I Sometimes Wonder What Those Of Us

Hope Is Not A Lottery Ticket You Can Sit On The Sofa And Clutch, Feeling Lucky. It Is An Axe You Break Down Doors With In An Emergency. Hope Should Shove You Out The Door, Because It Will Take Everything You Have To Steer The Future Away From Endless War, From The Annihilation Of The Earth's Treasures And The Grinding Down Of The Poor And Marginal. To Hope Is To Give Yourself To The Future - And That Commitment To The Future Is What Makes The Present Inhabitable.

Violence Always Seems To Me The Worst Form Of Tyranny. It Deprives People Of Their Rights, Including The Right To Live.

The Poor Have Often Been Subversive Just Because They Don't Always Believe Their Own Depiction As Brutes And Loafers And Leeches, And New Economy Is Making Lots More Poor Or Recognize Their Fellowship With The Insecurity Of The Poor, The Portion Of The Population For Whom The System Does Not Work.

The Battle With Men Who Explain Things Has Trampled Down Many Women - Of My Generation, Of The Up-and-coming Generation We Need So Badly, Here And In Pakistan And Bolivia And Java, Not To Speak Of The Countless Women Who Came Before Me And Were Not Allowed Into The Laboratory, Or The Library, Or The Conversation, Or The Revolution, Or Even The Category Called Human.

More And More I Think Of Privatisation As Being Not Just About The Takeover Of Resources And Power By Corporate Interests, But As The Retreat Of Citizens To Private Life And Private Space, Screened From Solidarity With Strangers And Increasingly Afraid Or Even Unable To Imagine Acting In Public.