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solidarity
Hope Is Not a Villain—But This Kind of Hope Is
We need a movement ready to restore America to the path of becoming the country we've dreamed of being for centuries. Not the fantasy of individual escape, but the reality of collective power.
Jul 04, 2025
I dropped out of high school. Got my GED. Worked as a general contractor in East Tennessee. Built things with my hands. Fixed busted systems. Lived paycheck to paycheck. That was my life, and for most of it, hope meant something real. Hope that a decent day's work would pay the bills. That a roof over your head and a future for your kids wasn't too much to ask.
But somewhere along the way, hope got hijacked.
Now hope looks like scratching off lottery tickets. Buying crypto hoping to get rich quick. Praying your side hustle turns into the next big thing. We don't hope to fix the system anymore.
We hope to escape it. And that kind of hope will kill us.
You see it everywhere. People identify with billionaires instead of their neighbors. They defend the rich because maybe someday they'll be rich too. They talk about taxes like they're one lucky break away from needing a tax shelter. The Hunger Games tried to warn us, and instead we started dressing like the Capitol.
I don't want to kill hope. I want to reclaim it.
Look at the numbers. The average person has a better chance of getting struck by lightning than becoming a billionaire. The odds of winning the lottery? About 1 in 292 million. Meanwhile, the odds of having medical debt? Nearly 1 in 3 Americans. The odds of being laid off or priced out or wiped out by rent? Closer to 1 in 2.
So why do we still believe? Because facing the truth is harder. The truth that the game is rigged. That the rungs of the ladder we were promised have been sawed off; the American Dream got replaced by American Denial.
Hope used to mean something different. It used to mean collective progress. Solidarity. We marched for better wages. We fought for civil rights. We built schools and unions and co-ops. We didn't dream of becoming the landlord. We fought to make rent fair for everyone. But now even our dreams are privatized. We traded shared ambition for selfish aspiration. And we're losing the plot.
I grew up hearing stories from my grandfather, who was one of 13 kids in a sharecropping family. One generation later, he owned 40 acres, grew tobacco, raised cattle, had houses to rent out to his kids. That wasn't just personal grit. That happened because America was actually building things back then. The TVA brought electricity to our region. The interstate highways connected us to the world. There were pathways to a better life that didn't require winning the lottery.
The pathways to prosperity were dismantled. I know because I watched it happen. My woodworking company made furniture components for Lazy Boy, Berkline, Universal, and Vaughn Furniture before NAFTA and CAFTA gutted us. It wasn't just my business. Our whole region got hollowed out while corporate America chased cheap labor overseas.
The pathways to prosperity were dismantled... Our whole region got hollowed out while corporate America chased cheap labor overseas.
The knowledge walked out the door with the last shift supervisor. Towns that had built middle-class prosperity around making things became ghost towns. Skills that took generations to develop got thrown away because some MBA in New York decided labor was cheaper in Mexico. We went from a country that made things to a country that made money off money. From building wealth to extracting it.
Now what do we have? The gig economy. Work three jobs and still can't afford rent. Get told to hustle harder while billionaires build rocket ships. We're supposed to be grateful for the privilege of driving for Uber while the guy who owns Uber buys his fourth mansion.
The whole system is designed to keep us hoping for individual escape instead of collective change. Keep buying those scratch-offs. Keep believing that if you just work hard enough, grind long enough, maybe you'll hit it big. Meanwhile, the people who rigged the game are laughing all the way to the bank.
They want us to think like temporary embarrassed millionaires instead of permanent working people. They want us to defend their tax cuts because someday we might need them too. They want us to vote against our own interests because we've been sold a dream that we're all just one good idea away from joining the club.
The whole system is designed to keep us hoping for individual escape instead of collective change.
But here's what they don't want us to figure out—we're stronger together than any of us could ever be alone. The TVA didn't happen because one guy got lucky. The interstate highways didn't get built because somebody won the lottery. Social Security didn't happen because workers hoped to get rich. These things happened because people organized, fought, and built something together.
