So much has happened since my last post. I won't spend time recapping.
What I'll say now is that I think there still can be a case of hope in the midst of all that is happening. Please know that these ideas are taken completely from elsewhere.
Many of my previous posts have ranted and raved about the decline of social capital and the lack of civic engagement in our society. I think this has drastically changed. It's improved out of necessity and improved over the very stark realities and societal context in which we're operating. Being under the grips of the most right-wing, overtly racist, embarrassing, disgraceful, destructive regime surely has woken up many.
And this matters. It matters so much now that we're organizing. That we can find a common narrative or story about what we need to do to survive and persist. It matters that we have young people who have survived traumas that they shouldn't have ever been exposed to and are now rapidly organizing and thoughtfully becoming active and re-inspiring our nation. It matters that we have an ecosystem of groups, tools and apps focused on resisting and building structures for a better and more humane future.
The future does still look very bleak. I worry that all of the activity and organizing is happening too late. I wish we (I) had been initiating much of this back when I was in High School. We could have maybe prevented some of this from occurring. I also feel utterly overwhelmed realizing that it's all fronts that are being threatened by this administration. It's immigration and health care, climate change and civil rights, income inequality, regressive taxation, threats to reproductive rights and family care... every facet of our society is being driven in a direction that is less humane and inclusive; more war-like; more concentrating of wealth and power and ultimately less conducive to life in our country and planet.
I recently heard Rebecca Solnit share ideas from her book, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities on an episode of On the Media. It was an excellent exchange. A main idea from her book and conversation with Bob Garfield is that our future isn't set. It's just not. We don't know how activities within our current regime will play out. We don't know where the chips will land in all the many moving parts of our society. Even with our climate, there is a wide range of outcomes that could still take place. There is still room to operate, especially when you take the long view. It is our responsibility to work towards the more positive outcomes and recognize that from every logical standpoint, there are chances that these outcomes can come to be. It would be cowardly to relinquish the opportunity and resign oneself to believing that the bleakest end point is the inevitable one. Take a listen if you could use a little hope in these challenging times.