On the other hand, I feel really sad and I will redirect my work in the years to come. Clearly, many people haven’t understood the left’s main message: We’ve seen a huge divide over the last year, and I want to find a world where leftists, progressives, and liberals can work together even if we have different situations. theories of change.

Isaias Hernandez, environmentalist and storyteller nicknamed “QueerBrownVegan”

I feel defeated, but I reference historical resistance movements that faced horrible injustices. More than ever, I rely on evidence-based hope. It is not enough to take wishful thinking and hope and pray that things will improve, but to remember that there are solutions, that people and organizations are working day and night to ensure a secure future.

It was never a title, a logo or a piece of data that moved me. It’s the people telling stories that moved me. And that’s what we need now: a new era of storytellers who will dispel doom, rewrite the blooming tales, and provide us with solutions as we continue to build power in our communities.

Maxine Bédat, general director of the New Standard Institute

I’m not faced with a “why bother?” ” mindset. We do not exist in a binary win-lose logic, we live in a constantly evolving ecosystem and there are still essential levers to advance our collective work, both at the level of each state and outside the United States. Remember that a state like New York has the 10th largest economy in the world, California the fifth.

Personally, I’m thinking and trying to understand what made the majority of Americans support such a different vision. Only if we can learn a few lessons from this can we lead majority coalitions for a future in which we can all thrive.

Rebecca Burgess, founder and director of Fibershed

I am more committed than ever to rebuilding cooperative, racially inclusive value networks for food and fiber systems that direct profits to workers and those at the base of the value chain. This entire movement to the right in our country (Democrats as centrists and Republicans as fascists) has been driven by extremely rich political organizing efforts.

We are paying the political price for wealth inequality and the concept of whiteness, which continues to propel Trumpism on an unacceptable scale. We are a country built on systemically racist policies that, by and large, we refuse to confront.

Restoring ecosystem function (our soils), fully reforming racist policies and rebuilding rural prosperity (centered on ecosystem restoration and a new circular bioeconomy): these are the cornerstones of resilience. It is the slow and steady march towards collective liberation. (I) have a strong feeling that we are only going to get stronger and clearer from this mess.

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