The world, and especially the US, have just suffered a tragic loss.  John Lewis, one of the greatest heroes of our time is gone.  I met him, briefly, on two occasions, once coordinating SDS support for a SNCC demonstration in New York, and once in an organizational meeting for MLK’s Vietnam Summer.  Seldom have so much moral power and so much gentle humility combined in one person.

John Lewis, who went from being the youngest leader of the 1963 March on Washington to a long-serving congressman from Georgia and icon of the civil rights movement, died Friday. He was 80.

In December 2019, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

As a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis was a committed participant in some of the key moments of the movement — an original Freedom Rider in 1961, a principal speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, one of those brutally clubbed during a 1965 march in Selma, Ala. Through it all, he faced taunts, beatings and dozens of arrests.

“In the face of what John considered the evils of segregation, he was fearless,” said longtime SNCC activist Courtland Cox.

By his middle years, he was in Congress and sometimes referred to it as its “conscience.”…

Inserted from <Politico>

I have to say that Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch had the audacious hypocrisy to praise Lewis upon his death, while still holding up Lewis’ bill to fix the Voting Rights Act.  I have two words for McConnell and Republicans who share his hypocrisy.  The second is ‘you’, and the first begins with F, ends with UCK, and rhymes with truck.  John Lewis would never say that, but he was a better man than I am.

Let me close with his own words that I heard in person.

Rep John Lewis’ Speech at March on Washington

RESIST!!