An Invitation to Lock into Revolutionary Hope

I recently read a poem that described hope as a feather that perches on the soul, sings a tune and never stops. Hope is a global phenomenon that enjoys many definitions and iterations, but what does it mean to lock into the radical, action-oriented, love-directed concept of revolutionary hope? To hope is to have agency, to be willing to live even though everything around us screams death. Hope is the ability to bravely build individual and collective futures on love, community, sacrifice and critical awareness. 

Hope is the desire to ask critical questions of normative assumptions and refuse to merely adapt. It shows up as the intentional exploration and intellectual rigour outside knowledge systems that have robbed us of legitimacy. Hope is the rejection of knowledge hegemonies that require us to filter our lived experience through a white supremacist prism. Hope is the refusal to adapt to distorted notions of our identities and the radical action to build new embodied present and pluriversal worlds. 

We’re in the middle of a vortex of pain with colonial violence and its resulting poly-crisis, the reinforcement of oligarchs through the bro-ligarchy and fascism’s loss of its very transparent veil. For people on the margins, keeping our eyes on what we know and our hearts on our dreams of liberation seems herculean. Critical consciousness requires us to see the world as an occurrence that can be read, re-read, built, and rebuilt. This task is worthy of our rigour, fervency, transparency, humility and curiosity. We must lock into the revolutionary hope that allows us to engage in non-reactionary world-building—bringing to life the imaginations of a new world that is critically aware of oppression and the need for liberation. 

We must become familiar with but unafraid of dominant narratives sustained by the hegemonies of power, which create a distorted worldview and cause a separation between our minds and hearts. This separation is both cognitive and embodied and renders colonised peoples as pawns in global politics and power struggles — this misalignment is a gold mine, and we must deprive them of gold. So, how do we realign with our dreams of liberation in private and public spaces? How do we confront a world that requires docility from us? How do we survive in a world that harvests our despair to fuel the thirst for power? The simple answer is the practice of Revolutionary hope. Revolutionary hope calls us to acknowledge who and where we are in this world and how we fit into the collective. It requires a profound recognition that we cannot live as though our role is simply to adapt.

Revolutionary hope is not the blind desire for what was; we must not be caught in the romanticisation of pre-colonial realities. We are invited to alchemise, to know what was, and to build a world that is. We must reject oppression Olympics and identity politics and recognise them for what they are: a wrench in our ability to express and receive solidarity. What is our political awareness and struggle worth if we cannot link arms?  

This is a call to critical reflection, recognition and acknowledgement of what this world is, an invitation to meaning-seeking and sense-making, the cultivation and nurturing of care, community, the desire and labour for collective healing and the nourishment of our spirits as we sing our songs and perfect our dance. 

Revolutionary hope is knowing that when our oppressors become versed in the songs of our movement, we must pivot and make new songs. 

Written by Omolara Oriye, Co-dreamer, Liberation Alliance Africa

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top

If You Would Like
To Make A Donation

Bank Details

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx