Three ways for activists to stay hopeful in these grim times | Natasha Walter

I work with refugee women, and know how hard it can be to stay optimistic. Even small positive steps should be celebrated

“Leftwing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.” So said the Nancy Mitford heroine who fell in love with a communist, and there is an awful ring of truth to her words. That sadness has started to seem relentless lately. I won’t parse the reasons, since my readers will know them all too well. Suffice it to say that the headlines are constantly terrible, and the unreported detail often worse. Campaigns that start with energy keep getting dragged down into factions and splinters, mud-slinging and taunts. And sometimes personal tragedies align with political setbacks in a way that feels impossible to rise above. One of the most powerful influences in my political as well as my private life has been my mother, who first took me to a protest in 1967 at Aldermaston when I was three months old, and later introduced me to feminism. A month after she died last year I went to a women’s march alone and stood there rain- and tear-streaked, feeling as if I’d lost my compass.

Related: Is compassion fatigue inevitable in an age of 24-hour news?

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wNnOOf