Have You Thanked a Woke Person Lately?

Staying awake built the world we love.

You’ve probably seen the meme: “Thank a liberal for your weekend, clean air, and the 40-hour workweek.” It’s a tidy, self-congratulatory reminder that progress doesn’t just happen.

But here’s the thing, it’s incomplete. If we’re really giving credit where credit is due, we need to thank someone more specific: someone who decided to stay awake to injustice and do something about it.

Someone “woke.”

“Woke” didn’t start as a buzzword or a political football. It began as a piece of Black vernacular, a warning and a call to stay alert to danger, especially systemic injustice.

Lead Belly, the folk-blues legend, used “stay woke” in 1938 while urging awareness of the Scottsboro case, a racially charged miscarriage of justice.

For decades, “woke” meant exactly what it sounds like: being awake to what’s wrong in the world and refusing to hit the snooze button.

So, let’s give the meme a 2025 upgrade: thank a woke person for the parts of America you actually like.

Because without people noticing injustice and refusing to let it slide, you’d probably be working Saturdays, breathing smog, and wondering why your daughter can’t try out for the soccer team.

Wokeness Gave You the Weekend

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite part of the week: the weekend. Contrary to popular belief, Saturday and Sunday didn’t fall from the heavens like some kind of divine act.

They were fought for - hard - by people who refused to accept 12-hour days and six-day workweeks as the natural order of things.

The eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek were demands of the labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Strikes, protests, and May Day rallies were led by workers who were wide awake to the brutal realities of industrial life.

Their efforts culminated in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which Congress passed to limit the workweek to 44 hours (with a planned reduction to 40).

If you like having evenings off or weekends to binge-watch your favorite shows, thank the people who stayed woke long enough to make it happen.

Clean Air? That’s Woke Energy, Too

Public health didn’t improve because corporations suddenly grew consciences. The Clean Air Act of 1970 and its later expansions didn’t just pop into existence because lawmakers had a change of heart.

They were the result of relentless activism by people who recognized that breathing shouldn’t be a luxury.

By the EPA’s own estimates, the Clean Air Act saved hundreds of thousands of lives and delivered tens of trillions of dollars in economic benefits between 1970 and 1990.

That’s what wokeness looks like in action: noticing harm, organizing against it, and pushing for systemic change.

So the next time you’re outside taking a deep breath of smog-free air, maybe say a quiet “thank you” to the woke environmentalists who fought for it.

Title IX and the Fight for Equality in Schools

Your daughter’s chance to play soccer, join a robotics team, or demand equal resources at school? That didn’t happen because the country suddenly decided to prioritize fairness.

It happened because of Title IX, the 1972 law banning sex discrimination in any education program receiving federal funding.

Title IX’s transformative power wasn’t just handed over; it was demanded by advocates who were wide awake to the absurdity of half the population being treated as second-class.

Across five decades, the law has opened doors in classrooms, locker rooms, and beyond. Wokeness isn’t just about noticing inequity; it’s about building systems that refuse to tolerate it.

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Accessibility: Civil Rights, Not Charity

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 didn’t happen because anyone felt particularly generous. It happened because disabled Americans and their allies refused to accept second-class status.

They crawled up the steps of the Capitol in protest, forcing the nation to wake up to the barriers that millions of Americans faced daily.

The ADA reframed accessibility as a right, not a favor. Ramps, captions, accessible hiring practices - all of these victories were won because people were awake to exclusion and pushed to make the world more inclusive.

If you’ve ever used a curb cut, watched a show with subtitles, or ridden a bus with a kneeling ramp, you’ve benefited from this work.

Innovators Are Always Awake

Pick any major leap forward in American life - child labor laws, the Civil Rights Act, same-sex marriage, environmental protections - and you’ll find a common thread: people who noticed harm, named it, and organized until something changed.

Wokeness, in its truest form, is the precondition for progress. It’s the refusal to accept the status quo as inevitable.

Sure, the language around activism can get clunky, and sometimes the group chat debates over microaggressions feel endless. But would you really trade the messiness of progress for the comfort of stagnation?

Spoiler: you wouldn’t.

Stay Awake, Stay Grateful

The culture wars may have turned “woke” into a punchline, but history has kept it a compliment. Americans live longer, breathe cleaner air, and work saner hours because generations of woke people refused to sleepwalk through injustice.

“Thank a liberal” might be a nice reminder, but the full truth is better: thank someone who stayed awake.

And while you’re at it, try staying a little woke yourself. The next big win - on climate change, voting rights, bodily autonomy, or something we haven’t even thought of yet - will come from the same place all the other ones did: people who refused to look away.

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