July 22, 2025

Barbara Arnwine, president/CEO of the Transformative Justice Coalition, at a Good Trouble Still Lives On Rally in Chicago.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When U. S. Rep. John Lewis died on July 17, 2020, instead of somber memorial services, his family and civil rights leaders and activists held rallies and marches and got into what he had described as “good trouble,” meaning pushing for truth and justice even when it means taking a risk.

Five years later, in his memory and honor, “Good Trouble Lives On,” a string of protest events took place in more than 1,700 communities across the country July 17. A growing coalition of leaders says their ranks are growing to challenge President Trump's agenda and hopefully restore crucial public policies that he and his administration have destroyed.

“We had more than 1700 events across the country Thursday night, and it was beautiful,” said Barbara Arnwine, president/CEO of the Transformative Justice Coalition, and a co-leader of Good Trouble Lives On.

The flagship event for Good Trouble Lives On was held in Chicago with other rallies in major cities like Atlanta, St. Louis and Washington, DC, but also in many smaller venues like Annapolis, Md.; Portland, Ore.; and San Diego, Calif.

“People said that it couldn’t be done because they are too angry and were skeptical,” Arnwine said. “But we started to organize and people, black and white, took to the streets.”

“This is what Democracy looks like,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, during the Chicago rally. “Congressman John Lewis, a man who put his body on the line for Justice. There are times when we must defy the status quo and push back against unjust laws and that time is now.”

One of the common themes about the Good Trouble Lives On events is that they are positive, diverse, and upbeat. In Washington, DC Rep. Al Green said in a TV interview that the march that Rep. Lewis led across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 was the “crown jewel of the City Rights Movement.”

In New York City, protesters marched and chanted, “We want justice, we want peace, we want ICE off our streets!”

In Deland, Fla., protesters yelled “This is what Democracy looks like!” and in St. Louis, Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, said, “We are standing up for the freedom of all people.”

While many events are held in Washington DC, Arnwine said she planned for a “flagship,” event to be held in Chicago because she had strong support from city officials as well as labor and Civil Rights leaders.

The Mayor of Chicago spoke and even the Rev. Jackson came in his wheelchair alongside labor and civil rights leaders,” said Arnwine, noting that there were major turnouts in other cities.

“Chicago as chosen as the national flagship because of its bold and defiant Mayor Brandon Johnson, because it is the headquarters of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and it’s a union town,” Arnwine said. “It also has great voting rights organizations and a wonderful chapter of Indivisible,” a progressive movement and organization that has vowed to fight against infringements upon civil rights gains.

Arnwine says she is expecting the events to continue and grow, including additional rallies later this summer. In August a rally for voting rights, a labor rally in September as well as a rally in support of the Constitution.

“Transformative Justice Coalition is pleased that more than 1,700 activations took place on July 17th through rallies, teach-ins and marches now planned across America’s communities and neighborhoods in the spirit of getting in ‘good trouble’. This has been created in honor of the late Congressman John Lewis, who coined the phrase ‘Good Trouble.’” Arnwine said. “John Lewis once famously quipped, ‘If not now, when. If not us, then who?’”

We are determined to reach and activate every American impacted by the poorly thought-out, poorly calculated, and callous budget bill passed on our country’s 249th birthday.

While the majority of people impacted by these cuts are White, it will also have a significant impact on Black, Brown, and other communities of color.

“The nature of the struggle has changed. It's a different era that requires a different response ,”  Arnwine said. “The beautiful thing is that we are under attack but we have each other's backs and there is more good trouble to come.”

July 21, 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the change in administration provided our nation with a four-year reprieve from much of the misery we are currently experiencing during the early months of Trump’s second term in office.

Multiple times during Trump’s first administration (2017–2021), the United States objected to U.N. resolutions that asserted the right to food as a legal and enforceable human right. Israel frequently joined the U.S. in casting opposing votes. The two allies were sometimes the only nations voting against the resolutions.

Officials under the Trump administration made it clear: while recognizing the importance of fighting hunger, they were unwilling to endorse the concept of a “right to food” as an obligation under international law. The votes reflect a consistent strategy of opposing the recognition of food as a binding human right. This pattern of inhumanity has continued into the second Trump term while producing needless suffering that has a direct impact on our nation’s foreign and domestic policies.

With 319 million people on the brink of starvation in places such as Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, and Haiti, the State Department was recently forced to destroy 500 metric tons of warehoused food, which eventually expired and was no longer considered safe to send to potential recipients. The high-energy biscuits that were destroyed are typically used to meet the immediate nutritional needs of children in crisis situations.

Was this a situation that could have been avoided? If the Trump administration had not been reckless in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) while suspending most foreign assistance, what are the chances that the destroyed emergency food could have been properly distributed?

Can humanitarian needs of any scale be handled with a sense of urgency and compassion when there is a political mindset that does not view the “right to food” as a binding human right? Is the “right to food” also ignored when the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is suffering deep cuts from the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”

For many, this program is truly a legitimate lifeline, saving individuals from hunger. It is not just impacting the urban poor. The repercussions will be felt hard in rural communities and food deserts—areas where people overwhelmingly voted for Trump. SNAP benefits are not just a humanitarian effort; they play a critical part in small-town grocery stores and rural economies that rely on the steady and reliable income that SNAP benefits provide. It’s the ripple effect. When a local store loses a critical number of SNAP shoppers to government cuts, many stores will have no choice but to shut their doors for good. These rural stores immediately lose a major source of stable income, far greater than supermarkets in more affluent areas. When the only grocer in a town shuts down, it can automatically create a food desert.

