Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

global restlessness, a pervasive shift of imagination and desire—that

It was striking that the people with the most at stake were often the most hopeful. And that those who were active were often hopeful, though it may be the other way around: some of those who are hopeful are active. Yet the range of the hopeful extends beyond that, and you can find hope in surprising corners.

Individual hearts and minds change; those who have been changed become aware of one another; still others are emboldened, in a contagion of boldness; the “impossible” becomes possible; immediately it is done, surprising the actors almost as much as their opponents; and suddenly, almost with the swiftness of thought—whose transformation has in fact

“Utopia is on the horizon,” declares Eduardo Galeano. “When I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking.”

Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible.

Much of what free trade has brought about is what gets called “the race to the bottom,” the quest for the cheapest possible wages or agricultural production, with consequent losses on countless fronts. The argument is always that such moves make industry more profitable, but it would be more accurate to say that free trade concentrates profit away

Cornel West came up with the idea of the jazz freedom fighter and defined jazz “not so much as a term for a musical art form but for a mode of being in the world, an improvisational mode of protean, fluid and flexible disposition toward reality suspicious of ‘either/or’ viewpoints.”

It’s hard to see radical change in the United States, and easy to see how necessary it is. I spend a lot of time looking at my country in horror.

The philosopher Alphonso Lingus says, “We really have to free the notion of liberation and revolution from the idea of permanently setting up some other kind of society.” Subcommandante Marcos understands well that what older revolutionary movements would have considered victory would be defeat for the Zapatistas, and he calls Zapatismo “not an ide

These other versions of what revolution means suggest that the goal is not so much to go on and create the world as to live in that time of creation, and with this the emphasis shifts from institutional power to the power of consciousness and the enactments of daily life, toward a revolution that does not institute its idea of perfection but opens