I don't want to kill hope. I want to reclaim it. I want a hope that says we can fix this country, not just get rich enough to escape its problems. I want a hope that builds instead of bets. That organizes instead of idolizes. That sees neighbors instead of competitors.
These things happened because people organized, fought, and built something together.
I want hope that understands we don't need to wait for permission from billionaires to make things better. We don't need to hope they'll trickle some wealth down to us. We can build our own wealth by building things that matter. We can create our own prosperity by investing in each other.
What we need is a movement that's ready to do the big things, the hard things. A movement that understands you have to impeach Supreme Court justices who violate constitutional norms or are corrupt. That you have to take a DOGE-like approach to removing revolving door lobbyists from corrupted institutions like the FDA and the SEC. That you have to go hard against the very people who will stand in your way—the same people we're going to see standing in the way of Zohran Mamdani in New York if he's elected mayor. And too often those folks have a D by their name.
We need a movement ready to restore America to the path of becoming the country we've dreamed of being for centuries. Not the fantasy of individual escape, but the reality of collective power. Not lottery tickets and crypto dreams, but the hard work of building something that actually serves the people who live here.
That's the kind of hope worth having. That's the kind of hope that actually works. And that's the kind of hope that scares the hell out of the people running things now.
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This Is What Authoritarianism Looks Like—and How We Fight Back
Sunrise is launching a new campaign to end the oligarchy and save our futures.
Jun 18, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and his cronies are waging war on the American people. This was on full display last week. Trump deployed the National Guard to aid his mass abduction of undocumented immigrants. A U.S. senator was handcuffed and thrown to the ground for asking the Trump regime a basic question. Meanwhile, as the Atlantic hurricane season kicked off, Trump gutted climate rules and announced his intention to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But, to be honest, this week has made me feel hopeful. It feels like the tides are turning in our direction. In LA, Angelenos refused to let Trump’s raids deter them and mobilized to protect their city. Millions of people turned out on Saturday for the No Kings protests.
And I’m seeing thousands of people get ready to launch Sunrise’s new campaign, End the Oligarchy, Save our Futures. We’re building a mass movement of young people that can disrupt business as usual so that we can end Big Oil and bring down the oligarchy that’s letting Trump hold onto power. We’re launching the campaign Wednesday night—I hope you’ll join me.
If students disrupt business as usual, if workers walk off the job, if government workers don’t cooperate with Trump, the system grinds to a halt.
People are mobilizing because they’re starting to see through Trump’s facade. He claims the popular will while representing billionaires. He claims a mass movement while barely being able to fill the stands of his parade. Trump’s approval rating continues to drop as his draconian policies come into full display. And his chaotic attempts to hold on to power reek of desperation.
You don’t deploy the National Guard if you’re not afraid of what protests might grow into. You don’t shove a senator to the ground for asking a question if you have a good answer to his question. You don’t cancel town halls and shut down debate in Congress on legislation unless you are afraid of people realizing that you’re decimating Medicaid, killing clean energy jobs, and taking food stamps away from millions of people.
The way I see it is, we are living in a turbulent time—a ton is possible, for good or bad. Yes, the oligarchs are in formation, but we, too, are getting in formation. And, there are many more of us than there are of them. There are millions of us who are sick and tired of the status quo, who want good jobs, healthcare, lower rent, a four-day work week, and a stable planet. Critically, this system depends on our cooperation to function. If students disrupt business as usual, if workers walk off the job, if government workers don’t cooperate with Trump, the system grinds to a halt.
Throughout history, that’s how working people across race, religion, and borders have organized to bring down authoritarians and oligarchs and win the world we deserve. That too, must be the playbook of our generation and of our time.
That’s what Sunrise’s new campaign is all about. We’re taking aim at one of the key pillars of Trump’s oligarchy: Big Oil billionaires. Three of the top seven donors in the 2024 election are oil billionaires. Those three donors alone spent $360 million helping Trump and the GOP win.
Big Oil could be Donald Trump’s Achilles' heel. Climate and environment are consistently one of the issues where Trump is least trusted. In authoritarian countries across the world, it’s often issues of corruption and infrastructure failure that are the last straw for millions of people. And this summer, we will be putting Donald Trump’s corruption and failure to govern on full display.
