Terkel: Hopes Dies Last...

Hope Dies Last
By Studs Terkel

Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. That's what Jessie de la Cruz meant when she said, "I feel there's gonna be a change, but we're the ones gonna do it, not the government. With us, there's a saying, ‘La esperanza muere última. Hope dies last.' You can't lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything."

She, a retired farm worker, was recounting the days before Cesar Chavez and his stoop-labor colleagues founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). It was a metaphor for much of the twentieth century.

As we enter the new millennium, hope appears to be an American attribute that has vanished for many, no matter what their class or condition in life. The official word has never been more arrogantly imposed. Passivity, in the face of such a bold, unabashed show of power from above, appears to be the order of the day. But it ain't necessarily so...

...This is not a new story. It is a strain that has run through the century past, though not as in extremis as in this one… There was always pressure from below: from beleaguered and embattled farmers coming out of the woods; from big-city neighborhood alliances, defying evicting bailiffs; from a threatened march on Washington by black trade unionists, leading to the passage of the Fair Employment Practices Act; and even from some forgotten man who swung from a chandelier during a Waldorf-Astoria dinner of baffled industrialists, shouting "Social security!" It was the very first time I had ever heard that phrase. Naturally, he was subjected to psychiatric care. Of course, that loner didn't cause social security to come to be, but he did help it along. At least I knew what it meant when, during the New Deal, it came to pass.

These troublemakers were, by definition, activists (active: 1. In action, moving. 2. Causing or initiating change. 3. Engaging, contributing, participating). They felt that what they did counted and that they themselves counted...

In the following pages are portraits of the inheritors of the legacy of those past...

 

Indeed...in a way Terkel gets across the "everyday activism" that distills that notion down to the reality of doing the best you can, for yourself, your family and your community (however big...or, in the case of Ian and manny, how niggling, that community might be)...