We once were revolutionaries. We believed in a better world, a just world, a world where every person was never alone. We inked pages with dreams for that world. We strove for it, determined that never mind the adversity – we would win. Because we were in the Right. It doesn’t matter where you look – to the Peasants Revolt, to the Independence of Algeria, to the Women’s Rights movements, to the anti-Apartheid struggles. It doesn’t matter if we won or if we lost. We worked together – not only against a common foe – but for a world that would be bearable to live in.

We fought for that world, and we died for it.

Now only splinters remain – sparks that fly from the heart of collective fires and quickly perish in the cold night sky. Where we once fought for utopias, we now flapper against our oppressor. There is no ‘us’ but when we are against. There is no collective but when we say ‘no’. Our hearts spit bitterly with negativity, not cry out with the collected chant of hope. Have we accepted Hegel so quickly, that we only offer compromise to skip the dialectic?

So I ask those of you who stand with me on the left:

Where is our vision? Where is our utopia? What are we all fighting for?

Now is the time to build it. Now, before we are driven out of steam by those who seek to destroy us. No more ‘NO’ and much more ‘WE WANT’. We need bigger demands, demands that will hollow their engines out just as they have hollowed ours.

They may have the money, but we have the people . We just need something to harness them with, something to give them hope, something to make them feel like there is an alternative to what they face now. We need fuel to drive the burning hearts of justice. We need a Vision.