This is an opinion column.

A crowd of protestors crossed the street toward the U.S. Capitol to decry Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” when the “Don’t Walk” signal cut the procession in two. A red electric wheelchair braked at the curb. Its driver, an elderly white man with a round face, wore black clergy robes, a weathered Hard Rock Cafe hat and wide wire-rimmed glasses.

I’ve been running into the Rev. Lawton Higgs for more than 20 years, always under similar circumstances, but this was our first time meeting in Washington, D.C.

“I had to recharge my wheelchair over at the Senate cafe,” Higgs, who’s now 84, told me with a chuckle.

The wheelchair was new, at least to me. As long as I’ve known him, marching has been Higgs’ thing. Now “retired,” he once served as pastor of the Church of the Reconciler in Birmingham, where most of the congregation had been homeless.

Wherever powerful people gather to do big things, it’s been Higgs’ habit to remind them how their plans plow over poor people.

One time, in Birmingham, when business and political players gathered to cut the ribbon for the city’s beautiful new Railroad Park downtown, a line of men and women appeared in the distance. They marched across newly laid sod and over hillocks recently sculpted by bulldozers. Higgs led the line, which had come to ask what would be done for the homeless people whose encampments had been displaced by the city’s new cultural centerpiece.

That’s the sort of thing he’s done for decades — arriving uninvited and then telling polite society its collective fly is down.

Almost weekly, when I covered Birmingham City Hall, he would sign up to speak at the end of meetings, to ask those in power what they were doing for the poor, and reminding those believers who attended more affluent churches what Jesus had charged them with. To city officials, he could be stubborn, irksome or irritating. Of course, that was the point — to remind those folks who they were supposed to help.

He makes comfortable people uncomfortable. His politics have even ruffled feathers within the United Methodist Church, which pushed him into retirement after complaints that he’d insulted too many city officials. As if that were going to stop him.

And here he was in Washington.

The crossing signal turned green and Higgs motored across the street.

Higgs said he had come to show his support for Rev. William Barber, whose Moral Mondays movement has pestered the powerful in Washington.

Barber was already arrested once in April for praying in the Capitol rotunda. (If you thought public prayer was supposed to be on the rebound, it actually depends on who’s praying and for what.)

This week, Barber returned, rallying his supporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building before making their way to the Capitol. A handful donned yellow armbands — those who would venture back inside — while the rest of the crowd would sing out by the steps in support.

I asked Higgs why this mattered now. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is nothing short of evil, he said. If approved by the U.S. Senate, it would cut up to $1 trillion, much of it from Medicaid and other social safety net programs that benefit the people he dedicated his life to serving.

“There are no second-class human beings,” Higgs said, quoting the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who led Birmingham’s civil rights movement. “It’s our first responsibility to defend the human and civil rights of every person. That’s every person.”

The “Big Evil Bill,” as Higgs calls it, would only help wealthy people get tax breaks, he says.

And if Congressional Budget Office projections prove correct, it wouldn’t cut the deficit either. To the contrary, it would drive the country another $2.3 trillion into debt over 10 years.

Higgs’ son Keith, who accompanied his father to the protest, predicted that the president’s bill would only accelerate the closure of rural hospitals, putting health care further out of reach for much of the state. They would like for Alabama’s senators to understand that before they give it their approval.

There are more than 10,000 churches in Alabama. I asked Higgs if he’d seen anyone else from back home. One, he said — a lady he’d met from Foley.

A few yards away, a smiling Barber shuffled into an elevator that would take him to the Capitol visitors’ center underground. Less than an hour later, he and about a half dozen others would be arrested again while praying in the Capitol rotunda.

“We’re not just going to sit here and let people die,” Higgs said.

As the elevator doors closed on Barber, Higgs and I traded goodbyes.

And then he pushed the joystick on his armrest and rolled back toward the crowd he’d emerged from, now rallying outside the Capitol.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. You can follow him onInstagram,TikTok,Facebook,X,ThreadsandBluesky.