Amid understandable doom and gloom over eco-anxiety, smoky skies, rampant homelessness, unaffordability, neighbors dying of cold and criminalized for sleeping in their vehicles, mass incarceration, and unjust wars, often worsened by “digital capitalism” making people with smartphones and social media hyperaware, a concept being revived in books and magazines currently is revolutionary optimism.
It’s demonstrated and seen in multiple mutual aid endeavors around northern Nevada, from the Reno Burrito Project to Soil Solidarity.
Revolutionary optimism is rooted in the belief that a better world is possible through action and empathy, and that participating in the struggle itself is transformational.
The revolutionary optimist keeps faith but not blindly; but rather by doing and knowing that movements often can have indirect consequences, even if progress can seem slow at times, and challenging mountains of the moneyed status quo insurmountable.
A recent must read book rooted in this philosophy is by Rebecca Solnit, called Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. “In the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act,” one passage reads.
Other books in this realm include Care Work, Dreaming Disability Justice, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The Centre of Optimism writes on its home page: "The most immediate antidote to nihilism is revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism isn’t rooted in a blind hope that change will come at some unknown point in the future. It is cultivated by the acknowledgement that only through participation in the struggle to liberate the people can the lives of the people be transformed. Revolutionary optimism is bolstered by a deep curiosity in and knowledge of the history of class struggle."
Widely respected organizer Mariame Kaba says “hope is a discipline.”
On the Power Shift Network website, Jasmine Butler explains: “participating in mutual aid and building power with your fellow community members, is a dangerously powerful decision. Now more than ever, we must choose hope and community.
Hope is a muscle that must be flexed, strengthened, and cultivated. Getting involved in a local mutual aid group, getting to know your neighbors and learning to rely on each other, committing to political education and learning about how we got to the current moment, and other acts of defiance and resilience are excellent methods for combatting doom and cultivating sincere hope.”
In June last year, in the Convergence Magazine, Jennifer Disla and Laura Misumi, co-wrote an essay titled “Creating Inter-generational Revolutionary Optimism,” exploring the necessary dialogue between youthful energy and movement elders.
“When we create organizations with a core ethos of moving at the speed of trust, outside the non-profit industrial complex, the inter-generational relationships we build will bring clarity, and be a guiding force to move our collective vision forward,” they concluded.
What is your own view of so-called revolutionary optimism and how would you define it?