But it isn’t. Believe me when I tell that the darkest hour is right before the dawn.
In my teens, we were fighting to end wars, and to see that everyone had equal rights and opportunities. We were in the streets, and in the halls of universities. We were beaten. We were arrested. But we won the battles.
Later on, we fought for women to be allowed those rights, too. And bodily autonomy, and we thought we’d won that battle, too.
After that, we fought apartheid in South Africa, and we thought that at least there, the job was done.
We were wrong, because having won the battles, we confused it with winning the war, but I tell you now, that doesn’t make our efforts and our gains insignificant.
Now some of those battles need to be fought all over again, and there are issues piling up on top of these, things like climate chaos and lgbtq+ rights, for example.
And it’s hard, I know. It feels so exhausting, but we need to stay on it. We (especially my generation) need to get back on the streets and into the boardrooms and fight like hell.
In the beginning, in each of these successive movements, we felt as though we were getting nowhere. That the people in charge would never listen, never change.
In the beginning, we were dismissed as naive, the issues were trivialized and mocked, vilified and insulted.
And then we were subjected to violence.
But little by little, we made gains. People from every age group and every walk of life began to hear our words and quietly at first and then with more insistence, they began to openly support our causes.
We changed their minds and their hearts.
So don’t give up. Redouble your efforts and shout ever louder.
Because eventually, if enough noise is made by enough people, we will scare those fuckers right down into their expensive dress shoes, and they will back down.
Traveling Light 