it on the inside instead of from the outside.”
Jones replaces retiring State Rep. Mike Stewart (D-Nashville) after defeating Delishia Porterfield in the Democratic primary last Aug. 4. Unopposed in the general election on Nov. 8, he nonetheless gathered 8,587 votes.
Jones is a graduate of Fisk University and a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He works for the John Lewis Center for Social Justice at Fisk and teaches an undergraduate course there. Throughout Tennessee in general, and Nashville in particular, he is well known for grassroots activism.
In other words, a pain in the neck for establishment politics and politicians.
Jones once helped lead a protracted, yet ultimately successful, campaign to rid the State Capitol of the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate officer and Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard.
During a 62-day protest at the Legislative Plaza in 2020, Jones was arrested a total of 14 times for engaging in “good trouble.” All charges were subsequently dismissed.
“Good trouble” is the term popularized by U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who devoted his life to the cause of racial justice. Lewis died, age 80, on July 17, 2020.
As a Fisk student in the 1960s, Lewis served three years as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He spearheaded sit-ins to desegregate Nashville eateries. He participated in the Freedom Ride for voting rights throughout the South. On “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, he and other marchers were bludgeoned by state troopers on Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Once persecuted, however, Lewis grew to be lauded.
He became known as the “Conscience of Congress.” He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A stamp bearing his image soon will be released by the U.S. Postal Service.
Which brings up the most dramatic irony of all: One of Justin Jones’s arrests at the State Capitol occurred as the U.S. flag flew at half-staff in memory of John Lewis.
Surely somewhere, the good congressman is smiling. And saying, “Never give up.”
Sam Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Sam Venable: It may take time, but ‘good trouble’ yields great results
