July 17th was the 5th anniversary of John Lewis’ passing. It was a day across the US to honor his legacy and stand up for justice, truth and equity. John Lewis was a peace warrior. We need to follow in the footsteps John Lewis laid before us and also stand up for democracy. This noble experiment was never perfect, but has been striving for centuries to craft a better union.

The Preamble of our Constitution reminds us,

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It was the vision of the American Enlightenment philosophers that this government should be composed of three co-equal branches, a Legislature, an Executive and a system of courts that the framers left fairly open, each with checks and balances on the other two, so that no one single branch would be more powerful than the other two. Today, that balance of power is being dangerously tested, as our attempted imperial executive is attempting to force everyone to bend the knee to his erratic will.

If this Union is going to survive, there must be a loud and disruptive public outcry. The People have the ultimate power in this country, but when good people do nothing, bad things can happen.

There was a time when vigilantes wore white hats to camouflage their identity. Today, roving bands of unidentifiable thugs wearing face masks with the letters ICE on their sleeves and backs, kidnap people with little warning and whisk them off to immigrant detention facilities with little or no due process, no explanation of where they are being taken, and little opportunity to reach out to family members and legal counsel to plead their cases. There is no democracy in these actions and they must be stopped.

The people must stand up, speak out, and demand transparency in all government activities. Congress needs to also do the job members were elected to do. The time to act is long past due. If we fail to redirect these actions, the time will be shorter and shorter for those opportunities to exist.

Autonomy is challenged in every arena. Each person has value, worth and deserves to be respected for their own unique characteristics. We cannot afford to be silent. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. We must be the people nature calls us to be, and to care for and protect the vulnerable members of our society.

We are a nation of immigrants who found land inhabited by indigenous tribes each with developed societies, occupied and developed it, often with little public regard for the rights of those original peoples. We have hopefully learned much from the mistakes of our past. It is time to move forward to develop new visions and new structures that will enable all of our inhabitants to live, grow and prosper as co-inheritors of the land, to protect it, cherish the land, and all its inhabitants, to care for and respect one another, and to share what we have so that all might prosper.

Now is the time to “make some good trouble”!