Agitation: The Essence of Democracy

There is a tendency among some people to be let’s face it, lazy. We want things delivered instantly to our doorstep. That may work for pizza but that’s not the way social change happens. It’s instructive to heed the words of Frederick Douglass, the great 19th century African American freedom fighter, who said, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”