Williamson County Democrats March at ‘Good Trouble Marches On’ Rally

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at Franklin’s Bicentennial Park on Saturday for the ‘Good Trouble Marches On’ rally hosted by the Williamson County Democratic Party (WCDP) and Indivisible TN District Seven. The march was held in conjunction with more than a thousand other similar events across the country, the title commemorating civil rights movement leader Rep. John Lewis’ iconic call to create “good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Maryam Abolfazli, who was the Democratic nominee for the state’s 5th Congressional District in 2024, kicked off the march with a speech.

“We know what [authoritarianism] looks like. We’ve seen it in other countries, and it is not creeping; it is running into our country,” she said.

She harkened back to Lewis’ experiences during civil rights protests, many of which took place in Nashville. Lewis was one of the 13 original freedom riders, led sit-ins at Nashville lunch counters to advocate for integration, and was a member of the Nashville Student Movement.

“It is important that people understand we are here commemorating John Lewis today. When he got his skull broken into, did he give up? No,” Abolfazli said. “Do you know what John Lewis said later in his life when they asked him, ‘What do we do? We keep losing, what do we do?’ And he said, ‘You just keep hoping.’”

Jeanette, an attendee at the rally, marched with Lewis in the 1960s. Although she said she’s seen progress since that era, she also reflected on seeing many of the rights she and Lewis fought for being rolled back.

“It breaks my heart,” she said. “Back in the ‘60s, I was out here, or wherever we were having the marches, in Nashville and North Carolina. Some things have changed — other things need to change.”

The rally was also colored by the ongoing race to fill a seat in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, which was recently vacated by Rep. Mark Green. Three democratic candidates — state Reps. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) and Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville), as well as Nashville Assistant District Attorney David Jones — were announced to appear at the event.. Jones dropped out of the race the night before the demonstration, and Rep. Dixie did not appear, with WCDP saying that they were told he had a scheduling error.

Behn gave the final speech before the march kicked off, highlighting the unique position that Green’s departure creates for Tennessee.

“This special election this fall will be the only special election, Republican to Democrat, in the entire country. The entire country will be fixated on Tennessee,” Behn said. “We are going to transform this state, and we are going to transform this country when we flip this seat.”

With Behn telling the crowd, “Let’s go kick some ass,” the few hundred demonstrators marched down 3rd Avenue North to Franklin Public Square before turning around and heading back toward Bicentennial Park. As they marched, protesters could be heard chanting, “This is what democracy looks like” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Andy Ogles has got to go,” referring to the Republican Representative in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.

Discontent with Tennessee’s elected officials is something that WCDP Chair Ragan Grossman told the Williamson Scene she’s been hearing consistently from voters across the county.

“People are disgusted. They’re completely fed up,” she said. “People that have been Democrats or they’re independents, they are sitting up and saying, ‘I am not okay with what’s happening right now, and I want to get involved, and I don’t know how to get involved.’”

Grossman explained that part of the reason WCDP wanted to have the rally in Franklin was to give those individuals a chance to get involved at an even more local level than previous events have allowed.

“After the ‘No Kings’ protest in Nashville, we had so many of our members come from Williamson County to go up to Nashville, and they asked specifically, they’re like, ‘Why don’t we do something like this in Franklin?” Grossman said. “[Today we can] encourage people to get involved, let them know they’re not alone, and our goal is to build a sense of community.”

Meredith Dunn, President of Williamson County Young Democrats (WCYD), said she’s hoping to capitalize on this energy to recruit more young people in the county who may want to get involved but feel disillusioned or left behind.

“The political landscape in which young folks are engaging with government around here has changed a lot in the past several years, especially since the election last year,” Dunn said. “We’re trying to adjust how we’re doing things to make sure that we’re meeting young folks where they are right now, we’re adapting to how they’re engaging with politics, and that we’re being the organization that they need to see in the community.”

Darden Copeland, who recently launched his campaign for District 7, made a speech to the crowd after demonstrators returned from the march. Copeland, a campaign consultant and strategist, also emphasized the importance of the race in light of ongoing federal debates.

“Republicans want to continue to cut for the sake of billionaires. They’re going to run up our federal debt by four and five trillion dollars so the billionaires can write off their airplanes, and they’re going to do it again and again unless we say no. So this district, and Williamson County in particular, is ground zero, literally, for democracy,” Copeland said.

Grossman feels the same urgency as both Behn and Copeland, and says that WCDP plans to launch an aggressive campaign to flip the seat.

“Any time there’s a special election, we have a better chance of winning in a Republican supermajority state, right? Because the dates are different and it’s very different, it becomes a numbers game at that point: who can mobilize the most people? So we are extremely energized about a special election, and jumped all over it,” Grossman said.

Amid this excitement, in a closing speech to rallygoers, Grossman reminded attendees that though they may feel isolated in their views in a red state and county, they should persist despite encouragement from others to leave the state or abandon their cause.

“Good things are worth fighting for, and Tennessee is great. So we have every right to live here and every right to fight to make it better. You are as entitled as any Republican to be a proud Tennessean — and never forget that.”