Summary Of We Are Power By Todd Hasak-Lowy

We are Power by Todd Hasak-Lowy is about non-violent activism. The book explains how non-violent activism is the best way to go about making a change to an unjust law. The book has six chapters all of which explain a non-violent activist's story and how they used non-violent activism to create a change to an unjust law. Gandhi's story about Indian independence is introduced in the book and alongside it is his belief in satyagraha. Satyagraha is the first recorded example of non-violent activism. Non-violent activists such as Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez, Vaclav Havel, and Greta Thunberg have their use of satyagraha against a non-violent cause explained throughout the book. The main idea of We are Power is that people can

In the text, it states “If they were lucky they'd get paid half the minimum wage, because farmworkers weren't protected under federal labor laws”(145). This surprised me because I assumed that everyone always had the right to minimum wage and the right to go to the bathroom and have breaks, especially the workers of one of the most important industries. This was significant as the conditions that were described in the text in addition to the unfair payment seemed inhumane to me and it seemed really unjust. Another fact that I didn’t know prior to reading the book was that Alice Paul was really weak and unhealthy. In the text, it states, “Paul was notorious for working too hard for too long. For neither eating nor resting enough”(38). This surprised me because whenever I heard about Alice Paul she was always associated with the words strong and powerful and seeing her in an almost anorexic and ghoulish state shocked me. I feel like this is significant because her weak physical body greatly contradicts the strong woman she was and I think this was important because at the time many men used the argument that women were weak against them, and Alice Paul's strength was indisputably incredible. Furthermore, I was surprised to learn that Greta Thunberg had Asperger's. In the text, it states, “Greta Thunberg is on the autism spectrum and describes herself on her Twitter page as a ‘climate activist with Asperger’”(253). I found this surprising as Gretta Thunberg has created many impressive feats in the fight against global warming at a shockingly young age and to find out that in addition to being young, she also has a mental disability was really shocking to me. Gretta has done incredible work towards the climate change prevention cause and her ability to do so with a disability feels almost empowering and motivating to me and therefore I thought it was significant. I was surprised to find out that Martin Luther