This year, like every year, climate disasters will ravage our country. Heatwaves will be longer and hotter, hurricanes stronger, fires will burn faster, and floods will spread further. And while that happens, Donald Trump will be defunding government services like FEMA that are meant to help people, and protecting his oil billionaire friends. He certainly won’t be willing to tell the truth about the climate crisis, or willing to send money.
We will be there to put his hypocrisy and corruption on full display. And if we’re successful, then this could be our equivalent of the bridge collapse that led Prime Minister Milos Vukevic to resign in Serbia or the corruption scandal that doomed President Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea. It could be a turning point in public opposition to Trump, laying the groundwork for the type of mass movement we need to kick him and his cronies out of power.
That’s our plan. We’re organizing young people around the country to strike from school and disrupt business as usual. We’re making sure millions of people know what Big Oil and Trump are doing to our communities. We’re demanding politicians stand up to Big Oil and make polluters pay for the costs of climate disasters.
We’re building up to May 1, 2028, when the United Auto Workers and other unions are aligning the expiration of their contracts. It could be the most impactful wave of action from working people in generations, and we intend to make sure millions of students are ready to join workers in demanding an overhaul of our political and economic system so that it finally works for everyday people.
It’s a bold plan, but if we pull it off, it will change the course of history. It’s going to require all of us stepping up. Whether you join us on Wednesday or not, I hope to see you in the streets for the fight ahead.
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What Protesters Know About Human Nature That Trump Doesn't
They know the real story of human evolution isn't about the strongest or most ruthless individuals surviving. Instead, our story is about cooperation and empathy.
Jun 14, 2025
In Los Angeles, protesters are standing between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and families. In Chicago and New York, all around the country, they're refusing to let children be torn from their communities. They're risking arrest to protect their neighbors, doing what humans have always done: refusing to give up on each other.
These protesters understand something that Trump's administration, and Elon Musk, fundamentally don't: We are not monsters. When President Donald Trump releases lists of "killers, rapists, and drug dealers" to justify mass deportations and disappearances of our beloved community members, when politicians paint entire communities as threats to our survival, they're selling us an ancient lie about who we are. And everyone taking to the streets knows it's a lie.
What the Protesters Understand
The protesters know that Trump's attack on immigrants isn't just inhuman, authoritarian policy, it's also outdated and genuinely bad science that contradicts the very reason our species continues to exist. They understand that when one of us is under attack, we all are.
The lie Trump tells goes like this: Humans are fundamentally selfish, competitive creatures living in a "dog eat dog world" where survival means stepping on others. It's a story that despots have told throughout history because it makes their cruelest policies seem inevitable. If we're all potential monsters, then we need strong leaders to protect us from each other. If compassion is naive, then brutality becomes wisdom.
Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren't worthy of moral consideration.
Elon Musk made this explicit recently when he called empathy "civilizational suicidal" and claimed that empathy is "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization." The tech mogul and unelected government official described caring for others as a "bug" that's being "exploited" and "weaponized." Musk is attempting to reframe our greatest evolutionary strength as our fatal flaw.
But if this were true, you wouldn't be reading this right now and I would not be writing these words. Our species would have gone extinct long ago. The protesters know this instinctively, and science proves them right.
We Are the Descendants of Carers, Not Killers
What do the protesters understand that Trump doesn't? They know the real story of human evolution isn't about the strongest or most ruthless individuals surviving. Instead, our story is about cooperation and empathy. Early humans knew that we cannot tear ourselves apart because our strength comes from being in community with one another. The humans who shared food during famines, who cared for the sick, who worked together to solve problems, they are our ancestors. Influential early psychologist Sigmund Freud could not be more wrong when he said that we are the descendants of murderers. No, you and I, all of us, are the descendants of carers.
