When People Power Is Too Much

When people power becomes too much for a certain group of union brothers, sisters, and siblings, that’s when the truth starts to rise from the cracks in the floorboards.

Inside our unions, we speak the language of liberation and freedom.
We chant solidarity forever. But behind the banners and bylaws, there are still those who tremble at what liberation truly looks like.

Because when the voices of the people, Black, Brown, queer, immigrant, poor, and disabled, start leading the charge, some of our so-called allies start searching for the mute button.

Our unions, like the nation they were born in, still carry the fingerprints of systemic racism pressed deep into policies, past practices, constitutions, and the comfort of white supremacy dressed up as “tradition.” Even now, as the MAGA movement tries to turn back the clock, some within our own halls are still holding the door open for them.

And maybe it’s time we ask the hard questions:
Does the thought of others obtaining power threaten your power or your existence?
Do you feel like you’re being asked to take the back seat, or that your voice no longer dominates the room? Do you feel erased, or simply uncentered?

Because what some are experiencing isn’t oppression, it’s status threat.
It’s white fragility dressed as righteous anger.
It’s masculine anxiety, mistaking equality for erasure.
It’s the fear that sharing power means losing power when, in truth, it means expanding it.

They say they believe in freedom until that freedom looks too Black, too Brown, too queer, too woke.
They say they want equality until equality means giving up a little privilege.

But we’ve seen this before.
We’ve lived this before.

They called the abolitionists radicals.
They called the freedom riders troublemakers.
They called women fighting for the right to vote hysterical.
They called the sanitation workers in Memphis “disruptive.”
They called Stonewall “criminal.”
They called César Chávez and Dolores Huerta agitators.
And now? They call us woke.

They weaponized that word to make awareness sound like a weakness.
But being woke has always meant being awake.
Awake to injustice.
Awake to inequity.
Awake to the systems built to divide and silence us.

And if being woke means we refuse to sleep through oppression, then let them call us woke because we’re not hitting snooze.

Today’s fights echo the past:
When we defend immigrant rights, both documented and undocumented, we carry the same torch that lit the path from Selma to Standing Rock, from Stonewall to the picket lines of Memphis.

Whether they label our brothers and sisters as “illegal” or “unworthy,” we know the truth:
There is no such thing as an illegal human being.
There is only an unjust system trying to define who deserves dignity.

And that’s why people power feels “too much” for some.
Because real power doesn’t beg for permission, it builds movements.
Real solidarity doesn’t stop where comfort begins; it starts there.
And real liberation isn’t a slogan, it’s a restructuring of power itself.

So to those who whisper that we’ve gone too far, understand this:
We’re not going back.
We’re not softening the message.
We’re not silencing the woke, the bold, or the marginalized.

Because people power has never been too much.
It’s always been exactly enough.

And if that makes some uncomfortable, then maybe it’s time they woke up too.