Naomi Klein on a forward-looking agenda

Continuing recent posts on a progressive agenda, Klein said we need this vision to sustain us in the long-term struggle to achieve it.

"Part of the reason why it is so important to save some space to carve out a forward-looking agenda that is really about the world that we deeply want and need is that vision is deeply healing and sustaining in these very difficult and unavoidable battles.

"Every sturdy revolutionary social movement has had that forward-looking vision -- the dream as Martin Luther King said. In South Africa, the vision laid out by the Freedom Charter sustained the anti-apartheid struggle all those years, that utopian imagination of the world beyond the nightmare. I think that it sustains us in these long struggles that, if we are to be honest, are going to take our lifetimes. This is not just a four-year battle. Not when we're talking about the level of deep change that is required. The finish line isn't in sight. So we have to find a way to sustain ourselves. And I think when we have that vision in sight, it also, to some extent, informs how we treat each other in struggle. It forces us to think long-term about the planet, about future generations, but also about our relationships with one another. We're in this for the long haul and we have to act like it."