time passes - hope

so i am getting older. and times are getting harder. As i go across the country i keep meeting old and beautiful friends who are not defining themselves as "active" anymore. They run small businesses which support community struggle, represent poor migrants, work with people with addictions, or do care support for people with disabilities, organize prison justice day but do not define as activists.

we spent hours discussing this with shane and kim and nathan. and i think two things came up 1.- it's a bad time - harper as PM, demobilization and people feeling without hope, repression - be it the G20 or even the camas raid here in Victoria ( a raid on a local infoshop resulting in a key organizer/sweetie being deported), 2. the hole toughie question - how do we organize for the rev and still have some security? shit jobs, paying high rent, no family bites after a while, can we have security though, or a family and still organize?

there is a critical mass when it comes to social change - social change beyond policy change. one or two (or even twenty) of us and the world comes crashing down (or those two or three of us overwork to the point of alienating new people, or burning out and becoming corporate hacks). but even with thousands, the state still comes crashing down on our heads

 but it is a bit easier when ten thousand of your best friends are there with you

and you really feel you can win

so where do we go with this? shane talked of those moments of epiphany - when the world we are working for feels like it is right there in your grasp - of the importance of hope

let's bring back hope

let's remember that though action often brings repression, that that repression happens everyday anyways, and that no abuser ever stopped abusing because his target didn't fight back

let's remember that anything we have ever won was won through struggle

let's bring back hope