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We Are the Heroes We've Been Waiting For [1]

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Date: 2025-04-06

*I was privileged to be asked to deliver the keynote speech at my local Hands Off protest this past weekend, which was the biggest gathering our community has seen since the Women’s March. The full text of my speech is below. Thanks for reading, and if you like this you can see the video version on my Substack (hopeanyway.substack.com).

No Going Back to Normal

I suspect a lot of us are here today because we’re grieving. Grieving the loss of rights and freedoms we took for granted. Grieving attacks on science, democracy, decency and due process. Grieving the loss of jobs, income, retirement accounts, and vital benefits. Grieving attacks on fellow Americans just trying to live their best lives. Grieving the loss of certainty in the future…and so much more.

Maybe you’re bouncing around the stages of grief, from denial to depression to bargaining to anger and back again. Or maybe you’re feeling them all of them at once! Whatever you’re feeling about the world right now is fine. But…the sooner we can all get to acceptance, the better. And I don’t mean accepting everything that’s going on right now. Far from it. What I mean is accepting the loss, so that we can move forward and get on with living.

Because here’s the truth: The world we knew is gone. The futures we planned on will not come to pass. Everything is different now. “Normal” is gone, and it’s never coming back.

This is wonderful news!

Because “normal” is not that great. “Normal” is environmental devastation, bigotry, political division, corruption, massive wealth inequality, homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, and pollution. “Normal” is plastic and pesticides in our bloodstreams, millions of lives wasted in dehumanizing prisons, wars without end, waves of extinction, and corporate profits taking precedence over human life. “Normal” is abandoning the future for lives of empty consumerism, loneliness, and work without meaning.

We’ve reached the nickel-and-dime phase of our society, where keeping the party going is costing us more than it would to just let it die and start anew. We have to let go, because the sooner we stop looking back and regretting all that might have been, the sooner we can look ahead to what might yet be.

Yes, this process will hurt, and some a lot more than others. Our most essential work right now is to stick together, limit the harm, protect the vulnerable, and ease what suffering we may. But we also need to keep dreaming, because how this all turns out depends vitally on those dreams. This may be the best chance we ever get to build a better world, one defined by truth, justice, beauty, kindness, abundance, solidarity, and a healthy planet. The future is in our hands!

Because here’s another hard truth: no one is coming to save us.

No One Is Coming to Save Us

Not our politicians and political parties. Not our institutions and agencies. And certainly not the media or corporations who would let the whole country burn if they could profit from the ashes. Just look at how quickly the centers of power in this country have abandoned their principles and bowed down, not after a sustained resistance but at the very first suggestion of conflict.

Power only serves power. Money only serves money. We simply can’t count on those with wealth and power to protect the rest of us from a status quo that’s working so well for them.

Again, this is wonderful news! Because it means that we the people get to be the heroes of this story. We get to be remembered as the ones who stood up and fought for freedom, decency, and what’s right when tyranny arrived at our gates.

And in case that sounds too grandiose, let me be clear that heroes aren’t those who do big, flashy things. That’s its own reward. Anyone would do that if they could.

No, heroes are those who do the hard, unrewarded, but necessary things that keep society afloat. Heroes are those who seek the greater good, who work to serve their communities, and who never stop trying to make things better. What makes heroes heroic is not that they succeed but that they fight and keep fighting and never give up. And any one of us can be like that.

So who’s gonna save us? We are!

But, you know, that being said, I’m not so sure we need saving. I’m thinking these petty authoritarians, “alpha-male” morons, and white nationalists are gonna need saving from us. Because we’re not going anywhere. We’re not giving up on democracy. We’re not giving up on truth and science. We’re not giving up on saving the planet. We’re not giving up on the rule of law or the dream of being finally a nation of equals. And we’re not giving up our freedoms or our rights or our hope for a better future.

Only those who won’t be bought ever drive real change. Only those willing to sacrifice their own self-interest for the sake of a higher cause can stand up to power. Only those who fight for higher principles justice, beauty, and truth can never be broken.

Those who fight only for themselves are easily subdued. But when we stand together, indivisible, for all that is good and right and true, those petty money grubbers will shatter against us like a river meeting a boulder.

The Future Is Scary and Unknown

But there’s one final truth we have to swallow: the future is unknown. This could all go horribly wrong.

I wholeheartedly believe that better times await us, and sooner than we think, but I also know that history is the story of great nations crumbling, free peoples falling into servitude, and liberty succumbing to violence and tyranny. The future is only what we make of it.

Which is also good news, because it means that anything is possible.

Which is why we can’t just wait to see how this all turns out. We can’t hunker down. We can’t ride it out. We can’t just hold out until things get better or return to normal. That ain’t happening. We’re facing an inferno, and it will only continue to grow until we either come together to stop it or it runs out of things to burn.

So we have to win. We have to prevail outright and definitively. We have to choose the world we want or someone else is going to choose it for us. In fact, they already are. It’s not enough to overthrow Trump and Musk and their sycophants. We have to create something better to replace them or this will just keep happening. There’s always another wannabe dictator waiting in the wings to rule and subdue.

Love and a Future Worth Fighting For

But it will be okay. Because we will make it okay. We will protect the vulnerable, we will heal the wounded, and we will replace all that is broken with something stronger. We will stick together, and we will prevail.

Unlike those driven by fear, anger, or greed, we have something worth fighting for. We have something to believe in. We have the love, hope, and courage to bend the moral arc of the universe and alter the course of humankind.

Those who live for power are doing everything they can to make us feel hopeless and isolated precisely because they know that if we come together in a spirit of possibility and joy, we’ll be completely unstoppable.

Because we are Americans. This nation belongs to all of us, and we’re done begging for the crumbs from the master’s table. We will take what we need. We will build what we dream. And long after the petty power brokers and cold-hearted capitalists are dead and forgotten in their gilded tombs, the seeds we plant here and now will continue to grow and flourish for generations.

Making Hope

I know that many of us are having trouble finding hope these days. But hope is not the sort of thing that we find; it’s something we create. And it’s something that we create together. Hope lives in community and in the bonds that connect us. If you need more hope, you’re in luck, because I have the formula: Good people, in real places, working together to make things better. That’s it. Like what we’re doing right here today!

Do this and you will feel more hopeful. And then you’ll want to keep doing it, and pretty soon you won’t just feel hopeful—you’ll actually see that hope manifested in the world, becoming real, as things begin to improve all around you.

And yes, if we dare to hope, we will be disappointed sometimes. But, if we don’t dare to hope, we’ll be disappointed all the time, living the hell of a quiet desperation. If we want a better future for ourselves, and our children, and their children, we have to start by believing such a future is possible. And then, dedicate our very lives to bringing it about.

Which is to say, let’s stop waiting to see what happens next and start choosing what happens next. I’m here today because I believe that we can and will create a better future together, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get started! Are you? … Are you ready to build a better Moscow? A better Idaho? A better America? A better world?

Today is the first step. And a great next step is to find a local organization to join and support, like Indivisible or Braver Angels, because we can do so much more when we work together. You can also get to know your elected representatives, either by contacting them relentlessly or, better yet, by running against them! Join a union. Start a union! Whatever you choose, what matters is that you pick something worth defending —a cause, a right, an institution, a community—and then work with others to protect it.

My friends, we are the heroes we’ve been waiting for. And even if the power we hold right here in this square is all we’ve got, it will be enough. A better future is ours for the taking. So let’s get to work and make it happen.

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