St. Johns, Ariz. is a community that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election. It sits halfway between Phoenix and Albuquerque with its one grocery store and one local food bank serving over 3,500 people. If the one grocery store closes due to the food aid cuts, the next closest option for groceries is approximately 30 miles away.

“I lean pretty heavily right most of the time, but one of the things that I do lean to the left on is we’re a pretty wealthy country, we can help people out,” said St. Johns Mayor Spence Udall. According to a study from the Commonwealth Fund, the Republicans’ cuts to the nation’s anti-hunger program will lead to thousands of job losses and a drop in revenue across the agriculture, retail grocery, and food processing industries.

Hunger relief organizations are also bracing for the ripple effect. Food banks are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts because they are often the last resort in the fight against hunger. Cuts to food assistance programs and other benefits could force millions of people to seek help from charitable organizations that currently lack the infrastructure to handle the potential surge of vulnerable individuals seeking assistance.

“A misperception of the public is that when needs go up, we do more. We can only do more when resources go up. We can’t magically produce more food,” said Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank.

All the pending human misery comes from shortsighted lawmakers who are afraid and intimidated by President Donald Trump. They gave the dictator his megabill, even though it means people are going to encounter more stress of not knowing where their next meal is coming from, forcing people to rely on overwhelmed charities that will be faced with more people seeking help and less food to meet the need, and the continued destruction of the social safety net. In six months, America has found different ways to deny people the basic right to food. It’s reckless and cruel.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body and author of the book “God Bless Our Divided America.”

To Be Equal 
July 20. 2025

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A war has been declared in this country. And the fight isn’t just for diversity, equity, and inclusion or for fair economic and criminal justice practices. It’s for the soul of America. It’s to determine which of us will have an opportunity not to prosper, but merely survive in a future clouded with uncertainty at every turn.
 
It’s for the fundamental right of Americans to protect themselves against predatory corporate practices, destructive environmental policies, and state-sanctioned violence by vigilantes and uniformed officers alike. And it’s for the right etched in the very fabric of what it means to be an American, which is the right to vote in a fair and free democracy where every vote is counted and every vote matters.
 
That is the war that has been brought to the feet of every American and the doorstep of the civil rights community at the top of this year. It’s the war being waged in courtrooms across this land, from local jurisdictions to the Supreme Court.
 
It is no secret that we are in a state of emergency. The hard-fought victories of the Civil Rights movement, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Equal Employment Opportunity laws, and the establishment of the Department of Education, are being systematically dismantled.
 
But as we’ve stated in our D3 framework, we doubled down on our advocacy on Capitol Hill and at the White House, and moralized in the 49th edition of the State of Black America Report, State of Emergency: Democracy, Civil Rights, and Progress Under Attack, the National Urban League movement is not backing down.
 
We are defeating poverty through every program offered through our affiliates. We’re defeating poverty through the work of our Equitable Justice and Strategic Initiatives division to correct a discriminatory and punitive system that keeps our people economically and civically disadvantaged and causes our communities irreparable trauma.
 
We are defending our Democracy through every action taken by our Washington Bureau to hold elected officials accountable for their actions and inactions in this moment. We are demanding diversity through the collaborative work of our Demand Diversity Roundtable and by suing this administration for an outright racist executive order that is undermining our Democracy, eroding trust in our systems, and dismantling our government.
 
For the Urban League movement, this state of emergency and scourge on our nation and community is a call to action.

This week at our national conference in Cleveland, we convened affiliate leaders, community advocates, and thought leaders from across the country with one mission and a unified message: we are not backing down.
 
We shared economic strategies to equip our communities and partners with the tools needed to help navigate an employment landscape that has become increasingly hostile towards people of color, especially Black women. Provided support and training for entrepreneurs and small business owners to thrive in the face of changing economic headwinds.
 
Invested in our young people at our annual youth summit as a reminder that even in a state of emergency, their dreams and ambitions are worth investing in and fighting for.
 
Developed civic engagement action plans to prepare our communities for the midterms in 2026 and support grassroots and civic engagement groups with the resources they need to fight back against rapidly expanding discriminatory voting laws.
 
We are taking the time to recognize every single person in this fight, thanking them for their contributions and reminding them why we do this work.
 
The Urban League movement is banding together to weather the storms to come, fight for our freedoms and Democracy in the face of tyranny, and equip our leaders every day to build a nation that reflects its values and its citizens.
 
                                                                               

• 22.6 million renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of theirmonthly earnings on their leases - the third consecutive year that this metric has increased. It is also 7.8 million more than in 2001.
• Among renters, 12.1 million households - 27 percent - spend more than half of their income on housing.
• 20.3 million families, or 24 percent of homeowners, are also cost-burdened , an increase of 646,000 in 2023.
• Insurance costs remained a substantial driver of rent growth, up 26 percent year over year in 2023 and twice the previous year’s rate. Other cost increases include repairs and maintenance (12 percent), administration (12 percent), property taxes (10 percent), and payroll (6 percent).