Question One said the social contract carries two signatures. This page is the second one. Everything the American Story showed you — abolition, the eight-hour day, the vote for women, the civil rights acts — was won by ordinary people using a short list of tools. Here is the list.
Vote — and not only in the famous years. The elections everyone watches choose presidents. The small ones choose the school board, the district attorney, the judges, the city council: the offices that decide your child’s school and your block’s policing. Turnout in those elections is often tiny, which makes each vote in them enormous. Primaries — the earlier elections in which each party chooses its candidate — are smaller still, and a great deal of American politics is actually settled there, before November ever arrives.
Serve on the jury. The summons feels like a chore; it is one of the only places where the government must stop and convince twelve ordinary people before it can take anyone’s liberty. The rights you read in Question Five are enforced, in the end, by the people in that box. When you sit there, you are not doing the system a favor. You are the system’s check.
Speak, petition, show up. The public comment period, the community board — in New York City every neighborhood has one, open to you — the call to your council member’s office, where the calls get counted; the letter; the petition; and, from Question Four, the march and the picket line, which are tools, not history.
Organize. This is the tool underneath all the other tools. A tenants’ association, a parents’ group, a union at work, a congregation’s committee: every victory in this course was won by people who organized first and were called unreasonable until they won. One person asking is a request. An organization asking is a fact the powerful have to deal with.
Be counted — and if it is your road, become a citizen. The census every ten years sets your neighborhood’s seats in Congress and its share of federal money; being counted is not paperwork, it is power. And if you are on the path to naturalization — the legal process of becoming a citizen — take heart: the civics test draws from a bank of one hundred questions, and a student who has walked this flyover and its history twin will find almost nothing on that list they have not already met, with the story attached.
The contract’s other half includes the unglamorous parts too: obey the laws you are free to work to change, pay the taxes that fund what you vote for, answer the summons when it comes. Done with your eyes open, that is not obedience to power. It is ownership of it.