I have not come to support an impeachment inquiry lightly. I have been a reluctant participant in this investigation, not because I approve of the president’s conduct, his tone or his divisiveness, but because I believe that impeachment must remain a last resort, reserved for situations in which the safety of the American people and the integrity of our democracy are undoubtedly at risk. I now believe that they are.

It is clear that the president, by his own admission, has endangered our national security and the very foundation of our democracy, leaving Congress no choice but to move forward with an investigation, regardless of whether or not this inquiry is politically savvy. Congress has a duty to the American people, to our founding fathers and to our Constitution to follow the facts of this investigation where they lead, reinvesting our faith in the system to work as it was intended.

Growing up in Selma, Ala., ground zero for the struggle for civil rights, I was reminded every day of the powerful change that can be enacted by working within the system. My home church, Brown Chapel A.M.E., is where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. planned the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and where protesters sheltered on Bloody Sunday; on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which looms large over downtown Selma, my colleague and mentor, Representative John Lewis, was beaten bloody by billy clubs. There was rarely a family gathering or church function that didn’t include proud participants of the movement, their stories told and retold as a reminder to us all of what ordinary Americans are capable.

When we think about the civil rights movement, it is often within the framework of individual bravery. We tell the stories of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus or those nine children in Little Rock making their slow walk through the angry white mob that was hurling insults, spit and rocks, their shoulders braced and heads held high. We rightfully laud these acts of courage, without necessarily naming it patriotism, but the civil rights movement was fundamentally an act of patriotism. The foot soldiers of the civil rights movement were not trying to overthrow the government or upend democracy. They believed that our country could and should do better, and that the way to get there was through legal recourse and the checks and balances written into our Constitution.