partial victories as the world is moved toward, not to, a better state, ending with (re)construction underway and the world changing, not changed. 

The punk movement is anti-establishment, with long ties to political activism and resistance, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian, with a strong ethic of visibility and in-your-face active expression of these sentiments.

Take bloodthirsty, vengeful joy where you can, because the night is dark and the fight is long and there are no knights in shining armor waiting in the wings to slay the dragon at just the right moment of dramatic tension. Be spiteful. Be petty. Be rude. Spray-paint someone’s house. Grab your local senator and tar and feather them, I don’t know. Do whatever you have to do, as long as you’re doing something, as long as you’re taking hold of the world around you in a real way and yanking it in the direction of Slightly Less Terrible.

You can do a lot when you decide to be a stubborn motherfucker who refuses to die.

The work is never finished. The work will never be finished. There will never be a nice, comfortable utopia where we can rest on our laurels and sip strawberry daiquiris by the pool and trust that now things are Fine and we can all relax. Utopia is not a stable system. It doesn’t last. The best we can hope for is five minutes, an hour.

It’s about doing the one little thing you can do, even if it’s useless: planting seeds in the midst of the apocalypse, spitting on a wildfire, bailing out the ocean with a bucket. Individual action is almost always pointless.

How do you do it? How do you manage when the task before you is enormous and impossible? How do you do it? How do you go on? Here’s how you start a fire with two sticks: sheer, simple, bloody-minded obstinacy. That’s how you count the stars, build the library, and go to the North Pole. That’s how you hold the story even when it’s unraveling in your hands. You grit your teeth, and bear the pain, and keep going: One star at a time, one brick at a time, one step at a time.

Going to political protests is hopepunk. Calling your senators is hopepunk. But crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive. The 1% doesn’t want you to have feelings, they just want you to feel resigned.

Hopepunk says, “No, I don’t accept that. Go fuck yourself: The glass is half-full.”  YEAH, we’re all a messy mix of good and bad, flaws and virtues. We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but (and here’s the important part) we’ve also been soft and forgiving and KIND. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.