This is an opinion column.

Pages 20, 21 and 22 must have been doozies.

Donna Brazile was running short on time but long on message.

She was in her comfort zone–regaling the sheorism of African American icons like Harriet Tubman, architect of the Underground railroad and Mississippian Ida B. Wells, the nation’s first female millionaire whose death The New York Times confessed 87 years later it had overlooked in own iconic obits.

Even more so, Brazile, the long-time operative, strategist, pundit, author, and mouth of the Democratic party, was among her sisters. more than 250 black female state legislators, members of the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative (NOBEL) Women, who held their annual convention in Birmingham over the last few days.

They were from as distant as California and New York but each near and dear to Brazile.

“You know how I get when I spend two or three days with y’all,” she said during her luncheon speech on Saturday, which was brimming with love for Alabama and its rich (though sometimes tragic) litany of black women birth here who crossed these borders to change lives.

“Y’all crank me up,” Brazile continued, “then I go out there and start more trouble.”

The crowd, almost, had church.

For those who may need translation, “crank” means inspired, excited, amped or fired up even.

“My nickname,” Brazile said, “is trouble.”

As for trouble, that’s exactly what the audience needed to here because each of them lives for trouble.

Not the kind you may be thinking of, the kind of trouble that breaks laws, injures people or destroys property.

The kind of disruptive trouble that changes unjust laws, unseats people whose time has (or should be) passed, and, yes, destroys systemic norms and conditions that have oppressed, repressed and suppressed African Americans and other under-represented peoples for longer than any of us have breathed.

“Don’t be afraid of trouble,” Brazile said.

And the people said…

On Thursday, the conference got off to an auspicious start. U.S. Representative Maxine Waters was scheduled to be the fire-pit personality of the conference–lighting it up with ain’t-scared-of-Trump rhetoric and brimstone at an invitation-only event that evening and at “Moments (30 minutes, actually) with Maxine” on Friday.

But after causing trouble by rallying folks to “push back” on Trump’s Cabinet members, Waters became the national pariah of the moment. Some knucklehead in Texas threatened to kill her; scheduled trips to Birmingham and Texas were subsequently canceled.

It was a blow to NOBEL. To its members, she is Beyonce: unvarnished, unapologetic, unadorned by anything other than who-she-dang-well is. To heck with what you may think about it.

“When black women say they want to be heard,” NOBEL president Rep. Karen Camper of Tennessee told me. “She’s the example of, ‘No, you will hear me. I am here. I do have a voice and you will hear me. We want to thank her for being that person. She has inspired so many of us.”

By mid-Saturday afternoon–on the same day Waters, being Waters, would say during an open-air Los Angeles rally for “Families belong Together”, “If you shoot me, you better shoot straight. There’s nothing like a wounded animal”–NOBEL attendees had all but overcome the loss.

“Nobody should be threatened,” Brazile said, “just because they speak up and tell people they have a right to protest.”

There is much work to do.

Work to ensure all families have adequate medical care, including access to “every form of reproductive health”, Brazile said.

Work to ensure all people have the right to vote, including formerly incarcerated citizens who served their time and deserve to retain their dignity as citizens vote.
Work to ensure immigrant families are not ripped apart under some Trumped-up farcical, non-existent immigration crisis.

Work to ensure Stacey Abrams is elected as the next Governor of Georgia.

Work to ensure public schools are well-funded, all children are well-fed and that anyone who wants to ably support themselves and their family is able to obtain the support and training to do so.

Work to ensure, as much as possible, that “another right-wing Supreme Court justice,” in Brazile’s words, doesn’t just skate towards nomination.

“Don’t be afraid of trouble,” she told the sisters, at about the time a young woman in the back of the room lifted a sign reading “10 minutes”.

“I can do math; two times ten is twenty,” she said, prompting laughter.

Brazile flipped through the pages in front her on the podium. “I have some great stories on pages twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-three,” she said.

Mustering her inner-Tubman, Brazile challenged her sisters: “Be ready to run the next leg towards freedom. You have the power to transform American. Black women can change history.”

Yes, they can.

And with the leverage, power and collaboration of 250-plus women, sisters, head return to their respective regions, it can be one doozie of a change.

Roy S. Johnson’s column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Hit me up at rjohnson@al.com or/and follow me at twitter.com/roysj.