teethleave:“Well, I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic....

teethleave:

“Well, I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. What has kept me going has been the development of new modes of community. I don’t know whether I would have survived had not movements survived, had not communities of resistance, communities of struggle survived. So whatever I’m doing I always feel myself directly connected to those communities and I think that this is an era where we have to encourage that sense of community particularly at a time when neoliberalism attempts to force people to think of themselves only in individual terms and not in collective terms. It is in collectives that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”

—Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, Chapter Three: We Have to Talk about Systemic Change (Interview by Frank Barat in Paris [December 10, 2014])