Open Letter: Hope
co-written by Reina Ortiz. it’s completely okay to have faith in the future, and in the reactions of this land's occupants to the changing times, without having faith in the government.
BISHOP:
When people you trust say “Another World is Possible”, they say it the same way as “baking a loaf of bread is possible”. With simple, obtainable ingredients, and an amount of patience, it surely will come to pass.
No matter the result of the national election tomorrow, I hold this truth with relaxed hands.
I don’t know if you feel this way, but I find the fearmongering spewing from mouths of people I trust slightly horrifying. They’ll say full sentences of things I agree with, about accountability to humanity and finding an end to genocide, then follow up with one of two things: “That’s why we have to stop Trump from getting into office.” “That’s why we have to vote for Kamala.” I know no one is immune to propaganda, but I know you and I both see the irony of critiquing issues that have come to pass under both terms with limited interruption.
Now, I truly believe a missing ingredient– a secret third option– is found in the lyrics of a favorite Wingnut Dishwasher’s Union song:
“So we’re building a new world, All of my friends and me
It’s not an exact science yet but we have the technology
Now all we need is an economy
Where everybody will finally get enough to eat.”
I would love to hear more people go on monologues about transgender rights and reproductive healthcare and affordable housing and have them finish with, “And that’s why I, myself, am starting a project near me.”
Straight up I don’t believe hope carries through at the government level. The force for change is not bureaucracy, it’s culture. We need a ground-level cultural shift of interdependency and land stewardship on a scale not seen during the colonial reign of the United States Empire. Home-brewed medicine for isolation and hunger are more effective than any tax cut or imported good.
I’ve seen it– remember when we traveled together on that road trip? When we would remain on the highway, we would easily be heartbroken by what appeared to be desolation and injury, and every time we drove into a small town we could find a garden in minutes, remember? And when we would go into the cities, we would find the greenest coffee shop, and they would always sell goods from local people and promote their own economic growth? And we’d giggle and buy some small piece of jewelry, or an artwork, or a local CD to listen on the drive. We would find slivers of the things that require multiple sets of hands to bring to ours.
I hope to disregard national power. I hope to cast it off in favor of regional wisdom and localized leadership. I hope to form new relationships with tradesmen and crafts workers and farmers.
Here, the phrase “I hope” means “I intend, because it feels right.”
ORTIZ:
When I hear the word “hope” it can oftentimes evoke an overwhelming sensation. We are a generation burdened with the responsibility of having to watch the atrocities and injustices that unfold all around us. It is not only that we know about them, but also that we must watch them occur. Genocide atop genocide, protest after protest, dispute after dispute- with seemingly no end in sight. The great blessing of our modern-day technology, of being able to be connected with everything, everywhere, at the same time, is a double edged sword. For it can also incapacitate us. Hope can feel like an impossible task in the face of our world.
What is there to hope for? Where is the room where we can sit in hope’s stillness, and let it soothe our distress?
Hope, I used to think, was something to be found. Something that I would find in a candidate… or in a particular ballot proposition. Perhaps, there was hope to be found in a non-profit or in an international human rights body. Surely, there was somebody, somewhere, who would stop all this? Some people have given up on such a notion altogether. Some roam about the Earth hopelessly, waiting for the next paycheck.
But I have come to learn, begrudgingly, that hope is not something one finds, but rather that it is a gift. There is an Arab idiom, which has been reiterated and expounded upon by bell hooks in All About Love, which says that “resistance is the deepest form of love,” and what is resistance, if not, the courageous decision to hope?
To throw a rock at a moving tank. To raise a flag in the face of a cop. To wake up the next day. To break bread together, to continue, despite it all. We hope everyday. We hope as a way of loving.
Hope is given to me whenever I look at my siblings' faces. Every time I see my younger brother, he unintentionally gifts me all of his joy and life; in his eyes I see the multitudes that he deserves. The greatest gift I could ever give him is to not give up. In this way, hope is endless, because we give it to each other in a cyclical fashion, again and again. As summed up by great James Baldwin:
I never have been in despair about the world. I’ve been enraged by it. I don’t think I’m in despair. I can’t afford despair. I can’t tell my nephew, my niece. You can’t tell the children there’s no hope.
True, sustained hope, doesn’t come in the form of a politician. It doesn’t come from candidates and parties whose roles are designed to line the pockets of a few and appease the rest.
Hope, practically, looks like how we serve each other, how we take care of one another. And how we resist the binaries of our system, for one another.
read Reina’s writing: