Is there such a thing as “good trouble?” Absolutely, said best-selling author Luvvie Ajayi Jones during the opening general session, which kicked off PLA 2022 on Wednesday morning. Ajayi Jones began by telling the audience that from a young age, she had the tendency to speak up – and it wasn’t to be disrespectful, but rather to defend herself. “I was the kid who got in trouble for her mouth,” she said. “Growing up I was little, so I had this complex that just because I was small, I didn’t want people to take advantage of me. I can’t help myself not to say something when I feel something isn’t right.”
Her latest book, Professional Troublemaker – The Fear Fighter Manual, became an instant best seller and raised the question, what is a troublemaker? “Professional troublemakers are the people that commit themselves to elevate the rooms that they are in,” said Ajayi Jones. She continued, stating that troublemakers are the disruptors, those that challenge the people that they love and those that start hard conversations. “It’s not negative – we live in a world that’s deeply unjust and has a lot of broken systems,” said Ajayi Jones.
An example she gave the audience was the late Congressman John Lewis, who she said, “dedicated himself to making good trouble.”
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