#Collective Agency

Our Power To Begin The World Anew

To claim we can ‘begin the world over again’ is also to challenge the authority of tradition. Paine does not deny the past, but he refuses to let it dictate the future. This stance contrasts with thinkers like Edmund Burke, whose *Reflections on the Revolution in France* (1790) defended gradual change and reverence for inherited customs. Paine replies that when institutions perpetuate suffering, deference becomes complicity; at such moments, starting over is not arrogance but moral necessity. [...]

Becoming the Change We Have Been Awaiting

Finally, education ties the arc together. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) argues that people become subjects of history through dialogic learning; Boggs extended this idea into neighborhood classrooms, garden beds, and maker spaces. When youth document oral histories or rebuild a corner store as a cooperative, they encounter knowledge as something made, not given. Thus the quote becomes a pedagogy: by practicing responsibility together, we discover that the leaders we awaited were the selves we are still becoming. [...]

Change Will Not Come If We Wait For Some Other Person Or Some Other Time. We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For. — Barack Obama

The statement warns against the trap of perpetual waiting—postponing action until an ideal person or moment appears. Procrastinating reform can allow injustice to persist, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lamented in his 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' (1963), criticizing those who delayed civil rights on grounds that the 'right time' had not arrived. [...]

Recognizing Our Power to Change the World - Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s message fosters a sense of hope and optimism, reminding us that positive change is possible and can be achieved through determination and effort. [...]