On Thursday, February 12th, my neighbor sent me a message saying that she was going with another of our neighbors to an event at the Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis; she invited me to join them, saying that they were going to take the bus. I responded with enthusiasm, telling my neighbor that I had already planned to “bus it” to that same event. A group called “Indy Singing Resistance” had put out a call on social media to gather at the Circle to join with others in “We Sing, We Stand: An Outpouring of Love For Minneapolis.” My neighbor had questions about riding the bus, and I assured them that I was “Captain BusRider,” and that I would help them navigate the #10. On Sunday, February 15th, 8 people waited at the corner of N. Hawthorne Lane and E. 10th Street to go make “Good Trouble.”
The bus was a little late, but we climbed aboard, and I assisted the group in navigating the payment process; we “put but money in (the) purse” (thanks, Bill Shakespeare) for IndyGo, and plopped into available seats. We decamped at the Julia Carson Transit Center and walked the 3 ½ blocks to Monument Circle. There was already a large gathering in front of the Soldiers and Sailors monument, ready to sing for Minneapolis.
Someone held up signs that had the words to the songs we were to sing; the “choir director” called out the words, someone else sang them, and we in the audience repeated them. Sharp reporter that I am, I did not swim through the crowd to interview the leaders of the singing resistance, but the group that I had travelled with were all enthusiastic singers. I saw a member of “Harmony Collected,” the choral group founded by Dr. Webb Parker that practices and sings at the Irvington Presbyterian Church and that I had joined a couple of years ago. The group of bus riders that I had travelled with sang with varying degrees of enthusiasm; a young woman near me was an exhilarating alto, harmonizing with the crowd in an inspirational way. We were all sending joy to Minneapolis and making “good trouble.”
On March 7th, 1965, John Lewis, the civil rights icon famously led more than 600 peaceful protestors across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma Alabama to “demonstrate the need for voting rights” in Alabama. The result that day has been memorialized as “Bloody Sunday” as Alabama state troopers beat and bashed the protestors. Lewis later said that he learned the importance of the need to make “good trouble” from Rosa Parks, who sat where she had been forbidden to, and refused to yield her seat. Lewis “stuck to Rosa Parks’ advice to never be quiet,” and to get into “good trouble.”
The rally at the Circle ended and the #10 Bus Riders walked back to the transit center. We boarded the #10 East, and the Bus Riders, still energized by what we had witnessed and done, broke out in song: “The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round…” I participated, then — as a frequent rider, I know the rules — I cautioned them against raucous behavior, which is forbidden on the buses. (Our quiet rendition of “Wheels” hardly qualified as raucous, though.) The bus dropped us off at the corner where we had started, and I for one, felt joy and change. Walking home, I was quietly appreciative of the company of my neighbors, and proud to have joined with them in the making of good trouble.
Rosa Parks and John Lewis: We will not be quiet.
cjon3acd@att.net