“Good Trouble Day” was July 17, 2025, the fifth anniversary of the death of Civil Rights Movement veteran John Lewis, who encouraged people to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” in order to “redeem the soul of America.”

At an advance press conference, progressive coalition leaders announced a “day of action” against Trumpist fascism, with 1,640 actions planned. The central role of racial justice organizations was significant, as the antifascism movement won’t reach full potential without the integrative power of women of color. The League of Women Voters CEO said the day was “all about getting into good trouble” because “sometimes you have to take risks, and you have to rock the boat, be a little unruly, put politeness aside, and fight for what you believe in.”

After the event, online reporting from across the country mentioned protest marches, roadside sign-waving, downtown rallies, exhortatory speeches, informational tables, film screenings, and candlelight vigils—much like Hands Off (April 5) and No Kings Day (June 14), only with fewer participants and a more reverential tone. I read of frequent calls for “raising your voice” and “getting out the vote,” but found little evidence of risk-taking and boat-rocking. In short, lots of good, not much trouble.

Principled Nonviolence

“I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way.” –John Lewis

Lewis was always polite, never unruly, but he knew about risky boat-rocking. In 1960, he was among the Nashville students who were assaulted and then arrested for quietly sitting-in at “whites only” lunch counters. During the initial 1961 Freedom Ride to desegregate interstate busing in the South, Lewis endured severe beatings, narrowly escaped murderous mobs, and spent three weeks in a miserable prison. In 1965, he was hospitalized after being beaten by Alabama state troopers as he led 600 silent marchers during the Selma voting rights campaign. (Lewis said he was jailed forty times in 1960-66).

This civil disobedience—physically resisting immoral institutions and accepting the unpleasant consequences—was necessary to expose the violence of Jim Crow segregation, mobilize blacks in the South, win the sympathy of “moderate” whites, and gain federal protection for black citizenship. The protestors’ demeanor—calm energy, respectful language, neat appearance—clearly distinguished them from their hate-filled oppressors. Lewis explained, “You have to put yourself in harm’s way, and in the process you may stir up some violence. But you will not engage in violence.”

Lewis, an ordained Baptist minister, learned nonviolence from Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Using Biblical references, they presented the insights of Mohandas Gandhi as a Christian concept. In their view, Christian nonviolence is a spiritual way of life which resists evil, chooses love not hate, and seeks reconciliation with opponents in order to create the “Beloved Community.” This is possible, they believed, because the Christian God loves justice and because undeserved, voluntary suffering for a moral cause is redemptive.

Lewis’s “good trouble, necessary trouble,” then, is civil disobedience based on Christian nonviolence. For Gandhi, it was satyagraha—which translates as “holding firmly to Truth” (Truth = God = Love = ahimsa/nonharming)—based on “soul force.” In secular terms, principled nonviolence is active opposition to all forms of violence, even at the risk of suffering, understanding that there is power in vulnerability and compassion. Indeed, there is no other way to create a truly just society—which is what Lewis meant by “redeem the soul of America.”

I’ve viewed online some recent, well-attended “resistance trainings.” The presenters, doing essential work, were inspiring; Gene Sharp’s “pillars of support” theory (revelatory) and Erica Chenoweth’s “3.5 percent rule” (irrelevant) were explained; but no mention of principled nonviolence. This is unfortunate, in my opinion, because there is much to learn from satyagrahis (principled nonviolent campaigners).

A Start

“You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul- wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time.” –John Lewis

Two books by men who knew Gandhi—Richard Gregg, The Power of Non-Violence (1932) and Krishnalal Shridharani, War Without Violence (1939)—inspired interracial, urban communes in the 1940s USA. Residents studied principled nonviolence, served their impoverished neighbors, and undertook desegregation campaigns. 

Not even cruel imprisonment, during the Second World War, could hinder the satyagraha of commune members Dave Dellinger, Lee Stern, Bill Sutherland, Bayard Rustin, and other conscientious draft refusers. They organized work stoppages and held hunger strikes to improve prison conditions and desegregate cafeterias. Upon release, they re-energized the War Resisters League (WRL); formed a network of communes called Peacemakers; and cooperated with Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker Movement in challenging war taxes, military conscription, and, beginning in 1950, nuclear weapons. Out of this emerged, in 1957, the Committee for Non-Violent Action, which engaged in good, necessary trouble against nuclear weapons testing.

A.J. Muste, of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), was the elder of this small tribe. In 1942, he inspired satyagrahis to form the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which pioneered desegregation sit-ins. In 1947, CORE organized a “Journey of Reconciliation,” precursor to the 1961 Freedom Rides. In 1956, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rustin and Glenn Smiley, representing the WRL and FOR, introduced King to Gandhian nonviolence. Smiley led nonviolent workshops and connected King to Gregg. Rustin initiated the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which became King’s organizational base.

