Quote of the Day
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass said these words in his 1857 West India Emancipation speech. The U.S. National Park Service preserves the quotation and identifies the speech and date.
There is something uncomfortable about this sentence.
It reminds us that knowing something is wrong does not necessarily make it stop.
Sometimes people know.
The neighbour knows.
The community knows.
Those in authority know.
Everybody knows.
And still, nothing changes until somebody asks a difficult question, reports what happened, organizes others, goes to court, writes about it, protests peacefully, votes, refuses to remain silent or simply says: This is not right.
We sometimes imagine advocacy as something done by people carrying microphones, standing before crowds or working for large organizations.
But it can begin much more quietly.
A parent asking why a child with a disability has been excluded.
A woman refusing to accept violence as a private family matter.
A citizen asking what happened to public money.
A community demanding clean water.
One voice does not always change the answer immediately.
But silence rarely asks power to answer at all.
Source: U.S. National Park Service — Frederick Douglass, “West India Emancipation,” 1857
Did You Know?
An internet shutdown does much more than stop people from using social media.
When the internet disappears, we tend to notice the obvious things first.
WhatsApp stops working. Messages do not go through. Facebook will not load.
But think about everything else that now travels through the same connection.
A small trader waiting for a mobile payment.
A student trying to submit an assignment.
A family trying to reach someone during an emergency.
A journalist attempting to send photographs.
A citizen trying to find election information.
A human-rights group documenting what is happening on the ground.
This is why an internet shutdown is not simply an inconvenience.
The United Nations has examined how shutdowns can affect a wide range of human rights, while digital-rights monitors continue to document deliberate disruptions around the world.
In 2025, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented at least 313 internet shutdowns across 52 countries—their highest annual total yet. The countries affected included Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda, among others.
That number can sound distant until the screen in your own hand stops connecting.
Then the issue becomes very ordinary, very quickly.
Can you call home?
Can you receive your money?
Can you find out what is happening outside?
Can you tell anyone what is happening to you?
We sometimes speak about internet access as though it were mainly about convenience.
Increasingly, being disconnected can also mean being cut off from information, work, education, public participation and other people precisely when those connections matter most.
Sources: United Nations — Internet shutdowns: trends, causes, legal implications and human-rights impacts · Access Now — Internet shutdowns in 2025
For discussion: If so much of ordinary life now depends on being connected, when—if ever—should a government be allowed to switch that connection off?
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