This year marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. In his opening remarks to the U.N. General Assembly, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recalled growing up under the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. When that regime was finally overturned with massive popular support for democracy, Guterres learned that “real power rises from people – from our shared resolve to uphold dignity.”
His story inspired me to highlight certain news items that demonstrate the power of ordinary American citizens in a political climate of authoritarianism.
At the beginning of this second Trump administration in January, visitors to our National Parks were encouraged to report to the federal government any signs on National Park lands that the Trump team felt reflected negatively on our history – such as information about White destruction of Native American lands and the slaughter of Native Americans, and Whites lynching and murdering Black people. Every sign was supposed to hero White people instead of telling the historical truth. In response, hundreds of citizen-visitors across the country took out their cameras and photographed existing National Park signs to create an archive of the facts those signs were relating, before they were forced to disappear under Trump’s censorship.
NPR reported this week on a similar response to Trump’s recent meddling in the content and focus of Smithsonian exhibits, wanting those to also hero White people. Hundreds of citizen volunteers are taking their phones to the Smithsonian to photograph displays about our history as a people and as a country. The task is daunting. There are 21 different Smithsonian museums, with thousands of displays in each, containing millions of artifacts that are all pieces of our history. Because people care about the truth of our history as a country, the detailed displays at our design history museum, art museums, space museum, natural history museum, the museum of Native American History, and the museum of African American History and Culture are all currently being photographed for posterity by hundreds of historian volunteers and citizen volunteers.
Individual, ordinary people are out there unplugging from the Disney channel so fast and in such numbers that a fired Jimmy Kimmel was back on the air before Disney President Bob Iger could draw a breath. We are out there as an army of advocates for immigrants – publicising how people can protect themselves from arrest, photographing unlawful arrests, appearing beside our fellow citizens in court, yelling at their oppressors in such numbers they retreat from their targets, and creating a cacophony of noise around the hotels where the nameless, faceless, shameful armies sleep. Ordinary people created a successful boycott of Target to protest their anti-DEI policies. Millions of citizens marched in the No King’s protests across the country this past June.
Individual Americans repeatedly demonstrate that we believe in the dignity and equality of every person in this country. When those in power tell us truth is lies, we tell truth to those in power. We are following in the footsteps of the United Nations and many of our own presidents, claiming a force that comes from being a nation of immigrants, a nation drawing our real power from being “We the People.”
Notes:
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5517973/smithsonian-document-citizen-historians
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO1d0idEtnU/
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165918
