Hope and Death

I woke this morning to the news of James Forman’s death. He was one of those
heroes of my youth, one of the leaders of the March on Washington in 1963 and
the Freedom Summer of 1964 and the Freedom Rides and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. Forman composed the Black Manifesto in 1969, demanding
[still long over-due and unpaid] reparations for slavery. He endured beatings
and jail and ridicule, and kept on going.

On Democracy Now this morning, Bob
Moses and John
Lewis, two still-living heroes of that time, two colleagues of Forman, spoke
about him. John Lewis is now a Congressman,
and always a leader. Bob Moses, from a far less prominent position, does no
less good work heading up the Algebra
Project, demanding and providing the educational tools that young black
men an dwomen need to succeed.

Cornel West’s eloquent essay on hope makes a fitting meditation for this day
of loss and remembering. Here’s one paragraph from Prisoners
of Hope.

"This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the
spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to
get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies
of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown,
and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively
struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth
inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision,
courage, and hope can keep us sane-and preserve the decency and dignity requisite
to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is
to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word."