For many, these past few days signal a first: the first time they have feared for their country, the first time they have doubted the sanctity of their government. But for others, the signs are a little more familiar. “I’m 75,” my grandmother shrugged, calm and utterly unfazed. “I’ve seen worse. The thing to remember is this: if you believe in what you have to say, then you must find a way to say it. This isn’t any worse, it’s just your turn.”

Resistance has a history and a lineage that predates the United States, and that certainly predates Donald Trump. My grandmother may not use the word feminism in her daily speech, but she understands its meaning instinctively. She may not discuss the dictatorship she fled from in the language of colonialism, but she lived it. We joke about the stories we’ve all heard before: back in my day… But back in their day our parents and grandparents were twenty-somethings too. They were protesters and feminists and dissenters, too. If we look around us and don’t know what to do, we are forgetting that we already have the blueprints: immigrants who have done this all before. Resistance is not a genetic trait or a predisposition, it is a practice, and we have so much to learn.