We the People, Resist

The environmental activist organization Greenpeace, USA posted a short video using the words of Howard Zinn from You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. This one-minute history lesson is a timely reminder of the power that resides outside the three branches of the U.S. government.

Here is Zinn’s quote in full:

The good things that have been done, the reforms that have been made, the wars that have been stopped, the women’s rights that have been won, the racism that has been partly extirpated in society, all of that was not done by government edict, was not done by the three branches of government. It was not done by that structure which we learn about in junior high school, which they say is democracy. It was all done by citizens’ movements. And keep in mind that all great movements in the past have risen from small movements, from tiny clusters of people who came together here and there. When a movement is strong enough it doesn’t matter who is in the White House; what really matters is what people do, and what people say, and what people demand.

On January 25, 2017, Greenpeace summarized that message with one word, RESIST, in a banner unfurled in the sight line of the White House.