This moment in history is heavy. The challenges we confront—inequity, oppression, and the entrenched forces resisting progress—feel insurmountable. It’s hard not to be distressed, dejected, and disoriented.
Recently, you may have heard people say, “Have hope. Don’t despair.” But let’s be honest: it’s hard to feel hopeful right now, and we won’t shame you if you don’t. Nor are we here to offer false hope.
Hope requires resources – time to reflect, space to dream, and energy to imagine a different world. But that is hard to do when the struggle to survive consumes someone’s reality. When all their energy goes into making it through the day, hope may feel out of reach. For those on the frontlines of housing insecurity, food insecurity, and immigration insecurity, hope can feel like a luxury, a privilege reserved for those with power and stability.
And let’s not ignore that hope can be weaponized – used to pacify, distract, or maintain the status quo. It’s natural to long for easy answers and simple solutions in times of crisis. But these shortcuts often lead to false hope – promising quick fixes while obscuring the deeper, systemic nature of our problems. For example, blaming individual communities for poverty, while ignoring system causes like wage inequality, community disinvestment, and structural racism.
So, what can we do?
First, we must make room for despair. When acknowledged and embraced, despair prevents us from normalizing violence, inequity, and oppression. It sharpens our refusal to accept the unacceptable. Despair, channeled constructively, can be a catalyst for transformation.
Second, for those who do have the space and privilege to hope, it becomes a duty to turn that hope into action—not just for themselves but also for those currently on the frontline. It’s about ensuring that hope is not merely a luxury of the relatively secure but a force that actively dismantles the systems keeping others in survival mode. After all, any of us can be on the frontline; let’s ensure there will always be people to speak up against injustice.
Third, we must redefine what hope looks like. For some, surviving another day is an act of hope. For others, creating space for someone to breathe, rest, or heal may be their most significant contribution to hope. Justice movements are strongest when they honor all contributions, whether from those imagining radical futures or those fighting for stability in the present.
Let’s embrace both despair and hope. Let despair fuel our righteous anger and hope sustain our commitment to building a better world. This is how we persist. This is how we win.
