Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said Thursday he wishes he could use a cattle whip to get people to work on civil rights issues.
“I said to my colleagues — and it doesn’t matter whether they’re black, or white, Latino, or Asian American, or Native American — that when you see something that’s not right, not fair, not just, you have an obligation to do something, to say something. They’re just too darn quiet. I really wanna use some other words sometimes,” Lewis told attendees at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Town Hall on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., Thursday morning.
“I believe in the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence, but sometimes I feel like taking a bullwhip and saying to people, ‘You get your butt up. You go out there and do what you must do,'” Lewis said.
Lewis added that people “just need to be radical,” “need to be extreme,” and “get in the way” if that is what it takes to ensure the public understand racism will not be tolerated in American society.
Lewis warned “things are gonna get a little worse” before conditions improve if activists take part in nonviolent protests of incidents like what happened in Charlottesville, Va., last month when a white nationalist group rallied around a Confederate statue.
