From Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit, with thanks to Natacha Ruck for putting the book in my hands. I recommend the book to anyone longing for encouragement in the work toward a better earth, work that does not ignore—but resists and develops alternatives to—the systems that prioritize the comfort of the few over the vitality of the many.
“The difference between the best and worst case scenarios is vast, and the future is not yet written”
“Dark… as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other.”
“The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave”
“being politically engaged means having a sense of your own power”
“To be effective, activists have to make strong, simple, urgent demands… their victories may come as subtle, complex, slow changes”
“urbanites who have been at risk… have been among the least fearful”
“Hopefulness is risky”
“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism”
“the figures onstage are the actors… much of the script is written elsewhere, out of sight, by corporations and elites, but also by popular movements that tug the conscience and change the status quo, and it is in these neglected places that radical power lies”
“stories migrate secretly”
“radical… the root of the word, radice, literally means ‘root’ and suggests that radicals get to the bottom of things, to the causes rather than the effects.”
“Fifty-thousand people joined the union-led march… ultimately canceling the meeting of the WTO that day… This time victory–the shutdown–was tangible and immediate.”
“the imperial belligerence of the so-called War on Terror”
“Viagra is good for endangered species. Animal parts that traditional Chinese medicine prescribed as aphrodisiacs and for treating impotence—including… the velvet from half-grown antlers of caribou—are, thanks to the drug, no longer in such demand.”
“they surged onto a freeway overpass and, muffled by rave music, smuggled jackhammers onto the concrete under the giant bell-skirt of a stilt-walking grande dame, then jackhammered openings in which trees were planted.”
“There is no day without its moments of paradise”
“I grew up in that left encouraged to despise ‘rednecks and white trash”—the racism of some working-class white Southerners became a handy way for the middle class elsewhere to carry on class war while feeling progressive.”
“Bioregionalism was an attempt to return to what human life had been for most of history, ecologically and socially, to return not nostalgically but radically, with a sense that this could also be the future, that it was the only viable future.”
“Subcommandante Marcos says, ‘History written by Power taught us that we had lost… We did not believe what Power taught us. We skipped class…’”
“One of the arrested wrote… ‘sitting in that jail cell, I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders… If these are the values of our society then I want to be an outlaw in that society.”
“Human beings half a century or a century from now… will regard us as people who rearranged the china when the house was on fire.”
“This is the time to find your place in [the movement], if you haven’t yet.”
“Nothing less than systemic change will save us.”
“‘Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings,’ said LeGuin.”
“If the world is totally doomed no matter what, little or nothing is demanded of you in response. You can go bitter and idle on your sofa if you’re already comfortable and safe.”
“you can talk about both the terrible things we should engage with and the losses behind us, as well as the winds and achievements that give us the confidence to endeavor to keep pursuing the possibilities.”
“I wrote this book to encourage people to stand up and participate, to look forward at what we can do and back at what we have done”