Politics & Power Quote by Peter Coyote

Coyote’s line has the sting of a personal demythologizing: the moment a onetime protester admits that the iconic image of dissent can become its own kind of narcotic. “It came home to me indelibly” reads like an actor’s stage direction for an internal turn, the instant when conviction stops being performative and starts being strategic. The target isn’t activism itself; it’s a certain romantic idea of activism that confuses visibility with leverage.

The subtext is partly generational. Coyote came out of the 1960s counterculture and the Diggers’ street-theater politics, where the sign is both literal tool and symbol of moral clarity. By the time you’ve watched institutions absorb outrage and outlast slogans, the sign starts to look less like a weapon than a ritual - a way to feel aligned without being effective. His phrasing is bluntly utilitarian: “change anything in America” is totalizing, almost impossible by design, and that’s the point. If your goal is maximal transformation, a single tactic will always disappoint. The “revelation” is a pivot from purity to efficacy.

What makes the quote work is the refusal to flatter the listener. He doesn’t say the system is rigged in some grand, abstract way; he admits his own misplaced faith in a symbolic act. The kicker - “saved me… anxiety and… wasted energy” - is a quiet critique of activist burnout culture before we had the term. It’s resignation, but also relief: a permission slip to trade protest-as-identity for politics as sustained, unglamorous work.