You're More Powerful than You Think

the skills required for civic power more nearly resemble those of an epidemiologist: the ability to read a map of the spread of a virus, or to locate the concentrated centers of its activity, or to focus energy on containing it. But of course, in civic power, the virus isn’t always a disease—it might be an economic trend, or a spate of violence, or a growing social consensus on an issue. No matter what it is, if it’s happening, we can sense it. All of us can try to think, see, and act like an epidemiologist.