On the Passing of John Lewis

Georgia Congressman John Lewis has died.

He was a Civil Rights icon, Freedom Rider, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and more. Bloodied and beaten during the freedom rides, he won a seat in Congress in 1987 and stayed.

Lewis was a partisan Democrat. He hated Donald Trump and was openly contemputous of Trump. Years ago, John Lewis recorded a radio spot for a candidate running for Chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta that claimed Republicans running the Fulton County Commission would be as bad as the dogs in the street and hoses of the white supremacists in the Civil Rights era. He ended the spot telling black voters their “very lives” depended on this voting for John Eaves for Fulton County Commission Chairman.

You can hear that ad here:

I note all of that to note this.

John Lewis did not stop his partisanship from allowing him to have friendships with those with whom he had disagreements. He worked behind the scenes with Republicans to do what he could to help Georgia. He cultivated friendships with conservative members of congress with whom he could find no agreement on politics.

Contrast Lewis, a partisan Democrat who could be a bomb thrower against Republicans, with the fickle children running the New York Times now. The very idea of friendship with political opponents is anathema to them. Lewis would have published Tom Cotton’s op-ed and condemned it with his own op-ed next to it.

He was a complex man whose on-camera appearances were deeply partisan for his side and whose off-camera work was congenial, bipartisan, and kind.

Nowadays people would call that being two-faced. People seem to think if you’re a partisan bomb-thrower in a radio ad or on television, that’s who you should be in person. But people and relationships are more complex, politics is weird, and John Lewis was a giant who earned his street cred getting the crap knocked out of him by white supremacists in the streets of the South when all he wanted was the right to sit in a restaurant.

John Lewis and I agreed on little in politics. I only met the man once, in passing, on a flight from Washington back to Atlanta. We shared a laugh about some political nonsense going on at the time. That was the only time we ever spoke to one another. But we spoke to one another and found a way to share a laugh.

Not enough people do that with their political opponents these days. We presume disagreement means the other side wants to destroy the country when sometimes it is just a disagreement.