Brooklyn Dem Party boss mourns John Lewis
By Nelson A. King
Brooklyn Democratic Party
chair Assemblywoman Rodneyse
Bichotte over the weekend
joined elected officials
across the nation in mourning
the death of civil rights icon
and congressman John Lewis.
Lewis, who was diagnosed
with stage 4 pancreatic cancer,
died on Friday. He was 80.
“Today, with great sadness,
I mourn the loss of Rep. John
Lewis, an icon of the Civil
Rights Movement and United
States congressman,” said
Bichotte on Saturday.
Bichotte, who represents
the 42nd Assembly District
in Brooklyn, noted that Lewis
participated in lunch counter
sit-ins, challenged segregation
as a Freedom Fighter and was
a keynote speaker at the 1963
March on Washington.
She said Lewis also organized
protests to end Jim Crow laws
in the Southern United States,
and led over 600 marchers
across the Edmund Pettus
Bridge in Selma, Ala. during
a campaign to register black
voters, “and survived a brutal
beating by police there.”
“He showed courage when
met with discrimination and
violence, as he championed
equality, often at great personal
cost,” Bichotte said.
In Congress, Lewis served
Georgia’s 5th congressional
district for more than 30 years,
and was known as the “Conscience
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of Congress.”
In 2011, President Barack
Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential
Medal of Freedom,
Bichotte noted.
“John Lewis is a true hero
and an inspiration,” she said.
“He succumbed to a battle with
pancreatic cancer, but pursued
justice even during his illness.
“In his last weeks, he summoned
the strength to visit
the protests, and show his support
for the continued fight for
racial justice,” the assemblywoman
added. “Lewis spent his
life pursuing a better life for
future generations.
“Let us remember John
Lewis and use his legacy as
motivation in our continued
fight for justice and equality for
all,” she continued.
Chancellor of the City University
of New York (CUNY),
Félix Matos Rodríguez also said
on Saturday that Lewis was “a
true giant of the Civil Rights
Movement, an American hero
who made the long journey
toward a more just and equitable
society his life’s mission.”
Rodríguez noted that Lewis
was the last surviving speaker
from the March on Washington
in 1963 in the shadow of
the Lincoln Memorial, one of
the original Freedom Riders;
“and, more than a half-century
later, he was still imploring us
to speak out.
“Most recently, in the aftermath
of the police killing of
George Floyd in Minneapolis,
he called on demonstrators
around the country to muster
the same commitment and
zeal that typified his lifelong
fight for social justice and basic
human rights,” said Rodríguez
in a statement.
He said Lewis “blessed CUNY
with those same sentiments
when he served as keynote
speaker for the 2019 commencement
at City College, urging us
to stand up and to speak up,
to go out and to get into ‘good
trouble’ and to ‘turn our world
and our country upside down in
order to set it right side up.’”
Rodríguez said that CUNY
bestowed Lewis with three honorary
doctorate degrees over
the last two decades — John Jay
(2000), Queens College (2009)
and City College (2019) — “all
celebrating his pioneering work
and ideas.”
“He told us to be unceasingly
brave, bold and courageous,
and reminded us that it was
our moral obligation to do so,”
he said. “Those words resonate
today more than ever, and serve
as a clarion call for all of us to
continue the hard work that he
left behind and to be relentless
in battling racial intolerance
and bigotry.
Congressman John Lewis as keynote speaker for the 2019
commencement at City College, CUNY. CUNY
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