Movements begin when oppressed people make — and keep remaking — a deeply inward decision to stop consenting to external demands that contradict a critical inner truth, the truth that they are worthy of respect. I call this “the Rosa Parks decision,” a decision to act on the heart’s imperatives against all that diminishes us and what we value. People who make this decision are willing to suffer punishment because they come to understand that no external punishment can possibly be greater than the one we impose on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment.