Howard Zinn: "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. 1/4
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Gonna have to give people time to process the existentialism of "in their lifetimes things might only get worse, but there's a chance after they're dead the work they start will bear fruit because that's just how humans are".
It's a rough ask after 50 years of brunch and off-screen genocide.
"What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, 2/4
"this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. 3/4
"The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." 4/4
I was just reading a little about Saul Alinsky's idea of “Moment of the Whirlwind”. I need to read and digest more, but the idea that there could be an opening for a good movement to emerge from the chaos should not be discounted. Not at all
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It's a rough ask after 50 years of brunch and off-screen genocide.
Howard Zinn, "The Optimism of Uncertainty" (2004)