Everyday acts of fairness and compassion constitute resistance against imperialism

Evidence

Yet Hobson calls the crush of domestic liberty a “nemesis” of imperialism precisely because the desire to preserve a republican civil society is, in the end, a powerful one that must outweigh the imperial agenda. In fact, what many of the stories in this book illustrate is that the fight to retain standards of fairness and to mine human compassion are themselves acts of resistance, ways of opposing the imperial push in the age of terror. Hundreds of people signed a petition for the release of Rasha and her family from detention. Yasmin reached out to Advocates for Children and found a receptive ear based on principle. Akram discovered a supportive community around his store when the danger of retributive violence was high, and Rami is learning much about the possibilities of religious freedom in the United States as he engages the general public to educate them about Islam. There are countless other stories like these around the country and in fact across the world today, where people connect to each other on the basis of equality and coexistence and through the universal values of a shared humanity. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 993

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: This redefines ‘resistance’ to include mundane civic decency, a move that could pair with the sacrifice article’s argument about ritual stabilizing communities — both reframe apparently apolitical acts as politically meaningful.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that ordinary acts of compassion — signing a petition, finding a receptive ear, hosting a store community — are genuinely acts of resistance against the imperial push is a quietly paradigm-shifting reframe of what political opposition can mean, and it resists a one-line summary.