There's tremendous disillusionment all across the country

The point is to try to get to a situation where the society and all its institutions and arrangements are set up so as to maximize the options for people to pursue the healthier alternatives. And I really don't think there's been a better period in modern history for organizing towards that than there is right now, actually. In the United States, for example, about three-quarters of the population thinks that the future is going to be "objectively worse" than the pastin other words, that their children won't live like they do. About half the American population thinks that both political parties just ought to be disbanded, they're useless. The disaffection from institutions is always high, and it's been going up very consistently in past years. These are conditions under which organizing for social change ought to be very much possible-if we're not doing it, it's our own fault: these factors have not been true in the past.

But at the same time, it's also true that people feel hopeless. I mean, part of the disillusionment is that they just don't see anything else-they don't see a solution, or any alternatives. Even at the depths of the 1930s Depression, which was objectively much worse than today, people were never hopeless the way they are today. Most people felt it's going to get better, we can do something about it, we can organize, we can work. I mean, they had illusions too, like there were a lot of illusions about Roosevelt, for examplebut the illusions were combined with something real going on. Today what people mainly feel is, it's going to get worse, and there's nothing we can do about it.

So what we're faced with is a combination of a very high degree of disillusionment, and a very low degree of hope and perception of alternatives. And that's exactly where serious organizers ought to be able to step in.