Minneapolis, MN — On July 17, 2025, there was a nationwide call to action to commemorate the life and legacy of John Lewis, where many put emphasis on how his philosophy of getting in “good trouble” inspired them. Good trouble was Lewis’s coined phrase inspired by Rosa Parks, who taught him the philosophy and discipline of non-violence. “Rosa Parks inspired us to get in trouble. And I’ve been getting in trouble ever since,” said Lewis. “She inspired us to find a way, to get in the way, to get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”

There were 1,600 events nationwide that took place, and thousands of people gathered for nonviolent action in Minneapolis as part of the Good Trouble Lives On National Day of Action with organizers from Indivisible Twin Cities, MN 50501, Women’s March MN, AFL-CIO, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and the Racial Justice Network.

John Lewis, born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, was a renowned civil rights leader and politician who served in the House of Representatives from 1987 to 2020.

He was known for the notable 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, like “Bloody Sunday,” an event that took place on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The then 25-year-old Lewis led over 600 marchers 54 miles along a highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery to advocate the need for voting rights for racial minorities.

Lewis and activists faced a brutal onslaught by state troopers; the shocking scene was shown for those who watched the broadcast on ABC, where the network interrupted its scheduled movie, “Judgement at Nuremberg,” to air the footage.

Monique Cullars-Doty, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and aunt of Marcus Golden who was a victim of lethal police violence, spoke about fighting in the spirit of John Lewis. “In the spirit of John Lewis, I want to encourage you to continue to fight. Fight like John Lewis fought. Fight even though it’s painful to fight, even when there’s sacrifices, fight when it doesn’t feel good. Fight when it may mean taking an arrest. But John Lewis fought, and he fought until the end.”

Spoken word artist Kennedy Pounds performed a piece that described John Lewis as “the man who showed us how to bleed and still believe, who turned a bridge into a battlefield for justice.”

The rally turned into a march that snaked through downtown streets during rush hour. Stopping in front of Target, Leslie Redmond, former President of Minneapolis NAACP, expressed her disdain for Target’s cancellation of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

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The corporation publicly announced their DEI rollback in January 2025 along with the Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) program that strove to “engage in the fight to end systemic racism in the U.S.” Redmond described the situation metaphorically where they were left to fight this battle alone: “lo and behold to us, Target had parachutes, they had safety coats and they were jumping off the flight as we were headed to battle, they left us on our own.”

As the march stopped again Trahern Crews, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, reminded everyone of Lewis’ legacy. “Giants like John Lewis co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and organized Freedom Rides in the March on Washington, and Bloody Sunday, where he experienced police terror, John Lewis also did a sit-in at the Capitol to demand gun control.”

Representative John Lewis died from cancer on July 17, 2020. In 2013, Lewis was the last living speaker from the 1963 March on Washington who spoke at the 50th anniversary of the event.

“This moment in our history has been a long time coming, but a change has come. We are standing here in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln, 150 years after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. And only 50 years after the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. We have come a great distance in this country in the 50 years, but we still have a great distance to go before we fulfill the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.”

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