This chapter examines how the past becomes an active political force through rituals, reenactments, social movements, and mass commemorations that mobilize communities and grant agency to their participants. It explores how grassroots initiatives and previously marginalized groups reclaim suppressed histories, bringing them into public spaces and challenging official narratives of “who owns history.” The chapter considers cases where personal memory merges with collective ritual, from local efforts to uncover family stories of repression to nationwide phenomena such as the Immortal Regiment, which began as a grassroots commemoration before becoming a state-sponsored spectacle. These practices transform history from a static narrative into lived, contested experience, turning the past into a site of negotiation, resistance, and belonging. By analyzing how memory is enacted, appropriated, and contested in streets, squares, and digital spaces, the chapter shows how societies continually “do” history—not only to remember but also to assert identity, claim justice, and shape political and social realities in the present.