An essential component of resistance, resilience and persistence—all three—is hope. You have to believe that there is light, no matter how long and dark the tunnel is, so that you can fight, protect yourself and continue. There is no quick fix for the mess we're in, so we've got to be ready to play the long game.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor
Frankl observed fellow inmates of Nazi concentration camps and concluded that
those who had something to hope for—a fiancée, a home or (in his case) an
academic paper to reconstruct—on the whole survived, while those who didn’t,
died, all other things being equal.
During his captivity in the Hanoi Hilton
from 1965 to 1971, Lieutenant Commander Bob Shumaker constructed a home for his
family, line by line and brick by brick—in his mind, as POWs weren’t allowed writing
materials. Eight years later, he built the house, laying the bricks he’d seen
in his mind. “Everyone has to have a dream to preserve in prison. Mine was to
have a house for my family,” he later said. It’s what kept him going.
We who find ourselves imprisoned in the
Project 2025 hellscape also need hope to sustain us as we organize to resist
for however long it takes. Today’s entry for National Poetry Month is therefore
Maya Angelou’s “And Still I Rise.” As your eyes fly across the page, feel
the cadence, the rise and fall of emphasis, the sibilance and glottal stops.
Then watch her recitation below and
experience it even more fully.
“And Still I Rise”
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
©2025 Bas Bleu