See list of public events July 17 in New Hampshire at end of this story.

By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists

Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace.  Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.

John Lewis, who began life in a poor, rural family in Jim Crow Alabama and died five years ago as an influential political leader, was a trouble-maker.  Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and coached by the Rev. James Lawson, he participated in historic lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville while attending college.  From there, he helped found and lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), risked his life in the Freedom Rides, and nearly lost his life in Selma in 1965 when police beat nonviolent voting rights marchers in Selma.  Even as a member of the U.S. Congress, Lewis’ practice of politics stirred up conventional norms and forced open the boundaries of the possible.

Lewis coined the term “Good Trouble” to characterize a brand of constructive disruption rooted in nonviolence and democratic values.  Marking the fifth anniversary of Lewis’ passing, “Good Trouble Lives On” is the theme of 20 demonstrations taking place in New Hampshire tomorrow (July 17) and more than 1600 nationwide. 

In 1963, then 23 years of age, Lewis was invited to be among the speakers at the March on Washington, known now primarily for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream“ speech.  As the leader of SNCC, he represented a wing of the African American freedom movement more willing to challenge authority than old-line civil rights groups such as the NAACP and Urban League.  While leaders of the other groups planning the march were negotiating with the Kennedy Administration over civil rights legislation — and the administration was putting federal troops on alert based on a groundless fear that a march of thousands of Black people could not remain peaceful– Lewis and SNCC were ready to call out the administration for its timidity.  It was only after the rally began that Lewis agreed to tone down some of his remarks under pressure from Dr. King and other leaders.

Still, Lewis made it clear that Kennedy’s bill fell far short of what was needed.  It would do nothing for voting rights, he said, nothing to halt police brutality, nothing to “provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation.”

“My friends, let us not forget that we are involved in a serious social revolution.  By and large, American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation,” he charged.  “Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington?”

“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” Lewis wrote decades later in a NY Times op-ed published the day of his funeral.  But what is “good trouble?”  And what distinguishes it from run-of-the-mill trouble?   

Barbara Peterson was quick to respond when I asked her.  If trouble is disruptive, she said, then “good trouble” is intended to disrupt unjust systems, what Lewis called “getting in the way.”  

Peterson, a Stratham resident, is the author of Reclaiming Power: Building a Stronger Resistance in the Age of Trump, published in 2017.  Good trouble-making is measured by what it intends and what it does, she said.  It’s “a principled stance born of compassion and empathy,” and it needs to be strategic, nonviolent, principled, and purposeful to achieve its purposes.   

A student of nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp, Peterson says groups that want to have an impact should do a “reasonable amount of research” before they set out, assessing their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses in order to figure out what will get them to move.  “What kind of change do you want, and what cost would it be to your opponent to give you that change?” she asks. If you can’t convince them to change their practices willingly, how can you erode their sources of power while your movement builds its own?  

Planning a successful nonviolent campaign goes well beyond acts of protest. For Sharp, developing a nonviolent campaign was not unlike planning for military combat.  Or as Lewis’ teacher James Lawson put it, being nonviolent is necessary, but it’s not enough.  There’s a need, he said, for “fierce discipline and training and strategizing and planning and recruiting and doing the things that you need to do to have a movement.  That can’t happen spontaneously, it has to be done systematically.”

Black Lives Matter NH, which is backing the July 17 protest in Concord, has a systematic approach to good trouble.  “It’s the daily resistance to injustice, the commitment to our collective liberation, and the refusal to be silent in the face of systemic oppression,” the group said in a recent email message.

“Protests are great and they’re a good way to vocalize and for folks to see solidarity and collective power. But there is a moment where you have to go beyond the protests,” said Tanisha Johnson, executive director of BLM-NH, pictured at left.

Good trouble, she said, is about organizing power to disrupt harmful systems.  “It’s about not being silent when we’re seeing and experiencing injustice. It’s about being risky in times where it is uncomfortable.”

For BLM-NH, that means entering spaces where they are not expected.  As an example, Johnson cited the world of early education, where BLM members have started attending NH Child Care Advisory Council meetings.  “No one’s in there advocating for black and brown students. No one’s in there advocating for lower socioeconomic status families. No one’s in there advocating for disabled communities or for our queer families,” Johnson said.  “No one’s talking about what it looks like for a Black family to go into a daycare with all white children, and seeing posters on the wall that are all white children, books that are not diverse, teachers that don’t look like us. No one’s talking about that.”  But with BLM members in the room, the silence can’t last. 

“That’s a space where we’re now showing up and being loud about what’s happening and looking to do the work and research to say these things need to change,” she said.  BLM-NH plans to release its own report next year on early education.  It’s a way for their good trouble-making to live on.  

In the days of the young John Lewis, the lunch counter sit-in was a powerful expression of good trouble, Johnson said.  “That’s what was needed to get us to the next step.  Now we don’t necessarily need to sit in at a lunch counter anymore, but we do need to sit in at a task force and demand that our people are acknowledged and understood.”  The board room has replaced the lunch counter, she said.

“’Good trouble’ means that in the pursuit of justice, individuals should be willing to make necessary trouble to provoke awareness and bring about change,” says NH 50501, which will sponsor a State House rally from 2 to 6 pm on July 17.  “John Lewis believed that individuals have a moral obligation to take action and do something, even in the face of adversity.” 

At the July 17 protests in New Hampshire, attention will no doubt be focused on several bills which have passed the New Hampshire legislature which would create new obstacles to voting for people with disabilities and those who want to vote absentee.  “Voting is hard enough in New Hampshire, and barriers to access will only lead to an increase in the number of eligible voters turned away,” said Kaylie Efstratiou of Open Democracy, which has organized previous events on the anniversary of John Lewis’ death.  Her group and the NH Campaign for Voting Rights are urging New Hampshire residents to urge Gov. Kelly Ayotte to veto bills which would obstruct voting access.

Mark Engler, co-author of This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twentieth Century, was on vacation with his family in New Hampshire when I caught up with him last weekend.  “The point of standing up is not just to bear moral witness or speak truth to power,” he said when I asked him about good trouble.  “I mean, those things are important. And it’s important to have a morally righteous cause. But we also want to win people over. Our point is to persuade. Our point is to build strategic movements that gain greater and greater levels of popular support.”

Engler says protest movements should be polarizing, carried out in ways that prompt people to take sides against oppression, exploitation, discrimination, and “everything that’s happening with the Trump administration.”  He reminded me that Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” was addressed to people who claimed they were on the side of civil rights but that civil rights activists were demanding too much too quickly, in short, that they were trouble-makers.  But the real trouble was racism, King said, and the movement’s acts of civil disobedience and disruption were shedding light on it so that it would be “seen and dealt with.” 

Rev. Gail Kinney often shows up in public wearing a cap that says, “Good Trouble.”  Kinney said she heard John Lewis speak a number of times and that for him, good trouble was “always grounded in the quest for justice.”

“Good trouble is not just about stirring things up for the sake of stirring things up, or stirring things up just to antagonize somebody who thinks differently, but good trouble is necessary in order to right wrongs, to bring attention to injustices so that they can be challenged and changed,” she explained. 

Kinney, who chairs the Economic Justice Mission Group for the NH Conference of the United Church of Christ, generally has her focus on workplace justice.  For July 17, she’s promoting the showing of a documentary, “Union,” at 6:30 pm at the Rex Theatre in Manchester (admission is free). The feature length film tells the story of a union organizing drive at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, NY. 

The Amazon employees there “were overworked, overstressed, underpaid, undervalued, disrespected,” Kinney said.  “Finally, just some rank and file workers from a variety of backgrounds–very significantly, workers of color–came together and said, this cannot stand.”  

When they started, they weren’t part of a larger labor organization.  “They didn’t have any external backing. It was just the workers themselves coming together independently to say, we deserve better. We are human beings. We need to be treated like human beings. And what they went through with a corporation that has unlimited means to strike back when workers try to assert their rights is just an incredible story.”  It’s a good reminder that lacking a union, workplaces can be authoritarian environments in which workers can be fired at will for little or no reason.  With a union, they can make their voices heard and win the respect everyone deserves. 

In addition to the film, the program will feature a speaker on unions representing freelance workers, a member of Starbucks Workers United, and an organizer with the Teamsters Union, which is now aiding the Amazon union campaign nationwide.  

John Lewis would no doubt cheer for the Amazon workers as well as for those standing up to defend voting rights, decent human services, collective bargaining, public education, and basic human rights under assault from Trump and his MAGA allies.  In the article he published on the day of his funeral, Lewis wrote, “Though I may not be here with you, 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. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

“When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

Good Trouble Lives On, July 17, 2025

Alton – near McDonalds, 4 to 6 pm

Concord, State House, 2 to 6 pm

Derry – E. Broadway & Crystal Ave., 4 to 6 pm

Jaffrey – 14 Peterborough St., (Rite-Aid Corner), 3 to 5 pm

Nashua – Soldiers and Sailors Monument, 5 to 8 pm

Peterborough – Jct. Rtes. 101 and 202, 5 to 6 pm

Dover – 1 Washington St, 5 to 6 pm

Dover – 238 Indian Brook Rd, 3 to 4 pm

Franconia – Post Office, 4 to 5:30 pm

Jaffrey – 14 Peterborough St., 3 to 5 pm  

Keene – Central Square, 5 to 7 pm  

Manchester, “Union” film and discussion – Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., 6:30 pm.  Admission free.  

N. Conway – Schouler Park, 4 to 6 pm

Orford – Samuel Morey Bridge, 4 to 6:30 pm

Pelham – 1 Main St, 5 to 7 pm

Plymouth – Baker side of Tenney Mountain Hwy, 6 to 8 pm

Portsmouth – Market Square, 5 to 7 pm

Salem – 14 Main St., 4 to 6 pm

Walpole – Corner of Main and Elm, 5 to 7 pm

Wilton – Wilton Public Library sidewalk, 5 to 6 pm

Wolfeboro – Pickering Corner, Noon to 2 pm

Other events will take place over the state lines in communities such as White River Junction, Brattleboro, and Amesbury. 

For updates and more information, visit GoodTroubleLivesOn.org