Hope Is a Discipline: Do Small Things With Great Love and In a Community

I’m the daughter of a civil rights activist and union organizer who dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to start working in a factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She got her GED, an associates degree, and went on to become a social worker.

If my mother had lived in another time, she would surely have been an artist. She lived through poverty, segregation, de facto segregation, and an environment that told her “No” far more than it told her yes. I recall attending a rally with her once in the 1970s; the crowd was singing “We Shall Not be Moved.” I have a memory of her face: she was proud, she was defiant, she was in community, and she was hopeful.

When editors from The Argus asked me if I would be willing to write a “Letter on Pragmatic Hope,” I was thrilled to accept. To my mind, there are few questions more essential than ”how students—and all of us—can act with purpose and efficacy in an increasingly authoritarian environment. In short, how can we turn despair into action? How do we practice hope?“

I started my time at Wesleyan in 2007 as a professor in the Dance Department, then joined African American Studies and Environmental Studies. I currently serve as the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. As an undergraduate, I attended a small Liberal Arts college during a troubled time. The 1980s and 1990s saw the explosion of the AIDS crisis, the war in Iraq, and a 500% increase in the incarceration of Black people in the U.S. And I was a dance major, trying to do the stuff I’m talking about here.

The issue of Black mass incarceration is the focus of civil rights attorney Brian Stevenson’s organization, “The Equal Justice Initiative.” During Wesleyan’s 2016 Commencement address, Stevenson reminded us: ”We are living in a country that needs more mercy, where we need more hope, where we need more justice.”

Citing other staggering statistics on the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, along with the poverty and subjugation of many communities, Stevenson described a landscape in urgent need of change. I cannot imagine what he would say today. From images of law enforcement gunning down citizens on the streets of Minneapolis, to racist depictions of the Obamas circulated by the President of the United States, to the forced removal of sovereign leaders abroad, we are living in destabilizing and unprecedented times.

Ten years ago on Andrus Field, Stephenson laid out pragmatic, hopeful steps that, taken together, form an effective strategy for change. Building on his recommendations and standing on the shoulders of my ancestors, I propose the following four possibilities as a road map for action in our troubled and troubling times:

1. Do small things with great love;
2. Remain hopeful, as hope is resistance;
3. Imagine the world you long to live in, and start living there;
4. Build and work in coalition.

1. Martin Luther King is often quoted as saying, “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things greatly.” I find those words freeing. The scale of the problems we face can seem so daunting, that you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed and unable to act. Yet our civil rights ancestors and contemporary organizers remind us that small acts carry power. The ways you move through your friendships, families, classrooms, and communities can model the world we need on a larger scale. Your work in community can produce ripple effects like a stone dropped in the water, impacting wider worlds.

I also like to place King’s words into conversation with black feminist educator bell hooks, who teaches us: ”The moment we choose love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose love we begin to move toward freedom.”

If small acts matter, then the way we do them matters as well. Let us do our learning, teaching, organizing, and acting with care and respect for human and more-than-human worlds alike. Let us do small things with great love.

2. I believe the current administration intends to destabilize, to instill fear, and to create despair. With a stated maximalist approach to domestic and international policy, and an intent to “flood the (media) zone” with statements and actions that terrorize and demean, it can be easy to fall into a state of numbness and disbelief. Don’t let them win. In the face of those strategies, hope is resistance. To remain hopeful is itself a political act. Remain hopeful because hope is resistance.

For me, hope is not merely a feeling; it is a discipline. It is dancing. It is the daily commitment to move with intention and skill. When approached in that way, hope is inherently pragmatic—and radical. I’m inspired by activist and organizer Mariame Kaba who talks about the role of hope in her work as a prison abolitionist in this way:

When I would feel overwhelmed by what was going on in the world, I would just say to myself: ‘Hope is a discipline.’ It’s less about ‘how you feel,’ and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other… It’s work to be hopeful… You have to actually put in energy, time, and you have to be clear-eyed, and you have to hold fast to having a vision…it matters to have it, to believe that it’s possible to change the world.

3. Hope is possible just as change is possible, even if their enactment is difficult. We need practice; we need fierceness; and we need imagination to envision new futures. Groundbreaking choreographer Bill T. Jones described his creative practice as imagining the world he would like to see and then embodying that world through creative practice. History has taught us that authoritarian regimes often seek to silence the arts, to censor and conscript imaginative spaces. As Jones suggests, imagination offers the possibility to envision futures and worlds—that’s powerful. You don’t have to be an artist to inhabit imaginative spaces. We can all imagine, and embody, the world we long to live in. As we imagine the worlds we long for, we can start enacting those worlds and effecting change.

4. But we cannot do this work alone. History reminds us that durable change is built in community. With the death of the Reverend Jesse Jackson on Feb. 17, I’m reminded of the powerful civil rights coalitions of the 1960s that helped end segregation and ensured the voting rights of Black peoples. In particular, I’m reflecting on the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Those college students, in coalition with civil rights leaders like Dr. King, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, white college students from the north, and ordinary citizens of all ages from the south, operationalized sit ins, freedom rides, and educational campaigns supported by theater and storytelling. Those activists were instrumental in the passing of the 1964 and ’65 Civil Rights Acts. Coalitions can allow us to bridge differences without erasing them. They expand our reach and make action more effective. In our highly polarized cultural moment, hope, and change, can be sturdier if we build and work in coalition.

We are living in difficult times. But difficulty can create possibility. If we do small things with great love, imagine the worlds we long for, and work to build those worlds in coalition—we can create pathways towards more just, more sustainable, more peaceful, and more emancipating futures.

Pragmatic hope is not naïve. It is rigorous. It is embodied. It is collective. And it is necessary.

Nicole Stanton is the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and can be reached at nstanton@wesleyan.edu.