This is what courage looks like!

A little over a week ago, I got an intimate view of tenacity and courage from seven bold women, including my wife Shonnie Lavender and our friend Elizabeth Likis.

On March 13, Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards was in Asheville for a town hall at A-B Tech. Since the college auditorium where the town hall took place had a capacity of only 400, approximately 1500 citizens were left outside the building as the official event began. It was a lively crowd carrying numerous signs protesting the recent actions of the Trump administration and chanting so loudly that folks inside the auditorium could hear them.

During the town hall, a 54-year-old disabled veteran, Jay Carey, stood up and delivered a powerful rebuke to Edwards. “Do your job!” Carey shouted at Edwards, interrupting the politician’s opening remarks. “I’m a veteran and you don’t give a fuck about me!” The crowd cheered and clapped as Carey was escorted out of the forum. The folks gathered outside, disappointed that they were missing the town hall, eventually began to shout demands that Edwards address them once the event concluded.

To facilitate this demand, a small band of seven women sat down in the driveway blocking the exit of a black government SUV, just in case Edwards was a passenger. Sheriff Quentin Miller politely asked the women to depart, but each refused and remained steadfastly in place. And after a standoff of approximately ten minutes, the sheriff had county deputies gently pick three of the women up and move them to the side. However, as soon as the deputies sat the women down on the grass beside the driveway and turned their backs, each of the women scurried back and resumed their places on the pavement. While the surrounding crowd lent raucous vocal support for the women, the impasse went on for twenty to thirty minutes, and the deputies eventually realized the futility of their efforts. When, finally, the government vehicle backed away, victory was declared, the women acknowledged one another and arose as the crowd roared in approval.

As these women clearly demonstrated, now is not the time to just bitch and moan. Now is not the time to normalize the current chaos and assume everything will eventually return to normal. Now is certainly not the time to wait for the next election cycle. Now is not the time to hope for the cavalry to ride to our rescue. We are the cavalry!