Lawson followed a similar path—imprisoned for Korean War draft resistance, studied satyagraha in India, then taught it to Lewis, Diane Nash, James Bevel, and other Nashville students who became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963, Bevel instructed the Birmingham children who, in facing down police dogs and firehoses, brought principled nonviolent resistance to a national audience and revitalized the long-delayed March on Washington.

In 1964, SNCC and CORE organized Freedom Summer, which recruited college students to run a voter registration and education campaign in Mississippi. Those students later jumpstarted the campus antiwar movement, while veteran conscientious objectors helped organize draft resistance networks. In 1967, King, Bevel, and other Civil Rights leaders boosted the antiwar movement into a force that demoralized President Johnson and “Defense” Secretary McNamara.

Few in number but mighty in spirit, the men and women who considered nonviolence a way of being, not a Saturday afternoon outing, were indispensable to desegregation, Cold War de-escalation, and Vietnam War delegitimization, and provided a model for the Chicano, Native American, gay and lesbian, and female liberation movements. In the mid-20th century, their soul force redeemed (partially, temporarily) the soul of the United States of Jim Crow, Joe McCarthy, and Dr. Strangelove. 

Nonviolent resisters, Gregg wrote, “must have primarily that disposition best known as love.” If that “seems too impossible or sentimental,” he added, “call it a sort of intelligence or knowledge.” By “love” or special “knowledge,” he meant “an interest in people so deep, and determined, and lasting as to be creative; a profound knowledge of or faith in the ultimate possibilities of human nature; a courage based upon a conscious or subconscious realization of the underlying unity of all life and eternal values or eternal life of the human spirit; a strong and deep desire for and love of truth; and a humility which is not cringing or self-deprecatory or timid but rather a true sense of proportion in regard to people, things, qualities and ultimate values.”

Wouldn’t you like to possess such wisdom? Wouldn’t you welcome some satyagrahis as allies right now?

It’s the Culture

“If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts” and which enables “unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror.” –John Lewis

The method of civil resistance generally taught in the USA today is Gene Sharp’s “nonviolent struggle.” Like Lawson, Sharp went to prison as a Korean War conscientious objector, then studied nonviolent dynamics. But Sharp, a scholarly political theorist, removed morality from the equation because he believed that most people couldn’t be “pacificists or saints.” Drawing on historical examples, his books showed how campaigners can use “psychological, social, economic, and political power” to remove a repressive regime, so long as they eschew self-defeating violence. For Sharp, nonviolent struggle is strategy and tactics, nothing more.

Sharp’s insights are many, but those who follow his lead in omitting the soul force of Gandhi and King from their resistance “training” may be limiting the antifascism movement in at least two ways.

First, they aren’t tapping into the longing of so many for spiritually meaningful work. For example, today’s college students—still nowhere near 1960s-level mobilization—are, in my experience, open to studying the biology (mirror neurons!) and physics (high vibrational frequencies!) and spirituality (meditation☺) of principled nonviolence. They easily fit these concepts into their worldviews and discover that their own efforts matter, that they can make a difference by cultivating intuition and compassion and being open to where it leads (moral purity not required, nor even possible).

Put another way, why organize an antifascism campaign without encouraging your best available aesthetes, the folks who deeply perceive unity and truth? New satyagrahis might emerge—the next Diane Nash or John Lewis or Joan Baez or Randy Kehler—if pointed in the right direction.

Second, Sharp’s method is only concerned with regime change, not with redesigning political and economic structures, not with cultural transformation. Remove hateful rulers and then hope (fingers crossed!) that new ones don’t emerge from the same disharmonious society.

Separating Trump from his pillars of support isn’t the same as addressing the root problem: cultural violence. Fascism is the open embrace and celebration of violence in all its forms, undergirded by discrimination and dehumanization, all packaged as nationalism. Trump’s regime—Make Hate Acceptable Again—is the culmination of fifty years of backlash to the social, political, and educational achievements of the 20th-century anti-violence movements. The backlash appeals to deeply-held illusions about skin color, gender, individualism, and divine chosenness—a most toxic brew.

This dangerous moment is also an opportunity. Millions of folks, previously distracted by Clinton/Obama charm and West Wing/Daily Show solace, no longer believe that everything’s gonna be alright. They are discontented and want to act. But they may still imagine positive change can come without anyone leaving their comfort zone.

Go ahead, resistance organizers, speak truth to people: To build a more just society—to redeem the USA—you’ll have to change your life. They might surprise you.

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