“Activists have always battled the odds. but it’s not a matter of Sisyphus rolling that stone up the hill. It’s not Beckett’s blind Pozzo staggering on. It’s more like a legion of Davids, with all sorts of slingshots. It’s not one slingshot that will do it. Nor will it happen at once. It’s a long haul. It’s step by step. As Mahalia Jackson sang out, “We’re on our way”—not to Canaanland, perhaps, but to the world as a better place than it has been before.” Studs Terkel Hope Dies Last.
Reading the stories from activists in Terkel’s book, focuses my eye more clearly on the steps along the way.
For each of us who has been disappointed, disillusioned, despairing, when our hard work has not yet saved the world or even our one small part in it—we are part of an age old tradition–possibly the human condition (in some forms of ‘civilization’ at least).
The more there are of us, the more we persist, the more avenues we take, the better chance we have for justice and goodness to prevail–someday.
It makes sense to be impatient when there is death and suffering at the hands of those who hate, who are greedy, who are twisted by fears of their own…….yet what can we do other than take every step we can see to take.
Each person who is touched by stories you can tell, each being or landscape that is protected by your stance, each time there is hope or joy because of your action…..it has to matter.