No one is coming

Getting scrappy

What can we do?

This has been a near constant refrain I’ve been hearing over the past several months.

After the election, after the inauguration, after the each successive incursion on our rights, I’d hoped for a spark—something to ignite a movement that could reach a critical mass.

I watched for a leader to emerge, a voice of clarity and courage, someone who could marshall the growing discontent.

Instead, things got worse. And things got riskier. If people couldn’t stand up when it was relatively safe, why would they start when things weren’t safe anymore?

This week’s Convocation Unscripted podcast was live, and one of our listeners expressed this frustration. Where are our leaders? There are so many of us who want to do something, who can coordinate us? Who can organize, mobilize, point the way?

I echoed these questions myself. And then Diana jumped in and said no, that’s not what we need. Coordinated movements are easy to defeat. Grassroots movements, bubbling up in hundreds of settings, are much harder to tamp down.

Jemar pulled out his copy of John Dittmer’s Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. (A faithful listener reminded me in the comments that Robby first recommended the book, and then Jemar pulled out his copy!) The ultimate success of the civil rights movement was due to regular people doing things in their own communities. There were organizations and there were leaders who would visit locations and get in front of the movement, but the movement itself was generated at the local level. Ordinary people. Unexpected leaders. Remarkable courage.

I thought of Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi, a story of a young woman who stepped up and put her life on the line, one of the foot soldiers of the movement. I thought of Fannie Lou Hamer, an unexpected heroine. And of Jemar’s The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance.

I think Diana is right. We are seeing people waking up, ordinary people who recognize the potential risk, who are showing up anyway. You can listen to our conversation here:

Rev. David Black was showing up in his own community in Chicago, protesting ICE agents by praying, when he was shot in the head with a pepper bullet. By showing up, he was injured, but through his injury he also witnessed to millions of people that this is where we are…who we are. There is value in that, too.

Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP

On October 18, there will be another No Kings rally. This one is expected to be much larger than the first one, which was one of the largest rallies in our history. House Speaker Mike Johnson has called it a “Hate America rally.” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer called it a “terrorist” event. One of the most basic rights guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution is the freedom to peacefully assemble and advocate for our political opinions. Rights that aren’t exercised are more easily taken away.

I’ve been traveling a lot lately: Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania. Everywhere I go, I’m greeted with hundreds of people ready to step up and do something. Most, too, are Christians. Many are evangelicals—people who would once have been called conservative evangelicals. At each place I visit, I’m reminded that there are so many of us.

Instead of waiting for the movement to come, just start showing up. Locally. In your community. Do what makes the most sense there, in your own place. Find your people. Know your rights. Defend the vulnerable, in whatever ways that looks like. Then, let’s see what happens next.