Still Hopeful

Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism

Maude Barlow

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781773059341
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Canada's best-known voice of dissent." — CBC

"It's time we listened to the Maude Barlows of the world." — CNN

In this timely book, Barlow counters the prevailing atmosphere of pessimism that surrounds us and offers lessons of hope that she has learned from a lifetime of activism. She has been a linchpin in three major movements in her life: second-wave feminism, the battle against free trade and globalization, and the global fight for water justice. From each of these she draws her lessons of hope, emphasizing that effective activism is not really about the goal, rather it is about building a movement and finding like-minded people to carry the load with you. Barlow knows firsthand how hard fighting for change can be. But she also knows that change does happen and that hope is the essential ingredient.

Chapter One
Give Hope a Chance

Do not be daunted by
the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work
But neither are you free to abandon it.

The Talmud

Coming out of a global pandemic and facing many crises, we need hope. Hope may not be for oneself, it may be for one’s children, or one’s children’s children. This is the story of so many immigrants and refugees who suffer great hardships in search of a new life for their families. But hope can also be for other people’s children and for the human family. Hope often defies logic and gives us the strength to continue when all the “facts” tell us things are hopeless. Hope helps us to put one foot in front of the other when despair would tell us not to move.

My fear is that the sense of hopelessness many people now feel makes them think that the situation itself is hopeless, leading to paralysis. In writing this book, I asked myself, What is hope? How has it sustained me through my life as an activist, and what lessons have I learned about the role of hope in my work? Still Hopeful is my best advice on how to keep hope alive, as Martin Luther King Jr. entreated us to do.

Distinguish between real and false hope

To start, I want to be clear that when I speak of hope, I am not talking about uninformed optimism — what Plato called “gullible” hope. The ancient Greeks warned of the danger of espousing hope based on insufficient knowledge that could lead to poor decisions in war and politics. This is not a call for cheerful optimism nor a denial of the urgent issues that we collectively face. Certainly I have done my share of disseminating the distressing facts and statistics on the climate crisis and in particular the threat to the world’s water.

In his groundbreaking three-volume work, The Principle of Hope, published in the 1950s, the great German philosopher Ernst Bloch saw all of human history as the story of hope for a better future. Deeply marked by the two world wars and the class struggles and divisions within his own country, Bloch distinguished between what he called “fraudulent” or “false” hope and “genuine” hope, which, to be effective, needs to be stoked by “informed discontent.” False hope, he warned, is often used by governments to tamp down dissent among the marginalized and can find us staring at a blank wall, blind to “the door that may be close.”

American Zen Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax clarifies how she sees the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism, she says, can be dangerous as it doesn’t require engagement. Things will be better on their own, says the optimist, and if they aren’t, one can become a pessimist, taking refuge in the belief that there is nothing to be done. Optimists and pessimists actually have something in common, says Halifax — they are excused from engagement. She calls instead for “wise” hope, and wise hope most surely requires engagement.

Wise hope is born of radical uncertainty.

— Joan Halifax

Joan Halifax has led an extraordinary life of service to what might be called “hopeless” situations, including ministering to the dying in hospices and men on death row. She is clear that hope is not the belief that everything will turn out well. After all, as she says, people die. Populations die out. Civilizations die. Stars die.

In a paper delivered at a 2019 conference in Australia, Halifax said that wise hope is born of radical uncertainty, rooted in the unknown and the unknowable. Wise hope requires that we open ourselves to what we do not know, what we cannot know, and to being perpetually surprised. Wise hope embraces the possibility of transformation and the understanding that what we do matters, even though how and when it will matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.

Don’t tie hope or success to a preordained outcome

Many times in this book, I am going to speak of the need to build movements, and the need for movements to have concrete goals and plans. Without a vision of what we want, it is hard to get others on board for the cause. Long-term goals are, in fact, essential to a purposeful movement and keep people from running in circles. But it is crucial not to judge the success of a campaign or struggle solely by an achievement within a hoped-for time frame. Successful campaigns can take a long time. As well, situations change, and we have to be able to adjust our expectations and refine the goals. Being too rigid will lead to disappointment and burnout. And it will kill hope.

