A protest in support of Gaza – Mexico City, September 13, 2025. Photo by Tamara Pearson.

“They sowed fear in us, we grew wings,” goes the song in Spanish by Vivir Quintana, about women in Mexico resisting femicide.

Amid the protests, a global collective hope crisis is also simmering, with many people hurting, criminalized, repressed, and doubting that justice and dignity are possible. The old fable of a stable job, home, family and retirement is crumbling. For many, it is becoming very hard to plan ahead, to dream. This, while also experiencing an ongoing, crippling concern for planet and people; a state of prolonged alarm at an abyss of too-big problems.

The hope scarcity is being created and capitalized on with deliberate, anti-people policies designed to keep people disheartened and passive, in order to maintain elitist power. But, things are much more hopeful than they initially seem. We can come out of this growing wings. There is possibility built into uncertainty and all this disillusionment. The lack of safety and a clear path forward, however, has many people understandably focusing on gloom.

Globally, there are significant increases in depression, especially among young adults and in parts of Africa, and happiness among young people in North America has nose dived. Happiness rates have also dropped in South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Downward trends in hope are contributing to rising numbers of deaths of despair (suicide, overdoses and alcohol-related mortality) in the US. A Lancet global survey found that 60% of young adults were experiencing climate anxiety.

The hope crisis isn’t equal. Young people with the biggest fears around climate change live in the Global South, with people in the Philippines and India feeling that “humanity is doomed” and “the future is frightening.”

The crisis also isn’t entirely new; the horrors of inequality, imperialism, and the recklessness of corporations are old, ongoing patterns. Now, though, the climate crisis has declared deadlines. The hazardous weather and floodscapes are less and less limited to just the Global Majority regions. Social media stupefaction is concerning. The ineffectiveness of global bodies like the UN to stop obvious horrors, while the ear-clogged baboon beings in power are also unable or unwilling to do anything about any of it, is perturbing. An emboldened right wing is dismantling care services and with them, the future. Most governments are going to increasing lengths to discourage resistance and initiative, and repress protests.

Why hope is so important and 9 ways they stifle it

Collectively, hopelessness has political implications. Hope supports resilience. It is based on self belief and on deep understanding of processes, history, and our ability to enact change, at many levels.

Critical hope (as distinct from blind hope, which sustains that things will work out without anyone doing anything) counters impotency and resists despair and paralysis. It spurs on action – which is what the baboons don’t want. Hope, as a vision for the future, helps determine what we believe we can achieve, what we deserve, and what we demand. CEOs and their political puppets prefer consumers and voters to be passive and dim, so they strangle hope in the following ways:

1) Criminalisation

There is an increased criminalisation of solidarity with migrants in Europe, with prosecutions last year up from the previous two years, and protest movements there are also increasingly criminalized. Globally, more countries are passing anti-protest laws in order to silence and isolate, and protesters are being repressed in the US, UK, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico, Panama, and more.

Here in Mexico, land defenders are frequently imprisoned for years without trial, while organized crime and transnationals have killed or disappeared hundreds of activists. As a result, there is a lot of trauma, distrust, self-censorship, and fear in communities and movements. There is also courage and resistance, but activists often aim low, and a lack of clear victories compounds the sense of hopelessness.

Using stigmatizing language in the media, arrests, and heavy police presence, authorities can turn the bravest, kindest people (activists, migrants, unionists etc) into a perceived threat. The chilling effect sees the communities of those targeted........

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