Hope is a peculiar thing. Though frequently paired with faith, the two are not the same. Hope is a feeling, a mood, sometimes even a state of being – faith is the confidence that hope is not in vain. On its own, hope can be fleeting and solitary, but with faith, put to action, it can make things happen – and help preserve our mental health, which is under relentless attack.

My hope for our nation – and, honestly, the Earth – is challenged almost daily. It’s humanity’s fault. We have the perpetual opportunity to learn from the horrors and ruins of our past and make a decent life accessible to all – and yet we intentionally choose to keep hate and destruction on a loop. Here in America, we lead this charge. 

As a Black Detroiter, born as the crack epidemic swiftly ravaged our local neighborhoods, I’m surprised at how quickly the entire nation has started to feel like a place where hope and faith are born to die. But new life calls for just one persistent seed and a willing patch of soil to lay the foundation to grow. My seed is epigenetic memory, my soil, a fresh read of my hometown’s history. Detroiters have meritorious standing in the people’s fights for human rights.

Those of us still leaning toward the light have to tirelessly search for reasons to keep going. One of the most difficult daily realities I contend with is knowing that millions of my fellow Americans wake up every day believing that I don’t deserve a decent life, or even a life at all, simply because I’m not a well-off white man. 

Someone’s going to read that line and say I’m exaggerating, but President Trump and his comrades believe it. My needs, and those of the people I know, matter not – unless, of course, they serve the material interests of the inhumane capitalists in power. To be clear, money and power are the only interests Trump and his courtiers have. In this moment, one week after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I’m not convinced the Republican Party’s attempt to martyr him has as much to do with despair over his killing as with squelching dissent and positioning MAGA’s communications machine to further pad its coffers and those of its billionaire enablers. 

Karen Attiah of the Washington Post lost her job for simply reposting Charlie Kirk’s own words on the social media platform Bluesky.

This week, several municipalities near Metro Detroit are under fire from the federal government for failing to lower flags to half-staff to honor the life of Kirk, a man who mocked the terror of gun violence to the point of calling for it. Karen Attiah, global opinions editor at The Washington Post, lost her job for simply reposting Kirk’s own words on the social media platform Bluesky:“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year,” Kirk said two years ago, “so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.” Now our president promises only vitriol and vengeance for those who simply acknowledge the irony in Kirk’s own life being part of the collateral damage, in an attack he seemed to think his wealth, gender and whiteness would insulate him from.

I am insulted that this nation’s leadership looks upon the American public and our intellect with such little regard. I am disgusted by the gutlessness of journalists, both conservative and liberal, who refuse to affirm the basic facts of this moment, that MAGA’s rhetoric is not about reasonable politics. It is about cementing two decades of fomented hate within people so yearning for an imagined past that they’ll kill to retain the dream of power. Politics is just the wrestling we do amongst ourselves in the hopes of gaining just a little bit more self-serving sovereignty than those we disagree with. MAGA sees the political sphere as only for itself; there is no room for anyone else, let alone anyone with a difference of opinion. When others are allowed to exist, it is to feed the MAGA machine in its quest to funnel more money (and resources) to those who already hold masses of it.

Another fact that needs affirming: The left enjoys suggesting conservatives are unintelligent, but there are some strong critical thinkers on the right, and they have done a phenomenal job of dismantling our country’s systems of health, education, environmental protection, and much more in less than nine months – with a lot of support from their base. Please understand that the people actually wielding power are cunning, and they will not stop on their own – they have to be stopped. That’s physics. 

How do we stop them? We stop them with hope, married to action.

But how do we stop them? Especially if you’re like me – totally overwhelmed by the onslaught of losses, low on funds, afraid, not in tip-top physical or mental health, and super inexperienced in organizing. How can one rouse masses of people to join in creating a new reality, pursuing a decent world for everyone – even people we don’t understand and would not choose to befriend? 

We stop them with hope. 

We hope, and then marry that hope to a teensy bit of faith, faith that will grow when we put it to action.

I’m not sure I’d still be alive if Trump had won the presidency in 2020. I was just too stuck in the haze of grief after scores of personal losses from COVID. I was too afraid. I felt so alone. My hope hinged on a Biden-Harris win and the fervent faith of my mother. She lent me some of our generational strength and my hope was reborn. Thankfully, it has sustained. The experience of this latest Trump Administration has helped me to accept that we the people cannot afford to look at our elected officials, in either party, as saviors. They’re just people making choices, in interests they believe are their best. And as our psyches and systems are assaulted by this full MAGA takeover, we the people have to remember we are our own last, best, enduring hope. 

I am a journalist who votes, but I also understand the voting booth isn’t our sole repository of power. It’s a good thing too, because our voting rights are at risk. Trump has, thus far, held to the promises he made in his 2024 campaign. Back then, he even said his supporters would never have to vote again because his administration would fix circumstances so tightly, it wouldn’t be necessary. But we didn’t even need to hear Trump say that to know he and his crew don’t respect democracy or fair elections; they proved that on Jan 6th, 2021. So we must remain actively engaged, even when things get worse. MAGA has changed the rules; we the people must do the same by reimagining and pushing toward something new. 

How do we push? We have to read and absorb our American history from multiple viewpoints, not just the narrow view of those in power. At present, the powerful are working to smother inconvenient histories and truths, as the US Department of Justice recently did by removing a study from its website documenting that domestic terrorists are most often from the radical right wing. 

We have to read accounts of current affairs from multiple viewpoints. We have to engage in critical thinking. We have to accept that even people on our side will disagree with us, sometimes. We have to stick together anyway. We have to do the things that scare us. We have to remember that doing the right thing when wrong is in power is terrifying and, often, dangerous. 

We have to seek joy, and when we find it, share it. We have to tell the truth. We must reject narcissism and embrace empathy. We have to spend time with people much younger and much older than ourselves. We have to listen to their intergenerational wisdom, and apply it to our lives. We have to make real room for people unlike us to be free, because only when they’re free can we access and sustain our own individual freedom. 

“Freedom is not a thing that you get or you gain or you accomplish or you buy,” James and Grace Lee Boggs once explained. “Freedom is essentially a relationship. When you become convinced that society must make a sharp break with past values and practices, you become a revolutionary.” 

Our charge in this moment is to be revolutionaries in our own little corners of the world, in the very places we find ourselves. If you care about freedom, you must not stay silent in the face of hate and injustice – not anywhere, not even when it’s coming from best friends or relatives or relatives during a visit to their homes. You are required to challenge them. You are required to stand up for humanity. You must be the person you imagine you will be in the heroic retelling of our future victory. 

It is the hardest thing to do and, sometimes, you will suffer. The suffering will make you want to quit, especially when you’ve grown enough to see it coming. Find hope in community; your community will challenge and change you. They will be your fuel when you’re waning, your joy when you’re sure we’ve lost, your reminder that putting hope to work through faith – in service to a better future for us all – is not in vain. You have to allow yourself to exist in two spaces at once: the grim reality we’re living in and the peaceful future our work anticipates. You have to know that better is coming – because we will make sure of it. 

I’m telling myself as much as I’m telling you. 

Now let’s gather our hope and faith, and get to work.