Vandana Shiva, Indian scholar, environmental activist and food sovereignty expert, is very clear about how hope keeps her going and it isn’t by “winning” everything she sets out to do. She has learned never to allow herself to become overwhelmed by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. She advises us to do our part without thinking of the scale of what we stand against; by tackling what we face, we enlarge our own capacities and create new potential. She has learned to detach herself from the results of what she does because those results are not in her hands.

“The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make,” she wrote me in an email. “And you can make the deepest commitment with total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them. But then you have to have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me always to take on the next challenge because I don’t tie myself up in knots.”

Shiva mirrors the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi who said, “I am content with the doing of the task in front of me. I do not worry about the why and wherefore of things. Reason helps us to see that we should not dabble in things we cannot fathom.”

Canadian philosopher and social theorist Brian Massumi says, in fact, the only way a concept like hope can be made useful is when it is not only connected to a desired success but is also rooted in the present. In an interview with Australian philosopher and writer Mary Zournazi for her 2003 book, Hope: New Philosophies for Change, he argues that uncertainty can be empowering once we realize that it gives us a margin of manoeuvrability and an opening through which to experiment. “The present’s ‘boundary condition,’ to borrow a phrase from science, is never a closed door. It is an open threshold — a threshold of potential. You are only ever in the present in passing. You may not reach the end of the trail but at least there is a next step. The question of which next step to take is a lot less intimidating than how to reach a far-off goal in a distant future where all our problems will finally be solved,” he writes.

Ernst Bloch admitted that even a well-founded hope can be disappointed, otherwise it would not be hope. In a 1961 public lecture at the University of Tübingen, Germany, he said, “In fact, hope never guarantees anything. It is characteristically daring and points openly to possibilities that in part depend on chance for their fulfilment.” Hope can learn and become smarter through roadblocks, but true hope can never be driven off course.

Because we do not live in the world we aspire to, we do not have the experience to formulate that world completely. “Still,” Bloch said, “it is possible to determine the direction toward real humanism, a direction that is invariable and unconditional; it is indicated precisely in the oldest conscious dream of humankind — in the overthrow of all conditions in which the human individual is a humiliated, enslaved, forsaken, despised creature.”

In fact, hope never guarantees anything. It is characteristically daring and points openly to possibilities that in part depend on chance for their fulfilment.

— Ernst Bloch

I have learned from my own work and through watching other activists that in thinking you can control the outcome of a campaign or action, you are probably giving yourself too much credit. You will also be setting yourself up for burnout. It is absolutely essential to trust that others are doing their part and, in ways you cannot know, are inspiring change.

Vi Morgan was a writer, storyteller and activist living and fighting for justice in Guelph, Ontario. Along with her husband, retired pioneer educator Griff Morgan, she ran the local chapter of the Council of Canadians and led the campaign to keep Walmart out of her city. They succeeded for over a decade. At an anti-Walmart public forum in 2004, Griff Morgan gave an impassioned speech to great applause about the importance of preserving the downtown core and protecting local business. Then, right there, speech finished, in front of young and old, he dropped dead. The next day, the Guelph Mercury had a front-page photo of Vi and Griff and me with a quip from the mayor, saying, “Now heaven is safe from Walmart.”

The last time I visited Vi was in May 2015, just weeks before she died at the age of 100. Her brain still sharp, she asked me if I had a “quiet mind.” What a canny and observant question! If I struggle with anything, it is letting go. I want always to heed my own advice to detach from the outcome, but it is hard for me. I hate losing and get frustrated with the slow pace of change. Why aren’t others upset at this? What can I do to make them care? What will it take to make change? Vi took my hands in both of hers and told me that I would find my quiet mind when I truly understand that others are, in fact, doing important things I cannot know about and when I learn to trust a greater force present in humanity.

