Today was Martin Luther King, Junior Day. This national holiday was created to celebrate the life and work of the great civil rights leader who died while trying to bring justice and equality to all Americans.
Today Donald Trump, our President-elect, chose to stay at home in his well guarded New York city tower rather than to attend the memorial ceremony for one of the country’s greatest heroes.
But no worries.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was there. And she had her gloves off and her anger up.
Warren told the crowd at the MLK event:
“To demean John Lewis is to demean all those who give their lives for a cause bigger than themselves. It is wrong, and we must stand up and say it is wrong. When Donald Trump says that our friend John Lewis is all talk and no action, he is talking about a man who was beaten to the ground with a club, his skull fractured, while leading a peaceful march for voting rights.”
The progressive Senator was referring to tweets sent out by the thin-skinned Trump about Congressman Lewis. After Lewis said that Trump’s presidency was not “legitimate” because of the serious evidence of Russian election interference, Trump responded with his usual infantile Twitter rants. He went after the heroic Lewis without a thought to a possible backlash, claiming that the man who marched in Selma with MLK himself was “all talk, no action.”
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017
Elizabeth Warren wasn’t going to stand for it. She told the crowd about when she toured Selma, Alabama with John Lewis as he recounted the marches that took place there. She recounted how Lewis told her that “sometimes it is important to cause necessary trouble.”
She continued:
“Now, more than ever, it is time once again for all of us to cause ‘necessary trouble.’ All of us. Not just congressmen, not just senators – all of us. We all have an obligation to act.”
I’ll be attending the Woman’s March on Washington on the 21st. What will you be doing to make sure that you create your own necessary trouble for the incoming Trump administration?
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
