People Power

From winning concrete improvements in people’s lives to toppling dictators, people power is a method that works. Every successful social change movement in US history has had a key element of people power and mass direct action; abolition, women’s suffrage, workers, civil rights, anti-Viet Nam war, anti-nuclear, Central America solidarity, global justice, and other recent movements. It was in the heat of struggle by communities of color and poor and working white communities that people-power methods were developed in the US. But people power is more than just a set of civil-disobedience and direct-action tactics. It is a different understanding of power and a wide range of organizing and tactics based on that understanding. The conventional view of power sees some people holding power-the...