American scholar and professor John Paul Lederach is known the world over for his work on peacekeeping and mediation. He has travelled into many of the worst conflict zones to broker peace agreements, sometimes putting his own life in peril. In a 2014 interview for Sojourners Magazine, he spoke of his Mennonite faith and how it has guided him when peace missions have failed. He said that he chooses to live according to a vision of relationships, community and creation as if they were possible even when all the signs around him suggest they are not. “Hope is love lived,” he said. “Even in deep disappointment, you don’t stop the heartbeat of love. Love requires patience and humility, reaching out, noticing the small gifts and the presence of life around you . . . When disappointment hits, remember you are a child of God, loved and nurtured. Just think of the breath of air you are taking right now, it is a gift. Remember the world does not rotate around you or depend on whether you were successful. Don’t serious yourself to death. Be kind to yourself. Find a park, find some children and remember how to play. Smile. Take a walk in the woods. Watch a flower in the sun for half an hour and think about unrequited beauty.”

In American activist and public intellectual Rebecca Solnit’s 2004 book, Hope in the Dark, she echoes this notion that we cannot know what will make a difference. Yes, she posits, the future is dark, but it is inscrutable, not necessarily terrible. Many transform this unknowability into something certain and awful, the “fulfillment of their dread.” She gently reminds us, “Far stranger things happen than the end of the world.”

She writes, “That is because we do not see the myriad of changes happening in the area of human rights and justice, for example, that would have been thought impossible only decades ago. The world is wilder than our imaginations. Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later; sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal and change comes upon us like a change of weather.”

Face the reality of our situation

. . . but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways . . .

— Rebecca Solnit

Greta Thunberg says that, upon learning about the climate crisis at age 11, she fell into a deep depression and stopped talking and even eating, losing 22 pounds in two months. She didn’t start to emerge from her depression until, at age 15, she decided to act by sitting in front of the Swedish Parliament every day rather than going to school. As we know, she went on to inspire a global youth climate revolution. Action was her cure. “When we start to act, hope is everywhere. So, instead of looking for hope — look for action. Then the hope will come,” she argues.

But not all young people have been able to find an outlet for their fears as they learn about the multiple environmental crises in their classrooms and from the media. Many educators and psychologists working with young people are reporting a dramatic increase in pessimism and fear in their charges. A September 2020 Washington Post–Kaiser Family Foundation poll of American teenagers found that almost 60% said that climate change made them feel scared and over half said it made them feel angry. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2015 warning that the climate crisis poses a threat to children’s mental and physical health and that failure to take prompt substantive action would be an “act of injustice to all children.”

In expert testimony for a 2018 lawsuit filed by a group of young people seeking to force the US government to adopt policies to fight the climate crisis, Washington-based psychiatrist Lise Van Susteren wrote that children will be at the centre of the storm as climate change worsens. “Day in and day out worrying about the unprecedented scale of the risk posed by climate change takes a heavy toll on an individual’s well-being, wearing them down, sending some to the ‘breaking point.’ Children are especially vulnerable.” She told the Washington Post that interviewing children about their fears for nature and their future families left her with a “sense of shame.”

Wenonah Hauter

Abby Greenawalt

Wenonah Hauter is an environmental organizer and author. She is founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch, a grassroots movement of over one million Americans working for food, water and energy rights.

Where do you find hope?

“Recent times have been difficult as people have been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, a brutal economy and climate change–supercharged fires, hurricanes and floods. In the United States, underlying these disasters is a fractured democracy and a highly polarized and divided country. In this context, it is easy to feel dejected and hopeless. Still, I remain remarkably hopeful for the future.

“I’m hopeful because of how I see people responding. I draw hope from an inspired and bold movement of young peopl...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Give Hope a Chance
• Chapter Two: The Rising of the Women
• Chapter Three: Challenging Corporate Rule
• Chapter Four: The Fight for Water Justice
• Chapter Five: The Next Steps to Take
• Afterword
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright