Happy New Year! No, Really!!

New plans for Another World is Possible, and why joy is at the root of all of them

Abood and Zain Abed celebrating New Year’s Day in Gaza

This morning I woke to this beautiful photo and note.

“A simple New Year celebration at home,” wrote Substack creative, Hany Abed, from Gaza. “A small cake, some coffee, a few snacks, and two smiling children….My mother and my sisters…We may not have much, but we always make space for joy whenever we can. Moments like these remind me why we keep going.”

Happy New Year, Everyone. I don’t know about you, but I was only too happy to see the backside of 2025.

I know it is random, deciding that a new year begins 11 days after the winter/summer solstice (depending on your hemisphere), and not, for example, on the solstice itself, or some other day of astronomical/seasonal significance. But the truth is, a new year begins every day, and every day is the first day of the rest of our lives.

I’ve been meditating on joy the past two days. The genocide in Gaza has largely consumed my capacity for joy these past 28 months, and what joy I do feel largely feels unfair, unearned, or shameful.

But I’ve come to believe that joy is not only not shameful, but a moral obligation. It is as essential to our capacity to work effectively for social change as breathing.

I’m not talking about some New Age version of joy rooted in privilege, or blinking reality and pretending that the world isn’t full of horror, that our own and others’ species aren’t suffering terribly under the boot heels of capitalism, imperialism and fascism.

I’m talking about joy as the fundamental nature of our condition, to paraphrase Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh. I’m talking about joy as the necessary precondition to radical nonviolent action.

A Buddhist monk, a Zen master born and raised in Vietnam, and exiled/condemned for being pro-communist because he promoted peace and an end to the Vietnam War, Thich Nhat Hanh was a leader in the movement of Engaged Buddhism.

No stranger to the agony, terror and grief of war, Brother Thuy nonetheless maintained that unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us.

To that end, as we move into 2026, I’m going to be making some changes to Another World is Possible.

A winter sunrise at the land we’re privileged to steward.

The first is to publish regularly and more often.

You all have been so supportive and so patient with me during these first two years as I’ve struggled with illness, grief, overwork, and difficulty finding my voice and clarity. I can’t thank you enough for your constancy, for your spiritual and financial support, and your faith in me.

Henceforth, I intend to publish once a week at least, probably on Sunday (unless an item requires immediacy).

My focus will be on the following four components I see as essential to successful struggles for social change.

1. Care. This can take many forms—self-care, building community, mutual aid, etc. The point is, we have to put on our own oxygen masks before helping others, but then we actually have to help others. Folks can’t wait till after the revolution to eat.

2. Education. I am not a journalist, nor do I wish to be one. I prefer to

   1. discuss tools for organizing,

   2. share the history of successful campaigns for change,

   3. and provide background information for understanding current actions of political, social or economic actors.

   But

   mainstream media has, for the most-part, abandoned their responsibility as defenders of the Fourth Estate. Therefore,

   d. at times, I will share news that the mainstream ignores, but which I think is vital to know as we go forward together.

   Today’s example is brought to you by Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch who labored to put together this amazing compendium of the year 2025 in ICE Abductions. It is a long, and far from joy-inducing, read, but if you want to understand what is happening in U.S. immigration in one sitting, is it a goldmine. Save it for reference if you don’t want to read it now.

   If we don’t know and understand the social and political injustices our societies are facing, we cannot begin to transmute that suffering into a campaign to build a society of joy.

3. Ideas. My experience of liberation theory mostly consists of male activists saying “Chomsky, Chomsky, Chomsky,” and male graduate students saying “Gramsci, Gramsci, Gramsci,” so I’ve never been a big fan.

   However, I agree with bell hooks: political theory is vital because it’s a tool to make sense of pain and fight for freedom, making the personal political and the theoretical practical. She argues that theory is a liberatory practice for healing from oppression and moving beyond abstract thought to name injustices, foster collective resistance, and create new worlds, grounding radical ideas in lived experience to dismantle systems of racism, sexism, and capitalism.

4. Strategy and Tactics. This will center on community organizing, campaign tactics, and skills development and trainings.

   All of this, even the most painful news, I will endeavor to share from a place of hope, a place of finding beauty and goodness and reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Ah, the good days when it used to rain at our farm.

The other night I was watching the first few episodes of the latest season of 9-1-1 with my dear friends (who, not incidentally, help produce the show). A very powerful moment between Athena Grant (Angela Bassett) and her younger self (Nigerian-American miracle Pepi Sonuga-Rogers) reminded me that it’s the darkness of the night sky that makes the stars so incredibly beautiful.

Both iterations of Athena are grieving their lovers, lost in the brave service of others. Both are in profound, lonely pain, at their tether’s end, literally and figuratively, and unsure they want to keep going. But Athena-the-Elder finds her strength and her will to live in helping her younger self see that the moments of joy and hope make all the pain worthwhile.

“They keep us going, those stars, those moments, like a dance between lovers or a laugh between friends, they pull us along, they warm us, they blaze with all that is good and tell the darkness, ‘Not today.’

She argues that, even though pain is the price we pay for joy—because everything ends, because love ensures loss—it is worth it.

“Any second, instant, moment of joy is like a diamond in the darkness. And letting go, floating away, is not how you get to the next [star. You get there] by reaching out and going together.”

Thank you for walking with me through the pain and suffering as we reach out for the next star of joy.