To refuse to participate in shaping our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do).

Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming.

It means doing the unromantic and tedious work necessary to forge meaningful coalitions, and it means recognizing which coalitions are possible and which coalitions are not.

It means knowing that coalition, like unity, means the coming together of whole, self-actualized human beings, focused and believing, not fragmented automatons marching to a prescribed step.

It means fighting despair….

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and social activist who was born in New York to parents from the Caribbean.

The text above the separator line is from Learning from the 60s, which is part of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984). Lorde was particularly focused on issues involving race and oppression, but her words are relevant to all of today’s critical issues.

Individually, we may not affect material change, but working with others, that becomes a real possibility.