“Emaciated and frail, more than 100 men lie on concrete floors of freezing, solitary cells in Guantánamo, silently starving themselves to death.

Stripped of all possessions, even basics such as a sleeping mat or soap, they lie listlessly as guards periodically bang on the steel doors and shout at them to move an arm or leg to prove they are still conscious.”

These are the opening words of an article that I read last weekend about Guantanamo prison hunger strikers. I felt sick to my stomach as I continued to read but made myself do it anyway.

Then I came across an article about Willie Manning’s impending execution in Mississippi:

“Mississippi is still scheduled to execute a convicted murderer Tuesday despite a lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime and a new admission from the Department of Justice that the forensic investigation was severely flawed.

Willie Jerome Manning, a 44-year-old African-American man, has been in prison for almost 20 years after being convicted for the 1992 kidnapping and murder of Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller, two white college students in Mississippi.”

At the last minute, a court granted Mr. Manning a temporary stay of execution. I took a deep breath and exhaled conscious of the fact that his state-sanctioned murder was only postponed for the time being.

I could feel my anxiety peaking and so I searched for some hope in the darkness. Last Saturday, I moderated a panel of Chicago youth activists and organizers. First, we watched a documentary about the 1963 Birmingham Children’s Crusade. A discussion followed. The young activists/organizers were inspiring and brilliant. This week, young people across the country (particularly in Philadelphia) also banded together to resist racism, austerity, and privatization of their schools. Perhaps all is not lost…

Philly students protest school closures and budget cuts this week.

Resignation and hope fight for supremacy in my psyche. Always. When I think of our treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo or the fact that a state might kill a man who could be “innocent” under our watch, it’s difficult to ignore what Lillian Smith has called our “creeping dehumanization” of each other. It’s easy to understand that we have to reverse this condition; that we need to change. We have to change and I wonder if we can. I turn to James Baldwin’s word for inspiration:”[H]owever painful it may be for us to change, not to change will be fatal.” I know that he is right.

Baldwin writing in 1962 declared that:”If we cannot reorganize our society on a more human and equitable basis, we will soon, as citizens, have lost any ability to reorganize it at all.” The question in 2013: “Is it too late?”

Friends and family sometimes ask how I can immerse myself in my work and remain sane. I usually give a variation of the same answer: I have hope that we can change. I use the word “can” rather than “will” intentionally.

Some words written by Lillian Smith in the early 60s have always resonated for me. I retyped them and pasted them in one of my journals years ago. I return to them often:

“The hope in our future lies in the fact that how change will come cannot be predicted. There is always the moment when the astonishing thing happens, when the changers abruptly leave the highway marked out for them and take to new, unmade paths. This is as it should be. I, as one human being, pray that more astonishing things will come to pass, and quickly, for we on this earth have little time left and none for the repetition of old, cautious errors.”

I guess that I am waiting for the young to “take to new, unmade paths.” It’s where my hope resides.