Excerpts below are from Chas Moore’s July 17, 2025 ‘Good Trouble’ Speech in Austin, Texas. Chas Moore is the founder and Organizing Director of Austin Justice Coalition – austinjustice.org
…I’m continuing to learn that the greatest solution to all our problems is indeed our neighbor. When I think about what we had in Kerrville, all I think about from a government perspective is that it’s failed its people. When I think about Hurricane Harvey, I think about another government that’s failed its people. When I think about all the school shootings in Texas, I think about a government that’s failed its people. Then on the opposite side of that, every time, the heroes are the people – people dressed similarly to you and me, in plain clothes, no badges, nobody voted for them. They rose to the occasion to be the heroes that we need. Nobody asked them to do anything. They just decided that it’s in the best interest of their community and our nation to go out and help their neighbor. … if you need something in an emergency you’re not going to go to City Hall or City Council. You should just go next door or across the street.
… I think about the immigrants in that same incident in Kerrville. They flew people from Mexico to help when trouble called, to help American citizens. The same people that Trump is trying to get rid of were the same people that back in 2019 when my grandma’s house burned down – it was my Spanish-speaking neighbor who was the first person to show up to give my grandma some food and say, “I’ve got you if you need anything.”…It’s always been everyday working-class people. It’s always been our neighbors that have risen to the occasion. … You are the heroes. You are the person that can start the change that we need to see in the world.
…it’s white people that got on buses and got their ass beat and murdered when I think about the Freedom Rides. One of my favorite people in history that we don’t talk about is Viola Liuzzo. She was a white woman in Detroit with four kids and a husband in the ‘60’s. She got on the TV one day and saw that Negroes were getting their ass beat on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. … This white woman was so moved that she got up out of her comfort in her Northern home … in her privileges, in her safety as a white American woman in the ‘60’s. She left her four babies and her husband in the north of Detroit to come down to the South in the battlegrounds of Bloody Sunday and help Negroes fight for justice. …She would take her car and she would give rides to Negroes from Selma back to Montgomery to make sure they got home safely. On one of those trips … Viola Liuzzo was ambushed by the KKK and …was killed…a white woman that left the comfort of her home in Detroit to come to the South ….She didn’t have to. But so many of us today, we decide that “Oh, that’s not my fight.”
There are many Black Americans who …voted…didn’t think that immigration was their fight. There are men at the job who won’t go …to fight for equal pay because they say, “That’s not my fight.” There are straight people … who see transgender and queer folks get beat, harassed and mistreated but say, “That’s not my fight.” … anytime a human is going through injustice it is indeed our fight. …we all are on stolen land. So for anybody in this country to say the immigration fight is not my fight, you are fooling yourself and you have drunk the punch. ….
How dare we sit back and act like we don’t have work to do on a daily basis. … we live in the city of Austin where there are still people sleeping on the street. We live in the city of Austin that once was 40-50% Black and now it’s down to 4% Black. We over here on the East Side …. used to be all Black and Brown … and we act like we don’t have work to do. …we do things not for the right cause of justice. We do them to say we did a good job. John Lewis, a Congressman, the same person that was bludgeoned on that bridge on that Bloody Sunday, got beat and battered by George Wallace and his cronies. … We have a problem to where we think it’s somebody else’s job to fight for our neighbor.
Every time when I go downtown and see people sleeping on the street, I always tell myself I haven’t done enough. … As long as we have Black people who are still being harassed by police, as long as we have Black and Brown folks who are being harassed by ICE, as long as we have Black and Brown students in schools that are being shut down …we have work to do. In 2025 women are still working and doing jobs 10 times better than men and still getting paid 64 cents to the dollar. We still have work to do…My question is what do you want to do … There’s plenty of good trouble to get into…
The land of the free and the brave – I could write a dissertation on how we have never been that… The only way we do that is to show up …every day at City Council. Right now City Council is trying to pass a budget where they give more money to the police because people still believe that police keep us safe. What if we had money for housing? What if we had money for food insecurity? What if we actually gave land back to indigenous folks? What if we taught young boys how to actually be men and not just a toxic masculinity version of what we say manhood is? What if it was really OK to love who you want to love and be who you want to be in the land of the free and the brave? I think that’s what John Lewis … Fannie Lou Hamer would want us to do. But most importantly that’s what our neighbors deserve. … there’s room at the table for everyone to get involved. … all it takes is your voice… What seed are you going to plant that’s going to grow a tree that can bear shade for future generations? … again I’m thinking about Kerrville …. it was everyday people who went out … and jumped into dangerous conditions just to make sure they could save anybody while our Governor was debating about who was to blame. …What kind of good trouble are you going to get into? There’s plenty to get into.
Chas Moore, Founder and Organizer, Austin Justice Coalition
