Song 9: We Are the Power in Everyone

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Em Am D Em

We are the power in everyone

Em Am D Em

We are the dance of the moon and sun

Em Am D Em

We are the hope that will not hide

Em Am D Em

We are the turning of the tide

History & Lore

Starhawk:

This chant was written for the anti-nuclear actions at Livermore Lab* in 1982. We were blockading on Summer Solstice, and there also happened to be a lunar eclipse around that time.

I had written the chant We Can Rise with the Fire of Freedom (on Chants: Ritual Music) for the February blockade (at Livermore) that year. It was meant to be a closeted Brigid song.

So I was looking for another idea for Summer Solstice, and I thought of the dance of the moon and sun.

Sometime in the 1990s I was down in Mexico for a Bioregional convergence. A friend who taught organic gardening invited me to come to her course. At the end of the course she had people sing a song – and it was We Are the Power in Everyone, translated into Spanish. She had no idea I’d written it or where it came from! It was really nice to see it had taken on a whole life of its own.

In some ways it’s not so great as a power-raising chant. She Changes Everything She Touches (on Chants: Ritual Music) is so simple, you can pile on the harmonies. We Are the Power doesn’t work quite that well.

* – RQ Note – Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco is one of two US nuclear weapons design labs. Civil disobedience actions have been organized there for years, with a total of about 3000 arrests between 1982-85, and hundreds more since then.

The dozens of affinity groups for Livermore and other actions of this period included pagan groups that helped create Reclaiming.

Anti-Nuclear Activism and the Birth of Reclaiming

Reclaiming was born in the alchemy of Earth-based, Goddess oriented spirituality and grassroots activism.

In the late 1970s, anti-nuclear protests on both US coasts began to create a new political culture based in consensus, feminism, and small group (“affinity group”) process.

On the west coast, huge direct actions at Diablo Canyon power plant (1979 and 1981), Livermore Weapons Lab near San Francisco (1982-83), and Vandenberg AFB (1983) led to thousands of arrests and fed a thriving activist/artistic culture that endures to this day.

People who helped organize Reclaiming in these years took part in these actions, some as part of pagan affinity groups such as Matrix. The actions were formative for Reclaiming’s culture.

The story of these early 1980s actions is recounted in Direct Action: An Historical Novel, by Luke Hauser. Get a copy of the book or download a free PDF (plus many other activist resources) at DirectAction.org