Jay Rosen has been tracking the results of Edward Snowden's rebellion against the surveillance state for weeks now in blog posts and tweets. In a recent posting, Rosen draws up into view a quotation in which Snowden talked about his hope of winning this battle and inspiring others to stand up when circumstances require it.

Snowden's remark about winning implies that we now know a modest amount about how small voices can sometimes stand a chance in the big fights. If he's right, it's time to start writing the user's manual. But it's not a manual for a person--it's for webs of individuals and groups that find common ground in protecting and reshaping their democracy.

There'd need to be a chapter for educators, and another for journalists, and another for active citizens, and another about all the ways that elections, though essential, are simply not enough for healthy democracy. And so forth.

"By and large, you have to believe people’s stories," says David Hilfiker, who blogs about the unfolding of his own Alzheimer's disease but also draws on the insights of his service work with impoverished people. Doing this work, he saw the lack of direct experience, the layers of ignorance and myth, that prevented more fortunate people from understanding the experience of others.

An ethic emerges from his service: "One of the things I've learned is that you have to listen to them." No wonder, then, that he chooses to blog as long as he can and that he values the "testaments" of other Alzheimer's patients who do the same. People are not needy; they need to be heard.

People's chances for a better life are bound up in their chances to speak and be heard, to write and be read, to break down the ignorance and distance of the comfortable who go about their business not having to know much about the lives of others.