Optimism says ‘everything will be fine,’ and pessimism says ‘nothing will work out.’ Hope, on the other hand, has no uncertainties. It is the dogged determination to do what is in our power to make the better future we wish for actually happen.
— Dr. Jane Goodall
Too often, hope is treated as a passive wish for the future—an unassertive feeling that expects things to improve on their own. But if that is hope, it rings hollow. Real hope demands deliberate acts and persistence toward achieving what can actually be accomplished. Hope is not a feeling we wait for; it is a decision we commit to, especially when justice is at stake. While hope affects our emotions, it is fundamentally a cognitive process—one that involves setting goals and devising ways to bring them about.
As such, we don’t abandon hope when circumstances worsen. We sustain it because we care deeply and believe change is possible. Change driven by hope happens because people refuse to quit. For those who believe in a more just world, hope is not abstract—it is about winning real improvements in the world or people’s lives.
Of course, no one can fight every injustice. To be effective, people must focus. For me, committing to hope meant concentrating most of my time and energy on a few things: ending homelessness in Minnesota, dramatically reducing or eliminating poverty, fighting the stigma and discrimination faced by those struggling with mental illness, and helping build a food system that ensures access to high-quality food for everyone.
This essay is being shared at a moment when hope feels especially strained in Minnesota. Only days ago, Renee Nicole Good was murdered by a federal ICE agent, and Minnesota has been crawling with federal immigration officials for weeks. Not only did Renee have her life taken from her, but thousands of Minnesotans, through racial profiling that had been going on for some time, were and are targets for deportation. As a result, some people have been hiding in their homes, unable to work, pleading with others in their community for help paying their bills and getting them groceries.
In moments like these, hope reveals its true nature. Consider that thousands in the Twin Cities metro area are doing exactly what is needed. They blocked federal agents from accessing their targets. On the evening of Renee Nicole Good’s killing, over 10,000 people showed up at a vigil to honor her. And mutual aid networks popped up everywhere to try and help keep their neighbors housed and fed. These acts of courage, kindness, and solidarity reminded me that hope lives in collective action.
Witnessing this kind of sustained care led me to reflect more deeply on what allows hope to endure. A friend recently sent me a video from a vlogger and novelist reflecting on love and hope. Both, the vlogger said, endure only through deliberate decisions over time.
Consider love. While we may feel it deeply with life partners, family, and friends, feelings alone cannot sustain love. Love requires showing up in both easy and difficult times. Life partners often formalize this commitment in their vows—“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” The difficult moments test it—that is when love demands work.
Hope operates the same way. While it may begin as an emotional tug, its realization depends on goal-oriented, planned follow-through.
As stated earlier, real hope does not vanish with the first setback. It is maintained through reflection and perseverance—especially when circumstances challenge our belief in change. Justice-fueled hope grows stronger when individuals refuse to underestimate their influence and recognize that progress often comes through collective deeds.
My hope to end homelessness has been tested repeatedly. Early in my career, in the late 1990s, roughly three to four thousand people experienced homelessness on any given night in Minnesota. That number soon doubled, then later quadrupled. Over two and a half decades, it has multiplied by more than five.
Whole generations have been raised not knowing that homelessness was once widely believed to be a solvable problem. This includes some elected leaders who question the hopeful advocacy of those currently working to end homelessness. As a result, I questioned my work at times. Doubt, I discovered, is not the opposite of hope—it is often where hope must operate. Thinking deeply about it, I realized that if conditions were different before, we could change things again.
For years, that realization has pushed me to act with others in my community. With 28 years devoted to affordable housing and homelessness prevention advocacy, that has meant sustained collective action. For instance, early in my career, alongside other staff at the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless (MCH), I worked with people who had experienced homelessness to register and turn out over 1,000 homeless folks to the polls. Later, in the mid-2000s, with MCH’s Organizer, I worked with supportive teachers, parents, and MCH staff to mobilize hundreds of young people from across the metro area to demand increased resources for youth experiencing homelessness. Later still, working at Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative, I worked with congregational leaders to organize an effort that resulted in more than 2,200 people of faith urging policymakers to allocate $100 million to affordable housing.
These campaigns did not end homelessness. But I believe they helped prevent the numbers from growing as much as they otherwise would have. More importantly, they made hope concrete—proof that caring deeply and acting collectively can change circumstances, even when the work feels overwhelming.
My hopes may feel minuscule compared to what must happen, but when gathered with others who believe in and act for change, they become a force for a more just world.
