Hope In The Dark: The Untold History of People Power

Solnit wrote the 2015 foreword to accompany a later edition of the book, which was originally published in 2004, in the aftermath of the Bush administration’s policies and the decision to go to war in Iraq. While that historical moment has passed, the defeatism, cynicism, and amnesia that defined it have not, even as magnificent events occurred that changed the status quo and gave us grounds for hope. The years between 2003 and 2015 saw rising economic inequality and the surveillance capitalism of global tech companies; however, a rising consciousness toward equality spurred movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.

Solnit defines hope, not as a naive presumption that everything will be okay, but rather as something that concerns “broad perspectives with specific possibilities […] that invite or demand that we act” (Location 100). To achieve this type of hope, we must alter our understanding of victory. While absolutists see victory as everything being well for an eternity after the battle is won, a more realistic notion of hope is the recognition of local wins against injustice, both in the present and in an overview of the past. Instead of an end, such victories are “encouragement to keep going” (Location 147).