Revolution

A call to action in essay format.

Revolution is rarely a loud sort of thing. Like an avalanche, it begins with a thought, a belief of one person that slowly cascades until it covers the landscape with something new, burying anything that stood in its way. The problem with avalanches is that once they start there’s no stopping them. It begins with a quiet murmur of discontent, the slow resentment of people who are being forgotten and that is where it begins. You can’t pinpoint a revolution on a single moment for it truly begins with a thought. You can never kill an idea. Or an avalanche for that matter. That quiet idea, that simple thing spreads like wildfire until it engulfs the mind and jumps to another and another and another yet, until it finally comes to a raging inferno. That is revolution, the minds of the forgotten finally pulling free of the chains that bind them and demanding what is theirs.

October 2013, our government shut down entirely due to a lack of compromise within the House and the Senate. Thousands of employees instantly unemployed,services cut off, projects delayed, National parks closed, zoos unable to open, and a nation in panic. Yet this is not the first sign of distress. Every few months it seems our officials in the capitol cannot come to a consensus and every few months we all pay for it, yet they do not seem to hear our cries for help. Every day on the news you find stories of those struggling to make ends meet,let alone when a stable job suddenly stops and we come to the aid of a fallen comrade. Yet we aren’t alone. Far from it. You can hear the whispers in the streets, the snide comments we make about our politicians, and the slow bubbling resentment for a system that seems determined to break. All that’s needed now is a match.

April 19, 1775, a single shot tore a nation in two.

August 28, 1963,one man stands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and shares his dream of community.

June 28, 1969,Greenwich Village, New York City revolution roared as stones crashed into police officers on the steps of the Stonewall Inn.

These are the points at which one person has stopped and screamed at the top of their lungs for everyone to hear “No more! I’ve had enough!”These people are forever immortalized by the change they began. All because they dared to yell. The revolution at this point takes a turn, it is now an epidemic, a fever racing through the major cities first, places where information is easiest to distribute but it slowly makes its way out of the cultural centers into smaller cities,then to the rural areas. It first infects the mind, a slow burn as you begin to see the world a little differently.

In our world of social media, our voices are easier to spread than ever, but can be drowned out in the sea of people. And yet Egypt, Brazil, and Turkey have all been paralyzed recently by social media, by us, the younger generation who are comfortable in our voices and ready to use the technology given to us to yell out what needs to be said. It falls on us to make our own voices heard, for if we don’t we will fall. We will become marginalized. Francis Fukiyama puts it this way in an article for The Wall Street Journal, “Newly arrived members of the middle class are more likely to be spurred to action by what the late political scientist Samuel Huntington called "the gap":that is, the failure of society to meet their rapidly rising expectations for economic and social advancement.” This gap is the trap everyone has the chance of falling into, the curse of losing your voice. As for us, Fukiyama puts it plainly, “No politician in the U.S. or Europe should look down complacently on the events unfolding in the streets of Istanbul and São Paulo. It would be a grave mistake to think, "It can't happen here."

And yet it has. If you never stop to look around you, never stop for a moment to think,never ask the question “Why?” then you doom us all. Military grade weapons in the hands of civilian police forces, why? Reporters threatened, video evidence destroyed, why? A Senator peacefully protesting, gassed in the streets along with her constituents. Why?

Revolution is rarely a loud sort of thing. Revolution is a whisper in your ear inthe moment before you fall asleep, the muffled little “what if”that squeaks in your mind, and the silent moments of clarity in whichall the pieces of a broken system reveal themselves to you. Revolution turns our planet and turns our minds in the dead of night with thoughts of change, of inclusion, of victory. Revolution meansa better system, means a better world for those who are left behind,and it is the quiet voice for an unspoken thought from a quiet people, waiting for its moment to roar.