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“What are your thoughts about Ms. Cory? Proud?�

It came from one of my regular emailers. I have a group of five to six loyal critics who email me almost every day. Most of the time they find something to dislike about my column. Or they send me a snippet of “news� from Breitbart or Gateway Pundit or some other right-wing disinformation source and ask why I haven’t written about it yet.

These are readers who won’t watch a moment of the congressional hearings on an insurrection against America, but they seem to care deeply that President Joe Biden fell off of a bike. We don’t often agree, but I appreciate their readership.

Spelling is not this emailer’s strong suit, but I knew in this case he was referring to U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, the St. Louis Democrat who was one of 17 members of Congress arrested Tuesday during an abortion-rights protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The protesters had stopped traffic and were arrested by Capitol police after several warnings.

This is the second time that Bush has made national news for protesting. The first came last summer, when her singular campout on the Capitol steps successfully moved Biden to use an executive order to extend protection for tenants facing eviction because they lost jobs during the pandemic.

So what are my thoughts?

I like the idea of members of Congress believing enough in a cause that they are willing to get arrested for it. Bush’s challenger in the upcoming Democratic primary for Congress thinks differently. State Sen. Steve Roberts Jr., through a spokesman, responded to Bush’s arrest by calling her “an exceptional activist,� but suggesting she should be focusing more on finding solutions to issues.

Roberts, the son of a wealthy developer and cable television pioneer, is supported by the person Bush beat two years ago, former U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. It makes sense because both men owe their spots in the political world at least partly to the actions, or money, of their fathers.

Clay’s father, former Congressman William Lacy Clay Sr., was, like Bush, “an exceptional activistâ€� in his day. Bush and Clay Sr. both grew up poor in north St. Louis. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ were civil rights activists before they were politicians — Clay in the 1960s, Bush since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014.

But like Bush, Clay’s activism never quite left him. As an alderman, he was arrested as part of the 1963 Jefferson Bank protests. As a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, he during former President Richard M. Nixon’s State of the Union address, and he was later arrested protesting apartheid in South Africa. Clay turned his activism into a career in politics, saying in an oral history, “It dawned on me that we can pass some legislation that would eliminate all of this walking and sitting and all of that.�

The elder Clay’s civil rights activism, like that of Bush, was authentic.

We are living in similar times. The investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection is earning many comparisons to Nixon’s Watergate era, with the potential for criminal charges to be filed against former President Donald Trump and many of his closest advisers.

Bush was standing up for women’s rights, currently under attack in Missouri and more than a dozen other states that have banned abortion in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn 50 years of precedent in the Roe v. Wade case.

“The Supreme Court will not stop us,� Bush tweeted after her arrest. “Even though they arrested us, we won’t stop our organizing, agitating, and legislating for justice.�

As civil rights arrests go, this one was mild. There were no handcuffs or jail stays. No need for bail. Charges may even be dropped, as they often are after acts of civil disobedience. But the protest served its purpose, elevating the issue of abortion rights to nightly newscasts and daily newspapers across the country, just a couple of days after the House voted along party lines for reproductive rights into federal law.

That bill likely will fail in the Senate, but in the meantime, Bush and her colleagues sent a message to fellow Democrats that they intend to keep the abortion-rights debate front and center on voters’ minds.

This is the push-and-pull of activism and legislating that Clay Sr. said led him to politics. The protests of 1963 led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bush is similarly putting her hope in the idea that the protests, marches and arrests of 2022 can lead to action protecting abortion rights in Congress.

In the process, she’s continuing a tradition in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District that has been passed down from one generation of activists to another.