Standing Rock inspired Ocasio-Cortez to run. That's the power of protest | Rebecca Solnit

Press on for what you believe in - a young woman's election to Congress shows climate activism can have unforeseen results

It's hard right now to remember how hot it was last August on the long sandy beach where the Colorado river meets the Green river in southern Utah. I was a few days into a rafting trip through Cataract Canyon with a bunch of young climate activists, and one of them, Will Munger, was telling me that since his months at the Standing Rock resistance camp, he had been encountering young Native people whose experiences at the protest site had encouraged them to dream of new possibilities and take actions that might otherwise have seemed out of reach.

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