I was grabbing a bowl of soup and my customary spicy skinny margarita at Ocean 302 in Melbourne Beach, Florida, scrolling through social media while I waited for lunch, when a sentence came across my screen that stopped my thumb mid-scroll.
“I’d rather bleed from resistance than rot from obedience.”
Well, damn.
Every once in a while, the universe puts exactly the right words in front of you at exactly the right moment.
Six years.
I have been on the front lines of this fight for six years. Writing. Organizing. Speaking. Investigating. Standing beside families whose stories would break your heart. Watching institutions circle their wagons rather than admit what they have done.
And if I am going to tell the truth, there are days when I am tired.
Bone tired. Not I need a vacation tired. Soul tired.
The kind of exhaustion that comes from seeing what cannot be unseen. From learning how the machinery actually works once you get behind the curtain. From watching power protect itself instead of people.
There are mornings when another injustice, another destroyed family, another story of rights violated under color of law lands in my lap and I think, "Dear God. Not another one."
And then there I was, sitting at Ocean 302 with my margarita, staring at those words.
I’d rather bleed from resistance than rot from obedience.
Yes.
Because resistance has a price. And I am fortunate that I don’t pay it alone.
Ann Vandersteel has stood beside me through much of this fight. Together, we built American Made Foundation because we kept seeing things we could no longer pretend not to see.
Ann and I have learned something about endurance. Sometimes we carry the torch together. Sometimes we hand it off.
When we’re both on, it’s like a three-legged race. We know each other’s stride. We move in sync. One knows where the other is going before she gets there. And when that happens, we can move mountains.
But nobody can maintain that pace forever.
Sometimes one of us simply says, "I'm tapping out. I'm overwhelmed. I need a few days."
The answer is always the same.
I’ve got it. I’ll hold the fort. Take whatever time you need.
Then we switch.
We have tag-teamed our way through an avalanche. And I often wonder: what if a country did that? What if half of us held the line while the other half caught their breath? We don’t need everybody fighting every battle every day. We just need enough people standing that those who are exhausted can rest without the torch hitting the ground.
And imagine those moments when we were all standing at once. We could change the world. I genuinely believe that.
Our problem isn’t that we are powerless. Our problem is that too many people have forgotten they have legs.
Because what Ann and I encounter is an onslaught of human suffering. Another mother. Another father. Another child. Another elderly person. Another family asking:
What do I do now?
And somewhere along the way, I became the keeper of their stories. I record them. I preserve them. I have an archive filled with the experiences of ordinary Americans whose government, courts or institutions failed them, sometimes catastrophically.
It is horrifying material to carry. But stories disappear when nobody writes them down.
Maybe 200 years from now, someone will read what I wrote during these years. Maybe they will want to understand what this strange period in American history felt like to those actually living through it.
I want there to be a record. I want them to know we saw it. And some of us refused to look away. That is why tired is not surrendered.
Courage isn’t the absence of fear or exhaustion. It is getting tired and standing anyway.
Freedom is ownership of yourself. Your mind. Your voice. Your children. Your conscience. Your labor. Your property. Your future. And your right to tell your government no.
The American experiment began with a radical proposition: rights do not originate with government. Government exists to secure them.
The Founders understood the danger of concentrated power. Yet somewhere along the way, Americans became accustomed to asking permission from institutions created to answer to us.
And obedience is seductive because obedience is easy. Keep your head down. Don’t make trouble. Don’t question authority. Don’t challenge the agency. Don’t make yourself a target. Just go along.
And after six years in this fight, I find myself asking another question:
Where are the men?
There are extraordinary men standing with us. I know them. I work beside them. I am grateful for them. But there are not enough.
Women are carrying an enormous share of this resistance. Mothers. Grandmothers. Women who never imagined becoming activists until something threatened their children, families or liberty.
They stood because someone had to. But America needs her men. Not performance. Not posturing. Not anger mistaken for strength. Men. Steady men. Principled men. Men willing to risk comfort for truth. Men who understand that strength exists not to dominate the vulnerable, but to protect them.
Resistance is not glamorous.
Sometimes it looks like a podium. Sometimes a courtroom. Sometimes a mother refusing to comply. And sometimes it is two exhausted women handing the torch back and forth.
I’ve got it. You rest.
Okay. I’m back.
Maybe that is how resistance survives.
Someone holds the fort. Someone keeps the stories. Someone remembers. Someone writes it down.
That is why courage is contagious.
One person stands, and another remembers he has legs. One person speaks, and another remembers she has a voice. One person refuses, and the illusion of inevitability breaks.
So yes, I get tired.
But as long as my feet can touch the ground, I will stand. As long as I have a voice, I will use it. As long as I have a pen, I will write. I may get tired. I may get discouraged. I may bleed. But I will not rot.
Freedom is a hill I am willing to die on, not because I seek death, but because I refuse to live without freedom.
And if someone reads these words 200 years from now, let the record show: We saw what was happening. We wrote it down. We carried one another when we were tired. And when enough of us remembered we had legs, we stood together.
That is how people change the world.
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