Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Nation Books)

Hope in the Dark is an exploration of optimism in an era of seeming defeat and cultural pessimism. When the worldwide movement against war in Iraq failed to persuade the Bush administration against military action, many activists felt that their actions had been futile, their voices ignored. This book arises out of this moment, arguing millions marching against war did not constitute a failure, but a step toward success. Throwing out the crippling assumptions with which many activists proceed, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit proposes a new vision of how change happens. She counts historic victories that we have forgotten-from the fall of the Berlin war to the Zapatista uprising to Seattle in 1999 to Cancun in September 2003-tracing the rise of a sophisticated, supple, nonviolent new activism that unites all the diverse and fragmentary issues of the eighties and nineties. Hope in the Dark is an invitation to recognize the vast, inclusive, inchoate, nameless, wonderful movement that shut down the Seattle WTO, that marched by the tens of millions against war in Iraq, that has learned many lessons from the past and is making its own future, and ours, against empire, against violence, and against the multinationals.