Day 2: The Heart of Hope

How do we hold on to hope when all feels lost?

Today is the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. December 2 marks the date of the adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (resolution 317(IV) of 2 December 1949).

The focus of this day is on eradicating contemporary forms of slavery, such as trafficking in persons, sexual exploitation, the worst forms of child labour, forced marriage, and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.¹

When I think about slavery and its abolition, I sometimes fool myself into feeling a sense of pride that we, i.e., my country, the United States of America, corrected that horrific wrong. We abolished slavery in 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution. And that was the end of that.

Or was it?

It’s important to note that the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Prisoners, rightly or wrongly convicted of a crime, can, even to this day, be forced to work.

Mass incarceration has become slavery for the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Activists who worked tirelessly in this country to abolish slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries had a specific goal, and when they accomplished that goal, they stopped, right? Wrong. Instead, they found that the goalpost soon moved, so, many abolitionists turned their sights on Jim Crow laws. Under Jim Crow, concocted infractions of Black and brown people ensured a continuation of the system of slavery well into the 20^th century. Under this system, the prison industrial complex was born.

Even with the eventual elimination of Jim Crow laws (as late as 1965), incarceration, particularly of Black and brown people, has continued at a staggering pace. Today, two million people are incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world. It has 5% of the world’s population and 20% of the world’s incarcerated persons.²

Prisons have gradually become a source of low-wage labor for corporations. Prison labor in the U.S. generates significant economic output. Incarcerated workers provide services valued at $9 billion annually, producing over $2 billion in goods.

Prisoners are typically paid less than $1.25 an hour, sometimes as low as $0.41. Corporations that use prison labor include Walmart, Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, Nintendo, Chevron Corporation, Bank of America, Koch Industries, Boeing and yes, even Costco Wholesale. Why send production to China when you can find low wage workers right here close to home?

Pretty depressing, right? When I think about it, I feel overwhelmed and helpless. And I’m sure some of you do too.

So, now that I have you feeling even more depressed, I imagine you’re asking, “what does this have to do with hope?” It doesn’t feel very hopeful to me, either.

However, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that in order to find hope, I have to “cultivate hopefulness.” Researcher/storyteller Brene Brown says it this way:

If we want to cultivate hopefulness, we have to be willing to be flexible and demonstrate perseverance. Not every goal will look and feel the same. Tolerance for disappointment, determination, and a belief in self are the heart of hope.³

Chances are as long as there are humans on this planet and in this universe, slavery will rear its head. Does that mean, then, that it’s hopeless? It wasn’t for the three million formerly enslaved people who were freed with the passage of the 13^th Amendment. It wasn’t for Robert Smalls, who was born a slave in 1839 in South Carolina and became a U.S. Congressman in 1873. It wasn’t for the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray who enrolled in law school at Howard University in 1940 with the “single-minded intention of destroying Jim Crow.”⁴ It took until 1965 for her to become the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. She persevered.

And these are only two examples of people who possessed incredible tolerance for disappointment, but because of their determination, they prevailed. They believed in themselves, and they believed in hope.

In fact, the 2024 Pauli Murray quarter that was recently released by the U.S. Mint, has her looking through the word HOPE.

2024 U.S. Pauli Murray Quarter

Her memoir, A Song in a Weary Throat, is filled with disappointment after disappointment. But she persevered and was ultimately victorious—at least in reaching her primary goal: the destruction of Jm Crow. If she were alive today, I have no doubt that Dr. Murray would be working to destroy the prison industrial complex. She was a hope-filled person.

It is up to us to carry on her work and the work of all those who have gone before. Whether it’s modern-day slavery, mass incarceration, voting rights, human rights, hunger, homelessness, gun violence, bodily autonomy, or the myriad other issues that confront our society, it’s up to us to continue the work. It’s up to us to persevere. It’s up to us to hold on to hope, even when all feels lost. I can assure you that the arc of the universe bends toward justice but only if we continue to bend it.

This month as you celebrate the holidays with family and friends, I encourage you to consider how you cultivate hopefulness in your life, even when you’re feeling hopeless. I believe that is the one thing, maybe the only thing, that will make a difference to all of us in these scary times.

Today’s Reflection

Share in words, images, art, poetry, or any other way you'd like to express yourself about a time in your life when something felt hopeless, but you persevered and reached your goal?

With hope in my heart,

Annette

1. International Day for the Abolition of Slavery | United Nations

2. Incarceration in the United States - Wikipedia

3. Brené Brown (2010). “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are”, p.81, Simon and Schuster

4. Pauli Murray (1987). Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage, p. 235. Kindle Edition, Harper & Row.