What I find interesting about the viral video from the United Airlines flight is how quickly people realized it was a PR nightmare for the company. Reading online I saw early signs of self awareness from the internet. We all seemed to agree, off the bat, that this was a worst case scenario in public relations and that it was our duty to make it so. I detect a certain amount of glee from the internet for what an opportunity this is to assert our rights.

What we have in this video is the capturing of a symbolic moment. A corporation wielding its sheer power of dollars over the rights of one helpless individual. Regardless of whatever nuance may be behind the situation, if any, that’s what we see. It is both a singularly egregious event and a reminder of larger issues at play in the world.

Corporate money is shelter from civil and criminal judgment that no average person can compete with. Often it makes a direct line of access to legislature to further profit and obviate their legal protection in the first place. It creates a near untouchable, abstract force of monetary power behind every business transaction it has with an individual human being. In the face of all this how could we not feel the priority of our own rights being threatened?

There is a bubbling resentment of corporate personhood. Of just how sizably formidable, legally influential and altogether powerful they are. But I am glad to see that we the people haven’t forgotten our own power. That’s why the buzz around this incident is palpable and righteous. We realize what can be done if we collectivize ourselves in protest. It is wholly, direly necessary that we do so. Our rights are at stake.