The Trouble With Optimism. The Seeds of Resistance

In my years working in non-profits, I've seen dozens of people walk through the doors starry-eyed and optimistic and leave claiming organizational leadership, infighting, and hypocrisy crushed their souls. So many people enter new political eras, social movements, and non-profits with an inflated sense of hope and possibility and leave burned out and defeated. To maintain our ability to serve in social movements, we must grapple with despair. Sometimes we lose. Sometimes, the President everybody wanted can't pull us out of the recession in time. Sometimes those fleeting feelings of optimism fall under the boot of a repressive structure.

The French Revolution, The American Revolution, The Soviet Uprising, and the Iranian Revolution all serve as big examples of a classic rule: in the name of Democracy people centralize power and betray their vision. The results kill.

So how do we work towards liberation when capitalists and autocrats hijack our movements? How do we move forward when leaders value centralized power more than Democratic will?

Bankers stole trillions from the people. Obama filled his cabinet with neo-liberals and neo-cons, presuming he could get the best input from a diversity of opinions. We stand on the brink of economic and environmental collapse with a President loyal to a dialectic between two parties with identical allegiances to corporations and bankers. Where do poor people, homeless people, the mentally ill, and the battered and beaten find representation? Where do those who want cooperation from the bottom up find solutions?

Inside each of us, we yearn to create the world we want to see, not through representatives, Presidents, Executive Directors, and managers, but through communication, collaboration, and community. I can imagine the naysayer reader seeing the word "community," and saying, "I don't even know what that means.

It's simple. In love and joy, we discover the seeds of true resistance and possibility. See community as a space where people share in the cultivation of food, culture, health, and well-being. Communities can be found in neighborhoods or across cities and regions. Our future depends on these associations working to build the local infrastructure needed to survive: urban farms, alternative health structures, cultural centers, and sustainable transportation.

How we do it is up to us.