"Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”
I cried my eyes out reading the final words of the great John Lewis that were published in the New York Times the day after he died, their quiet magnificence landing a powerful punch to my solar plexus. If you haven’t read them, please do.
Few people can write like that in such a moment, but his essay reminded me of Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 when she captured the imagination of delegates with seven words that quickly went viral: “When they go low, we go high,” she said, reacting to the lowest-common-denominator tactics of Donald Trump and his allies.
