Power to the people

Power means to me pretty much the same thing as freedom.  

Power is a thing that everybody wants the most that they can possibly have of.   

That is, skiing is power, sex appeal is power, 

the ability to make yourself heard by your Congressman is power.  

Anything that comes out of you and goes out into the world is power 

and in addition to that, the ability to be open, to appreciate, to receive love, 

to respond to others, to listen to music, to understand literature, all of that is power.   

By "power" I mean human faculties exercised to the largest possible degree.   

So in a way, in a large sense, by power I mean individual intelligence.   

Now when you reach out to another person through the energy 

or creativity that is in you and that other person responds, you are exercising power.   

When you make somebody else do something against their will, 

to me that is not power at all, that is force, and force to me is the negation of power.

                               Charles Reich, Power And The Law