The Hard Math of Hope

Reclaiming Our Future in the Shadow of Oligarchy

Right before a speech recently, someone asked if I was going to “give people hope.” I replied, “I don’t know. I’m going to tell the truth, and that has always given me hope.”

I wrote this with the same purpose. Many of us wake today with a familiar ache—a realization that the America we believed in, or hoped to build, has slipped further from reach. The new administration has risen to power on a tide of fear, division, and economic uncertainty weaponized to consolidate control. Yet, as history shows, even in the darkest chapters of oligarchy, ordinary people have reclaimed power and forged pathways to justice and progress.

The United States has faced periods like this before. During the Gilded Age, robber barons monopolized industries, exploited workers, and manipulated governments to cement their wealth and influence. Modern oligarchy began in earnest with the Reagan era, ushering in wage stagnation for most Americans and unimaginable wealth for a few. Today, that concentration of power rivals the 19th century, with billionaires influencing elections, policy, and even truth itself.

But history tells us this is not the end of the story.

From the Rubble, Movements Are Born

The excesses of the Gilded Age catalyzed the Progressive Era, with antitrust laws breaking up monopolies and unions forcing better wages and conditions. The Great Depression spurred the New Deal, creating safety nets that reshaped the nation. These victories weren’t handed to the people—they were wrested from oligarchs by sustained, collective action.

Moments of destruction often ignite revolutions of renewal. Fear and betrayal, while painful, can galvanize unity. They force us to confront the work ahead, to look into the eyes of neighbors—those who voted for this administration and those who stayed silent—and decide how we craft an irresistible vision of a future that works for us all.

Facing This Moment Together

For many, this administration’s ascent feels like a deeply personal betrayal. The cruelty, scapegoating, and casual misogyny can feel suffocating. But we are not helpless.

Throughout history, moments of profound defeat have sparked transformative change. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Stonewall Riots, and from Birmingham’s brutal resistance to civil rights to the Capitol Crawl pushing the Americans with Disabilities Act, change has emerged when injustice seemed most entrenched. Our darkest moments often precede breakthroughs.

When Florida enshrined a ban on gay marriage in its constitution in 2008, I felt deep despair. I walked through the city, realizing that my neighbors had ratified my dehumanization. Yet, from that loss came clarity. We rallied, we organized, and we won. That moment of rejection became fuel for the victories that followed.

Today, we face a similar question: Is this who we are? Or is this the last gasp of a fearful, outdated generation clinging to power? The answer depends on what we do next.

Finding Light in the Rubble

Real change never comes from the top. It rises from grassroots movements, coalitions of the marginalized, and people finding one another in the rubble of systems designed to suppress them. The Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Suffrage, and the fight for LGBTQ+ rights—all were born from despair but fueled by determination and hope.

This moment calls for that same courage and clarity. Whether you are an LGBTQ+ person fearing a rollback of rights, an environmentalist watching policy be handed to polluters, or a young person betrayed by a broken system, you are not alone. The hard math of this election—the votes, the maps, the headlines—is not the final equation.

We must ask ourselves what kind of country we want to leave for future generations. Then, as our ancestors did, we must do the work to make it so.

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A Familiar Hope

"Quis hic locus?, quae regio?, quae mundi plaga?"
"What world is this? What kingdom? What shores of what world?"

We awake this morning in an America that has given in to its worst instincts:

Fear of difference, racist scapegoating, and a cruel hatred of women.

This was a clash of tribes, one that believes they've "put things right again" and the other that sees the promise of America shattered to smithereens.

And so we find ourselves in this strange world where swagger and smears are the currency. How do we navigate when overnight the world has become even more dangerous?

The loss is not simply of a preferred candidate. It is, as Shakespeare wrote, "like another fall of man," a deep and burning betrayal executed literally by our neighbors.

The awful familiarity of that last sentence has oddly given me some hope this morning.

It reminded me of walking around my city in 2008 after the anti-gay marriage ban was placed in Florida's constitution. I looked at my neighbors' houses realizing six out of ten of my fellow Floridians had thrown me to the wolves. They had ratified something mean, hateful, dangerous, and dehumanizing.

But that loss became a turning point. It focused us, and we began to sift through the rubble to build a resistance that led to victories—first in a handful of state ballot measures and then steadily through the courts. In some ways, the attack on our families was evidence of our progress, of how close we had come to that tipping point.

So, is this the true character of America, its underbelly concealing a rot all the way through?

Or is this the last gasp of the dinosaur, aware that this is the last time victory is possible as their generation dies off and the emerging electorate embraces what they fear?

This was a clash of tribes, but it was not simply two tribes.

There remain millions more voters who did not support Trump. And millions more still who did not vote at all. Community organizers have nourished civil rights movements on fewer crumbs than that. My grandparents were born into a world of lynchings and segregation and dehumanization by law and custom. My parents married when my dark-skinned father and light-skinned British mother could only live on a few Air Force bases because of anti-miscegenation laws.

So whatever group you are part of—LGBT people fearing how far this backlash might push us, climate change activists alarmed that an arsonist now runs the environmental fire department, Black and brown people seeing the surge of angry, rural white voters comforted by white supremacist rhetoric, young voters who sat this one out as an intentional strategy to shatter an already broken system, or even those who—like some Brexiters—will come to regret the folly of following the mob—We need to find each other in the rubble today. We must look for the lights.

As LGBT activists, we have traveled hostile and dangerous terrain before. We learned to find our friends in unexpected places.

The hard math of this election is not the final equation.