Seeing over 7,000 websites protest the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) this week was one of the most exciting things I’ve seen as an activist, and you have to admit, over the past year, we’ve had some exciting stuff occur. From people rising up in their communities and refusing to pay charges, switching banks, and even protesting Wall Street’s control of our country, it’s an exciting time to live—and it’s inspiring, too. Sure, it’s not the sixties, but it’s so much better than the complacent sleeping the country’s done since Reagan handed the entire nation over to corporate interests.

And you know what? It’s working, folks. There are bills being drawn to end corporate personhood (which I don’t understand how came to life in the first place; perhaps it was something like Frankenstein’s monster), there are credit card regulations being put into place, there are banks and phone companies and even Netflix (sort of) listening to their customers—well, responding to our refusal to pay them, anyway, which is the way to boycott and voice your opposition these days. Hey, if it works, it works—and that is exactly what has been happening.

And when it doesn’t, well, we continue to fight back. Take yesterday’s big Department of Justice crackdown on the website Megaupload, for example. The FBI arrested the site’s people and shut it down—was this their big response to our giant PIPA and SOPA protest, I must ask?—thereby waving the big American middle finger in the faces of free speech. Well, it’s like Toby Keith said—putting a boot in you’re a** is the American Way, and all of that.

But many of us aren’t cool with that being our Way. And thankfully, we have our own responses to such actions—such as the hacker group Anonymous striking back, effectively shutting down both government and record label websites in retaliation, serving as the checks and balances that, perhaps while not perfect, we so lack right now in our government. They even said that it was their largest “job” ever, with over 5,000 people involved.

I had to chuckle when I read this, since SOPA and PIPA would affect my job, and the jobs of millions of other writers, especially. Anyone standing up against the acts is standing up for us all, as well as our free speech as a nation. Passing these acts would simply be one more step toward the direction of fascism that our country has been treading lately, and we simply cannot let it happen.