Jannie Edwards Reviews Maude Barlow's Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism
Barlow, Maude. Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism. ECW Press, $21.95, 240 pp. ISBN 9781770416321.
Maude Barlow’s latest book Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism tracks her hard-won optimism honed through forty years in the trenches as a social justice activist. Barlow’s joins a plethora of recently published books on hope by activists such as Americans Rebecca Solnit and DeRay McKesson, Iranian feminist Catherine Semeh, and others. Within this community, Barlow shares a like-minded Stoic resilience (capital S Stoicism, not small s), rooted in justice, equality, pragmatism and joy inspired and sustained by the work of fellow activists worldwide.
The seed for this book was planted after a 2019 panel on the New Green Deal with David Suzuki. A high school student told Barlow that she and her friends had felt utterly hopeless until Barlow spoke. The girl’s question, What could she do in the face of such overwhelming ecological collapse? struck a chord. In the midst of a global pandemic, as democracy is threatened worldwide and as the dire news of environmental crisis worsens, Barlow felt compelled to offer hope to future generations of activists to help resist both the paralyzing despair of pessimism and the gullibility of false hope. She echoes Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax’s call for “wise” hope as a practice to cultivate both passionate engagement and deep detachment that allows one to do the next necessary thing. Barlow offers her life story as inspiration for hopeful action in a time of radical uncertainty.
A prominent theme in Still Hopeful is mentorship. Barlow credits her father as her first mentor. A social worker who in the 1960s and 70s advocated for prison reform and abolishing capital punishment, William McGrath cultivated in his daughters the belief that privilege comes with the obligation to act for the common good. This teaching provides a solid ethical foundation, but how does one find the energy to sustain a lifelong commitment to social justice? Find your allies, Barlow counsels. Surround yourself with people who support you and your cause. Her feminist alliances in the women’s movement of the 60s and collective opposition to free-trade deals of the late 80s and early 90s paved the way to Barlow’s commitment to ecological activism. “Free trade changed my life,” she notes. Fighting against the impacts of economic globalization led Barlow to the disturbing realization that water is a precious but threatened resource. This has spurred her to foster a global movement for international water justice.
Decoding the complexities of free trade agreements and translating their impact in ways that ordinary people could understand informed some of Barlow’s greatest learning from this struggle. This can be seen in her uncondescending rhetorical style that gets to the crux of the issues clearly and succinctly. “Go to the heart of the human story to touch hearts as well as minds if you want to get people out of their silos,” she urges.
The writing in this book is hospitable, invitational. Barlow consciously avoids any sense of a bully pulpit or rant. “I promised myself I would spare the statistics,” she says. In contrast, Barlow’s activism is powered by relationships. Interspersed throughout are profiles of fellow eco-justice activists who have inspired her – people like union leader Oscar Olivera who led a successful grassroots fight against privatization of water in Bolivia; and Meera Karunananthan, director of the Blue Planet project, who works to support other grassroots movements fighting privatization. In addition to these alliances are countless stories of strangers who came to her aid in times of dire health crises while travelling as an activist – some crises exacerbated by drinking contaminated water. “Everywhere I needed help, strangers were there for me,” she says. She is inspired by the kindness of women in rural Mexico fighting for water justice who offered her their best rainwater in spite of living in crowded huts without access to running water or electricity. Barlow’s work as a passionate water defender has led her full circle back to women’s rights. In many parts of the world, she came to know, it is women and girls who walk miles to fetch water.
In spite of Barlow’s commitment not to assault readers with statistics, one of the strengths of Still Hopeful is its ability to alert readers to sobering facts. For example, of the top 100 economies in the world, 69 are corporations; 31 are nation states. Apple’s revenues exceed the GDP of more than 60 percent of the world’s nations. Walmart’s revenues are more than the GDP of 157 countries.
At the end of the book, Barlow quotes C. S. Lewis: “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” Barlow sees real hope in the growing awareness of the moral and social failures of neo-liberal globalization – awareness she is hopeful will energize informed activism and transformational politics she sees as crucial for our planetary survival. As David Schindler has said, “The economy will matter less when we run out of water.”
Barlow’s motivation for writing this book was to offer her life story to the next generation of activists in order inspire the same hope that for her sustained a lifelong commitment to activism. Will young activists read it? I suspect they would be more influenced by Barlow’s story in person and through other non-print media like a Ted talk or social media. Those familiar with Barlow’s profile as a social justice activist will be more likely to find in Still Hopeful a powerful antidote to doomscrolling and despair in the face of our global collective traumas.
Jannie Edwards is a writer, editor, mentor and artistic collaborator who lives in Edmonton/Amiskwacîwâskahikan on the traditional lands of Treaty 6 and Métis Region 4. She has published three collections of poetry and has collaborated on videopoems (Engrams: Reach and Seize Memory and adrift); an adaptation of her Blood Opera: The Raven Tango Poems for the stage; and, most recently, several community arts projects that saw poems sandblasted on sidewalks in several neighbourhoods and the walkway of the High Level Bridge. She is an emeritus of MacEwan University.