I passed a group of protesters on the side of the road yesterday. Maybe fifteen or twenty of them, posterboard signs, standing on the shoulder.
I’m not going to tell you what was on the signs. It doesn’t matter for what I want to say.
My first thought was honest and probably not very generous: there aren’t very many of you. You’re all probably over sixty-five. And I found myself asking — what is it you actually hope to accomplish? Are you raising visibility? Making a statement? Finding community by uniting behind something you don’t like? Or are you trying to cause actual change?
Because those are very different goals. And only one of them requires a plan.
I learned in basic civics — the kind they used to teach in schools — that there is an established process for creating change in this country. The Constitution was written with it baked in. You lobby your representatives. You build popular support through persuasion and communication. You draft legislation. You vote. You work the system because the system was designed to be worked.
That process isn’t flashy. It doesn’t fit on a posterboard. It takes longer than an afternoon on the side of the road. But it works. It has worked for over two hundred years.
Gandhi understood this. He led one of the most effective movements in modern history — not through noise, but through disciplined, organized, strategic action. Silent protests. Marches with a plan. Civil disobedience with a specific legal target. He didn’t just stand on the side of the road. He mapped the road.
I think about this in my own life too. When I want something to change — my health, my career, my creative output — standing around being frustrated about it doesn’t move anything. What moves it is a process. Define the problem. Understand the system. Find the lever. Pull it. Measure what happens. Adjust.
That’s true in data management. It’s true in government. It’s true in marriage. It’s true in faith.
Energy without process is just noise. Process without energy is just bureaucracy. But energy with process — that’s how things actually change.
I don’t know if those fifteen or twenty people on the side of the road had a plan beyond the afternoon. I hope they do. Because the passion was clearly there. And passion deserves a process.
David Willis 