Modern Day Revolution

Staring at the television screen our eyes go blank as a smothering sense of hopeless apathy overtakes us. We turn to each other as in bitterness as we take a shot to dull the stinging loss. Amidst the smoke of the bar the final tally has been called in the newscaster’s monotone voice, smug with a misplaced sense of victory. Cheers erupt in the streets and on the screen the camera pans to another crowd outside our country’s capital, giving those of us who have endured defeat another slap in the face. We step outside to smoke our cigarettes that we once were able to smoke where we pleased and inhale the cold night air.
We can remember the hope that had encompassed us just months and weeks, even days, before. Life, Liberty, and Freedom. With those ideals in our hearts had we proudly marched to the voting booths. Pens powerfully heavy in our hands we had colored in small circles on those crisp, white sheets of paper that would decide our future. We had believed that this time would be different, that finally our voices would be heard. It was this time that was supposed to send a message to those falsely in charge. Instead we found our strangled cries ignored yet again. With a heavy foot on our backs they shoved us and our ideas of revolution below.
We seek only to restore what our predecessors fought for so long ago, and once again all they can see is treason. We are dangerous with our thoughts of unalienable rights and our love for dated pieces of paper. They laugh in our faces and call us extremists as if the word is an insult. They ignore us, berate us, spit on us and attempt to ban us from existence. They want nothing less than our immediate death; we are a threat if we are allowed to continue. Our words are sparks and they can’t afford to have them catch. We are matches whose strength they would like to wash away.
Little do they know that they cannot kill us off. We are more than just faces in a crowd. We are more than calloused hands, sore backs and tattooed shoulders. We are more than the flags we fly and the signs we carry. We are more than the words we yell and the riots we incite. We are more than the songs we sing at the top of our lungs. We are more than the bricks we throw and the windows we shatter. We are change. We are ideas. And ideas are bulletproof, my friend. Ideas do not die; they cannot be washed away; they cannot ever be fully silenced. As long as we remain to fight they will go on. And should our mortal lives ever be stamped out those ideas still carry on, in the voices of the wind and in the hearts of the young.
It is with this thought that we snap out of our momentary comatose state. The revolution has only begun and we will not abandon it so soon. We are the angry, the desperate, the passionate, the true warriors of change. We are the ones that accept nothing but our Freedom. Our knees will never bend to a government corrupt. Our ears do not hear the beautiful lies spewed by wax figure politicians. It is we that carry Liberty’s torch still. In this Republic we are the tireless minority who speak on behalf of the mindless majority. We are the kink in the system; the wrench in the gears. We are the persistent advocates of the drones that follow the lies of their political caretakers.
You see us every day, but you don’t know our names. We flood the streets, but the media attempts to edit us away and keeps our pictures from the pages and the screens. But through the means of the underground we fill your lives just the same. At times we are the tired nine-to-five employee angrily flipping the pages of a recent newspaper you pass on the bus. Other times we are the punk rioters in your streets with our “fuck the state” tees and our ripped jeans. Sometimes we are the wrinkled face of the elderly who sit quietly in the pub, drink in hand, wondering if we’ll ever see our time come. And still other times we are the eccentric blemishes on your street corners, passing out literature you throw away in the trash while still looking at us. We force you to think, to feel, to rise up against which so comfortably oppresses you. We ask you to cast aside safety for Liberty; security for choice. And oh how you believe you hate us.
But we will never stop. Even when the blood runs from our mouths and our faces swell with bruises we still scream our resolute “no”! We happily endure the pain that comes from our frighten tormentors. We will survive. We never surrender. We never accept silence. We never stop pushing. We never allow our messages to be stopped. We have proved time and time again that we will survive. And now, in the face of our most recent set back, we fight. You may join us if you wish. Grab a sign, and take your courage from the dusty shelf you left it on. Choose to join us, or do not. We are you and so we continue regardless of the choice we fight for you to be able to make. But do not every make the grave mistake of trying to stop us. You’ve more to lose than we do. Our Freedom and Liberty has already been claimed- yours hangs in the balance still.