 We all know the saying, if you want something done right, do it yourself. What if we apply this idea to politics? Direct action means using our own power to achieve our own ends, rather than relying on someone else to do it for us. It's striking workers who want the eight hour day and weekends. It's anti-fascists protecting people from Nazis and it's people organizing mutual aid during crises to save the lives our governments ignore. It's the idea that who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The people in power, capitalists and their politicians, don't really care what we think. They don't care because they don't have to and they don't have to because we don't have power over them, they have power over us. That's why Frederick Douglass teaches us that power conceits nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Even liberals unwittingly pay homage to direct action, praising its past victories while attempting to claim them as their own. They praise the post-World War II golden age of capitalism, but ignore the powerful labor movements that forced capitalists and governments to meet people's needs, regardless of the party in power. They praise former colonies achieving national liberation, but ignore the movements and the tactics that won it. They praise the end of apartheid, but turn up their noses at people using the same boycott tactics today. Liberals are, in effect, the tale pretending it's wagging the dog. Silencing the working-class social movements that change the world like this is part of a little something we like to call bourgeois ideology. Liberals may object that the magical march of reason through bourgeois parliaments will work best in the end, with arguments like the British Empire freeing its slaves out of moral goodwill. To that we respond as Douglass did, that the slaves of the West Indies did fight for their freedom and the fact of their discontent. was known in England and that it assisted in bringing about that state of public opinion, which finally resulted in their emancipation, and if this be true, the objection is answered. State politics aren't some neutral playing field. They express the balance of social forces at play. The only way to counter the extra-parliamentary power of capital is by the autonomous extra-parliamentary power of the working classes. Note that sit-ins, strikes, blockades, workplace occupations and such are all non-violent activities. History shows us, however, that effective forms of struggle are often violently attacked by agents of the ruling class, from cops to armies to privately hired thugs. But it would be obscene to equate the actions of people defending themselves with the violent assaults of their oppressors. Let's not confuse law with morality. Laws are made by the rich and powerful to suit their needs and interests, not ours. That's why slavery, concentration camps and colonialism were all legal. It's why freeing people from such ruling class tyranny is illegal. And it's why the tools of effective class struggle, like strikes and blockades, were and in their most effective forms still are illegal. But working people have been doing it and winning anyway, thinking, if the law is wrong, break the law. Direct actions are tools of self-emancipation. We decide on and direct them ourselves, developing our powers and capacities for free forms of acting and organizing. And through them, we reduce the oppression, domination and exploitation we are subject to every day, all the while building towards universal human emancipation. Although the corporate media don't tell us, ours is an age of renewed popular struggle, with a number of mass protests worldwide growing by roughly 11.5% every year between 2009 and 2019, constantly getting larger. Even accounting for population growth, the authors of a recent report for the think tanked Center for Strategic and International Studies estimate that the relative number of people who participated in protests from Donald Trump's inauguration to the present day is higher than the relative numbers who participated in the civil rights movement or the anti-Vietnam War protests. The period from January 20th, 2017 to January 1st, 2020 included the five largest protests in US history. The world of tomorrow will be shaped by the forces of today. On the one hand, we have the conservatives, fascists and increasingly many centrists masking their upper class authoritarianism with fine words of stability and tradition. On the other hand, we have growing mass movements fighting for greater freedom, equality and democracy for all people. Which way the world goes, will be up to us.