Our caring nature is something we have been able to gather empirical facts about, confirming this across multiple scientific disciplines. Anthropologist Kristen Hawkes has shown how grandmothers caring for offspring allowed for more descendants and drove longevity in our species. Primatologist Frans de Waal has documented empathy and fairness in our closest evolutionary relatives. Even among nonhuman species, generosity is the norm: vampire bats share blood with unrelated bats to prevent starvation, and sparrow-like pied flycatchers will risk their lives to help drive away predators from non-relative birds.
We don't have to look to the past or to other species to see the evidence of our inherent compassionate nature being our strength, not our weakness. We can look at our own children. Toddlers as young as 14 months will spontaneously help others—handing objects to people who can't reach them, picking up dropped items, sharing resources equally even when they could keep more for themselves. This happens before any cultural conditioning, before they're taught to be "good." Research shows that 18-month-olds will help unfamiliar adults regardless of parental presence or encouragement; these fascinating studies suggest that this instinct to help is intrinsic to who we are.
This is our default mode. Cooperation isn't something we have to learn, it isn't a weakness, it isn't destroying civilization. Cooperation and solidarity led to our evolution and are our greatest strengths.
When We Believe We're Monsters, Monsters Win
So why do we keep hearing a different story about our human nature from people like Trump and Elon? Because the lie serves those who hoard wealth and power. When they want to justify policies that violate our moral instincts, they first have to convince us that morality itself is naïve, that empathy is a weakness.
Trump's rhetoric about immigrants is more than dangerous white supremacy in action, it's strategically designed to make us forget who we are. By flooding the media with dehumanizing language about people "poisoning the blood" of America, by claiming immigrants are "not humans" but "animals," by deploying Marines against protesters in Los Angeles, his administration is trying to override our natural empathy and tendency toward care for one another with manufactured fear.
The protesters in Los Angeles and around the country are refusing to dehumanize themselves by allowing anyone in our community to be dehumanized.
Trump's approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, "The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature." Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about "blood poisoning" to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren't worthy of moral consideration.
The current administration's approach follows historical patterns predictably. First, criminalize an entire population with selective statistics and inflammatory rhetoric. Then, when people naturally recoil from the cruelty of family separations and mass deportations, send in troops to suppress that moral instinct. Finally, frame any resistance as evidence that society is breaking down and needs even harsher measures. Trump has been orchestrating the chaos he needs to justify martial law.
Why This Matters Now
The protesters in Los Angeles and around the country are refusing to dehumanize themselves by allowing anyone in our community to be dehumanized. They are standing up for immigrants, refusing to let children be abducted from schools, because they understand that a society that abandons empathy for some will eventually abandon empathy for all. They know that when we allow the dehumanization of any group, we weaken the very bonds that make civilization possible.
Resisting the lies Trump tells us about human nature is urgent. If we believe the lie that humans are fundamentally selfish, we may become passive in the face of policies that violate our deepest values. We accept mass deportations and disappearances because we're told those who are being removed are monsters. We support militarized responses to peaceful protests because we're convinced our neighbors are our enemies.
But those are all lies. We have to hold on to the truth of who we are. We see that policies based on fear and division make us less safe, not more. We understand that our liberation truly is bound together. We see that people protesting the disappearances of beloved community members are fighting for all of our freedoms and rights. They represent the truth of who we are.
We are not a species of monsters barely held in check. We are not doomed to destroy each other when resources get scarce or when we encounter people who look different from us. We are the species that figured out how to care for each other across genetic lines, how to cooperate with strangers, how to build civilizations based on shared values rather than shared DNA. We have 14-month-olds who instinctively help others, brains that reward us for fairness, and genes that predispose us toward generosity. Moving toward collective liberation is our true nature.
This is what our true nature looks like in action. Not Musk's "bug" to be eliminated, not Trump's weakness to be exploited, but our species' greatest strength. When we stand up for each other, refuse to dehumanize anyone in our communities, and build futures where everyone can thrive, we're not being "suicidally empathetic." We are being magnificently, dangerously, revolutionarily human.
And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community. This is the power that topples empires. Not by denying humanity as they do, but through the simple, revolutionary act of affirming it for everyone.
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