00:11The right to free speech, free assembly, the right to petition our government.
00:21These rights are not abstract.
00:23These rights are made kind of most visibly and palpably real
00:27when people come together and they protest.
00:38In a democracy, change begins with harnessing voice.
00:44We have to disrupt the normal in order to change the status quo.
00:56Protest is inherently about passion, expressing
00:59pain, fear, hope, aspiration, anger.
01:03And so, of course, it can be raw sometimes.
01:05Of course, it can get confrontational.
01:10Do not agitate them! Don't give them no reason!
01:15Things spin out of control sometimes in a protest, and that is the price you pay for free speech.
01:22This is what democracy looks like!
01:24When an issue is so morally offensive, how do you respond to that?
01:28If we're coming out in the streets, it's because not enough is happening and we're very hot and bothered.
01:32We're coming!
01:34The quintessential protest movement, the Boston Tea Party, dumping a bunch of tea in Boston Harbor, protesting a tea tax.
01:41Things actually really changed. They repealed the tea tax. That's the gift that was bequeathed to us by the founders,
01:48that freedom of conscience, of belief, of speech.
01:52Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! No!
01:54In 1963, this scene behind me was filled with people on the March on Washington, and Martin Luther King spoke
02:01about having a dream.
02:03He had no expectation that civil rights would be achieved that day, that week, that month.
02:09What he did have an expectation was that this show of force of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of
02:15people, the National Mall,
02:16was going to send a message to the entire country that a moment had arrived.
02:22Martin Luther King's march on Washington was a huge act of civil disobedience, and it achieved something really concrete.
02:28And if you forget that, and if you allow them to own that narrative like it's in the past, then
02:34you are being robbed of your power.
02:38What movements do is they change the conversation. They change the political culture.
02:43What you're expecting is for passerbys to see you, you're expecting video to catch you, and you want to pull
02:49more people into your movement.
02:50Because the goal, we know, is a mass movement.
02:54This protest started out slowly. We had one person, and then we had a few more people come.
02:58Grab a sign, Brian.
02:59Well, I think protests do make a difference, because first of all, it educates people.
03:03And we're giving people courage, too, because sometimes we're doing things that they are afraid to do themselves.
03:11Protest is one of the most important ways for citizens to exercise power, but it's rarely sufficient.
03:17If you want to make lasting, durable, political, and civic change, you've got to convert that energy from protest into
03:25policy-making.
03:26Women's rights movement, they develop their own political party. They challenge politicians who oppose them. That's how they won the
03:32vote.
03:34The Tea Party movement has not died down. It's morphed, and you can't go to a city council meeting, or
03:38a school board meeting, or a state legislator meeting without meeting folks who came out of the Tea Party movement
03:44and are now directly participating in the governance of their municipalities or their states.
03:49God bless America!
03:52United!
03:53It is our duty as Americans to participate in democracy, to ensure that those who represent us in government are
03:59pushing forward our priorities and the issues that we care about.
04:02One person, one vote!
04:04One person, one vote!
04:06We are getting stronger and louder!
04:08When you have people marching, it's a great equalizer, just like voting. And our biggest power are our neighbors, our
04:15friends, coming together in marches, saying,
04:17I see your injustice. You see it? Do you see it? You see it? Okay, let's go and make them
04:21see it.
04:22I think protest is one of the most hopeful, beautiful things you can find, because it's people saying,
04:26we actually believe in the words of the Cree, and we're going to show up to claim them.
04:31Whatever your beliefs, get out into the streets, get involved in politics, engage, because it's your future.
04:38If not us, then who?
04:40We march, we organize, we rally, we protest for a better tomorrow.
04:44Are you ready?
