Hope and Dissent

“To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.”

— Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is a favorite author of mine: she’s an environmental historian and art critic. One especially enjoyable book of hers is Wanderlust: A History of Walking. At Tom Engelhardt’s site TomDispatch, she has a piece about Thoreau, dissent, and the Republican National Convention. Or as the sign of a protester there said: “No, you can’t have my rights, I’m still using them.”