Be The Flower In The National Guardman’s Rifle

Collection: Resist Rebel Revolt

Format: Article

Author: Melissa Nadia Viviana

Date: June 12, 2025

Tags: Protesting, Democracy, History, The Future

Resist Rebel Revolt is a reader-supported publication by Melissa Nadia Viviana; Author, Women's Rights Activist, & Philosopher.

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Maybe it seems lazy to post a short social media article I wrote 8 years ago about Donald Trump, but I was reminded of it this week.

Look: our actions rarely change the past, sometimes alter the present—but they always determine the future.

In fact, that’s why our present feels so out of control—because it’s the culmination of the past actions we took.

That also means that tomorrow’s culminations are due to the PRESENT actions we take.

You see, the future is always determined by whichever collective actions are taken in this moment. 

Our choices build the momentums that play out in the future.

At the end of the day, We’re not in control of the grand scheme of how things unfold in the bird’s eye view—but we’re each a single strand of thread that contributes to whatever is woven.

Everything we do now contributes to this future. And that’s always the best way to look at your choices—

Because sometimes if you can’t rescue the present—the least you can do is save the future.

So here’s what I wrote less than 2 weeks after Donald Trump won in 2016. I had already attended a White House Vigil & protested 2 or 3 times around DC.

Sure, I was 26 years old and a touch idealistic.

But 8 years and over 25 protests later—I have no regrets at the person I became.

November 18, 2016

You know, when my boyfriend laughed aloud and said protesting was a waste of time and would change nothing - I said I was only doing them for one reason: 

to write the third paragraph in the history books.

Over the next 50 years, every kid has to take a U.S. History class - and there's going to be a long page about the 2016 election: one of the most divisive, unconventional, (and also for women) hopeful elections in U.S. History.

When Donald Trump was elected—to America's dismay—the second paragraph was written to say: 

the hatred won.

I was so upset that generations to come would absorb that lesson.

It seemed unbelievable that our history had been on an upward track of more and more progressive freedoms—only to culminate (or regress) into someone like Donald Trump.

But I knew it wasn't going to end there. It couldn't.

So I began protesting to write that third paragraph in the history books: the paragraph that says: 

I don't know what our protests can do to his presidency now.

But the next four years that third paragraph gets written by us.

We have the choice to write into history that even if our own democratic process was flawed enough to commit this wrong to its own people... we didn't take it lying down.

We can't rewrite the wrong that already happened.

But how can we be okay with sending that message to our future generations?

"Well - after a year of ignorance, chronic lies, and insanity—he won fair and square, so Americans simply decided he deserved our support."

We don't only have power—as a people—on election day.

(And if we really believe that: maybe that's why this happened to us).

We all need to learn what responsibility we have to this country. Because the fact is the president isn't the only one who writes history.

Of course, as you know: aside from the small protests I attended after Trump won in 2016, the next big march I attended ended up being the largest protest in U.S. history—

The 2017 DC Women’s March. Around 500,000 people in DC, alone. (And millions more around the world).

I doubt I’ll ever stand in a crowd that large again.

This year, we’re dispersed all over the country, showing up in smaller cities that never got a chance to hold protests before. And that may seem watered down.

But it’s not.

It means that there’s an ever greater opportunity for ordinary people to show up in the streets—those who never felt compelled to do so before.

Or those who felt the protests were happening in some exciting place far away from where they live.

The truth is, I used to be upset when the media didn’t air the smaller protests I attended. But I soon realized that they’re not the only witness that matters.

Every person who goes to the streets to fight for democracy remembers that feeling For. Ever.

And if enough people take that collective action NOW—it DOES get written into the history books.

Maybe Donald Trump wasn’t only 3 paragraphs. Maybe he’s going to be a couple pages more.

But the future hasn’t been written yet—we’re writing it right now with our present actions.

So what’s it going to say?