Sublime

an identity embedded in local circumstance and a role in the global dialogue,

Most victories will be temporary, or incomplete, or compromised in some way, and we might as well celebrate them as well as the stunning victories that come from time to time.

Stories move in from the shadows to the limelight. And though the stage presents the drama of our powerlessness, the shadows offer the secret of our power.

Our movements are trying to create a politics that challenges all the certainties of traditional leftist politics, not by replacing them with new ones, but by dissolving any notion that we have answers, plans or strategies that are watertight or universal. In fact our strategies must be more like water itself, undermining everything that is fixed,

the more profound revolutions that had unfolded in our lifetimes, around race, gender, sexuality, food, economics, and so much more, the slow incremental victories that begin in the imagination and change the rules.

The activists who deny their own power and possibility likewise choose to shake off their sense of obligation: if they are doomed to lose, they don’t have to do very much except situate themselves as beautiful losers or at least virtuous ones.

“Organizing is to the community what spiritual practice is to the individual.” Being a part of movements is complex work, it requires a faith.