Jean Lewandowski is a retired special needs teacher. She lives in Nashua.

“You can’t expel hope.” – Tennessee Representative Justin Pearson

Sometimes, it’s hard to be hopeful. The front runner for the 2024 GOP primary is promising, “I am your retribution,” and his fans are all in. Across the country, rage, hate, and fear are armed to the teeth. No place in America is safe from gun violence — not schools, houses of worship, stores, neighborhoods, or even front porches. The arms merchants use fear to sell their products, and too many elected officials, instead of representing the will of the people, are shills for the bottom line.

Recently, Governor Sununu scolded an assemblage of the National Rifle Association, not because their funders’ products are shattering lives and communities, but because the political right’s messaging is off-putting. Their strident tone is shrinking the GOP’s voting base. They should quit “yelling and screaming” and act more affable, like him. Cynically pretend they care about the people more than power and profit.

But the day Joan Baez and Rep. Justin Jones sang “We Shall Overcome” and posted their impromptu duet on Instagram, I realized that this young man and his colleagues, Rep. Justin Pearson and Rep. Gloria Johnson, the Tennessee Three, are the spiritual descendants of those who have inspired and led social justice movements throughout American history.

Jones and Pearson, young Black men, were expelled from the Tennessee Legislature for joining a gun safety rally after a school shooting in Nashville that killed three children and three adults. Johnson, a white woman who stands firmly by them, was not. The blatant racism created the kind of embarrassment Gov. Sununu and his ilk fear, and Reps. Jones and Pearson were reinstated.

Our history is rich with stories of hard-won victories of hope over cynicism and fear. When I was 14 years old, I watched black-and-white TV images of Joan Baez leading people in song at an event documented in the film, “Mighty Times: The Children’s March.”

May 3rd will mark the 60th anniversary of the day a thousand students assembled at Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th St. Baptist Church to protest the racial oppression and unrelenting violence of the Jim Crow South. They marched two-by-two toward City Hall, singing songs of hope. Over 800 children were arrested and jailed.

On the second morning, when children began to emerge from the church, police chief Bull Connor was ready with fire hoses. When the drenched children stood and sang “Freedom,” Connor ordered the pressure increased. The demonstrators turned their backs, sat with arms linked, and kept singing. So he deployed water cannons, washing them down the street like leaves in a storm. Other students took different routes, so police had to split up to arrest them, but they kept marching. Finally, Connor set attack dogs on them, ending that day’s protest.

On the third day, Southern Christian Leadership Conference leaders finally convinced the adults that non-violence was the only way forward, and they joined the students. By then, the eyes of the world were on Birmingham. We saw the brutality of a system built on racism: waves of singing demonstrators falling to police batons, water cannons, and vicious dogs. We also saw courage, fueled by hope, in action.

On the fourth day, Alabamians were joined by leaders from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, NAACP, and other organizations from around the country. Days and weeks of demonstrations and boycotts followed, and as national support for a federal Civil Rights Bill grew, white supremacists grew desperate. The Ku Klux Klan, which included many prominent white citizens, planted dozens of homemade bombs in homes, businesses, and churches. Bomb threats became common at the 16th St. Baptist Church, where the Children’s March had begun. On September 15th, during the morning Sunday school, a powerful bomb exploded there, injuring 14 people and killing four children.

As political apologists for the arms merchants are doing now, the Dixiecrats publicly recited empty platitudes about the lives lost and privately urged violent extremists to rein it in a little; all this bloodshed was bad for their brand. Sell tradition, patriotism, culture, and rights, and above all, sell the fear that “they” are coming to take it all away. But within two years, the Civil Rights Acts became law, and states could no longer legally enforce racial segregation and violence.

It’s a national shame we have to keep fighting these battles, but history, honestly told, teaches it’s a mistake to imagine that hope is naive or weak. Today’s activists know this — they are descendants of the abolitionists, suffragists, labor organizers, civil rights workers, and environmentalists who have chosen hope over cynicism. Cynicism scapegoats, surrenders to violence, or finds a way to profit from others’ suffering.

Hope is smart and courageous. It knows the power of its First Amendment rights. It gathers in solidarity, links arms, and sings justice into being. Days after Sununu’s address to the NRA in Indianapolis, a coalition of churches, schools, public health professionals, businesses, and gun safety advocates formed a 3-mile-long human chain through downtown Nashville and sang “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me ‘Round.”

The circle is unbroken, and all are welcome to join.

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