Hope is what gives people the energy to act.

[Jackpine Radical]

Hopelessness is a major tool of the Plutocracy. How many people have you heard say "I don't vote; it doesn't matter. They're all the same. There's nothing I can do." You wouldn't believe how many times I heard that while phone banking for Russ Feingold and Tom Barrett.

The great gift of the Egyptian people to Wisconsin was hope, and Wisconsin has amplified the gift and is passing it on to the rest of you.

[The Blue Flower]

1. A gift to people everywhere in fact

Thanks for the reminder

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. So does fury. n/t

[KittyWampus]

3. This is why Cynicism pisses me off. Americans need to encouraged to fight for themselves

Rather than taking away benefits from others.

[Tippy]

4. I have written, I don't remember how many

Posts....Articles...and Letters to the Editor...on "Giving Up Is Not An Option"....

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Don't give up.

Keep writing.

[OneGrassRoot]

6. Huge K&R, and another opportunity to share a favorite Zinn quote:

"TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

— Howard Zinn

[Zorra]

7. I had written off the Democratic party after watching the Senate

submit to republican filibusters when they could have used reconciliation or simply ended filibusters altogether at will. President Obama was equally ineffective at producing the change that we desperately need.

Their repeated, deliberate pathetic spineless futility (in service to multi-national corporations) was the primary reason we no longer have a majority in the House.

I literally lost all hope at the point when the Senate passed the tax cuts for the wealthy when they could have taken it to reconciliation. And then Obama signed off on it. I was so totally done after that.

But the Wisconsin Democratic Senators flight, and the subsequent events in Wisconsin, have given me hope that we can change things.

The truth is, if we strike and boycott on a mass scale, the plutarchy cannot do anything without us if we stand against them, united in solidarity. They would have no one to use and control.

Your post is right on.

[Donnachaidh]

8. we *did* act in 2008 on that emotion

Fat lot of good it's done us since.

[readmoreoften]

9. Yes, but what's happening in Egypt and Wisconsin has nothing to do with putting hope in politicians.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Tell that to the Wisconsin Democrats.