Freedom Is Taken: The Ethics of Agency
Created at: August 27, 2025
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you are a man, you take it. — Chinua Achebe
What It Means to Take Rights
The statement insists that dignity does not arrive as a gift; it is asserted. Rights may be described as inalienable, yet they are rarely self-executing. To ‘take’ freedom, equality, or justice means converting moral claims into material leverage—through voice, organization, and risk. It reframes passivity as peril, warning that waiting for benevolence entrenches hierarchy. Accordingly, the language is bracing by design: it replaces petition with demand. That pivot, from hoping to insisting, prepares the ground for collective strategy, where people channel private grievance into public action. From here, the historical record becomes a guide to how such taking can be principled, effective, and humane.
Anti‑Colonial Currents and Achebe’s World
Set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s independence (1960), Chinua Achebe’s novels portray communities wrestling agency back from colonial narratives. In *Things Fall Apart* (1958) and essays like *An Image of Africa* (1977), Achebe does not plead for validation; he re-centers African voice, showing that cultural self-definition is itself a form of taking. Storytelling becomes strategy—narrative power converted into political confidence. Thus, even before we consider street protests or policy reforms, the reclamation of names, histories, and meanings is consequential. Yet this cultural reclamation intersects with more overt political struggles elsewhere, where the same insistence on agency was broadcast from pulpits, union halls, and street corners.
Malcolm X and the Politics of Demand
The line is widely attributed to Malcolm X, whose speeches—such as The Ballot or the Bullet (1964) and Message to the Grass Roots (1963)—pressed the point that no authority willingly yields power (Malcolm X, 1963–1964). His argument did not sanctify chaos; it stressed disciplined readiness to assert rights by every lawful and ethical means available, including self-defense. In parallel, Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized nonviolent mass mobilization. Their tones diverged, but both rejected passivity: neither expected freedom to be donated. This convergence clarifies the quote’s core: liberation is a project of agency, not a favor received. From principle, we turn to practice.
The Ethics of Demanding Without Dehumanizing
History offers a moral grammar for taking. Frederick Douglass declared that power concedes nothing without a demand (1857), condensing a hard truth about leverage. Mohandas K. Gandhi’s satyagraha framed taking as coercion by conscience—resolute yet humane (Hind Swaraj, 1909). Frantz Fanon analyzed how decolonization wrestles with force and dignity amid structural violence (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961). Across these approaches, the throughline is responsibility: demand with discipline, escalate proportionally, and keep human worth at the center. The goal is not domination but restoration—institutions realigned with the rights they claim to honor. That ethic becomes concrete in collective action.
Collective Power Over Lone Heroics
Taking is plural. The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56) translated private indignation into coordinated noncooperation, extracting concessions by shifting economic incentives. Polish Solidarność strikes (1980) forced recognition through disciplined labor power. Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests (2020) used leaderful networks and documentation to compel public scrutiny and reform. These cases reveal a pattern: organization converts moral urgency into negotiating strength. Instead of waiting for permission, movements alter the cost of the status quo, making justice the path of least resistance. With that template, the same logic scales to everyday life.
Everyday Praxis: From Petition to Leverage
In workplaces, taking can mean forming a union, assembling salary data, and negotiating collectively rather than pleading individually. In neighborhoods, it might look like tenants’ associations that secure repairs by aligning lease obligations with public attention. Parents who track near-misses at a dangerous intersection can marshal data, local media, and voting blocs to win a crosswalk. In each case, the shift is from asking to arranging conditions where fairness becomes the rational choice. Agency is not bravado; it is strategy married to solidarity.
Correcting Attribution, Honoring the Message
Although often misattributed to Chinua Achebe online, the sentiment and phrasing are closely associated with Malcolm X’s oratory (commonly cited from 1963–1964 speeches). Clarifying authorship sharpens context: the line arises from a tradition of insistent civic action. Yet the resonance with Achebe is real. His literature models how communities can take back the narrative that frames their worth. Joined together, the political and the cultural teach a single lesson: freedom is not gifted; it is exercised, defended, and, when necessary, taken.