on better futures

claiming it's over is just an excuse to avoid building what's next.

Bringing about the world we want to live in, the world we want to leave to our children is, substantially, the work of the imagination, or what educational reformer John Dewey describes as ‘the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise’.18

poetics and politics can be reshaped. Organizers are aspiring authors and artists, creating elements of stories, in constellations we are often unaware of, with pockets of unseen work happening far and wide. Creating connection, potential, and possibility is creative work. We are in a moment when we must hold prediction and possibility all at once.

I have learned to take the construction work of organizing as it comes, creating things that I believe have to exist, and working with others to build containers, organizations, and projects that I believe the world needs. I am always dreaming up new ideas and making things, because the world is not transformed primarily by what we think of it.

No matter how we choose to take action, we are usually working toward a future that we will be unlikely to see. It’s a future built on the hopes and the sacrifices of our ancestors upon whose labor and love we stand.

People tend to talk very casually about how kids are the future, how they will save the rest of us from climate catastrophe or whatever. This is so lazy. We must be right alongside them, and right alongside our elders too. Harry, the angel who connects us, said to me once how we’ll be ancestors too, how we gotta live for our future generations.

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‘It is one thing to say ‘Another World Is Possible.’ It’s another thing to experience it, however momentarily.’