Building a Future When Empire Is Obsolete

As Trump’s unapologetic spectacle of militarism continues to escalate at home and around the world, the historical scale of grassroots resistance on the streets shows not only widespread outrage, but also a collective hunger for change beyond tepid reform – especially when Democratic leaders often seek to accommodate MAGA rather than challenge it at the root. Mass outrage is palpable.

The nonstop violence of capitalism and empire in these times is meant to exhaust, demoralize, and pressure us to accept ever more injustice as a new status quo. But will we throw our weight behind temporary truces between the two parties of U.S. empire just to win a temporary reprieve, or will we continue to strive for a deeper transformation – one that seeks to put each and every relation of domination in the dustbin of history?

As David Korten wrote for YES! in 2006, a future without successive catastrophes requires solutions that put a culture of care at the heart of relationships with each other and the earth:

If we look for the source of the social pathologies increasingly evident in our culture, we find they have a common origin in the dominator relations of Empire that have survived largely intact in spite of the democratic reforms of the past two centuries. The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and environmental destruction that have plagued human societies for 5,000 years, and have now brought us to the brink of a potential terminal crisis, all flow from this common source. Freeing ourselves from these pathologies depends on a common solution — replacing the underlying dominator cultures and institutions of Empire with the partnership cultures and institutions of Earth Community. Unfortunately, we cannot look to imperial power-holders to lead the way.

—David Korten

Read the full article: How Will Future Generations Remember Our Time?

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From the Archives: We Can’t Let Them Take Away Our Neighbors Again

Mass resistance to the intensified brutality of ICE and other federal immigration agencies under Trump’s second term has shown us the power of solidarity and the necessity of confronting authoritarian violence. Writing for YES! during the first year of the first Trump administration, Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz explained the significance of the phrase nidoto nai yoni, “Let it not happen again,” for the Japanese American community in Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, and how it can inspire action today.

“It’s a motto with a call to action that shifts. It can be an appeal to justice and compassion: ‘Let it not happen again … please?’ It can be a demand to stand up: ‘Let it not happen again … dammit!’ It’s the latter that is resonating with me now, a reaction to this new government’s racism,” wrote Loeffelholz.

Read the full article: What Japanese Internment Taught Us About Standing Up for Our Neighbors

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From the Archives: Community Control of the Economy

If we are willing to take up the task of epochal transformation as Korten described above, then we must ask: What concrete ways can it be done? Writing for YES! in 2013, Marjorie Kelly pointed out, “Many of the great social struggles in history have come down to the issue of who will control land, water, and the essentials of life.”

“The cooperative economy — and the broader family of generative ownership models — is helping to reawaken an ancient wisdom about living together in community, something largely lost in the spread of capitalism,” Kelly wrote.

Read the full article: The Economy: Under New Ownership

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New Work by YES! Contributors

• Sarah van Gelder, founding editor of YES!, explains how elections, labor, mutual aid, and local organizing wins in 2025 point toward strategies that can work to defeat MAGA in the coming year.
• Marianne Dhenin, former contributing writer at YES! Magazine, reports on health care workers in Minnesota who are organizing to protect their colleagues and patients.
• Sonali Kolhatkar, former racial justice and civil liberties editor at YES! Magazine and the host of Rising Up With Sonali, analyzes California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s resistance to a billionaire tax that would help fund the state’s health care needs after the loss of federal subsidies.

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New Solutions Journalism From Independent Media

?️ Minneapolis Community Defense Is “Riding on the Learning Edge of a Whirlwind” – Truthout

? How We Can Defeat Authoritarianism Together – Convergence

? Iranian Artists Keep the Spirit of “Woman, Life, Freedom” Alive – In These Times

❤️‍? The Power of Collective Care – The Progressive

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Rising Up With Sonali

The Washington Post recently announced layoffs of nearly a third of its workforce, sending shockwaves through the media landscape. As more billionaire-owned outlets are decimated – because the rich don’t want the rest of us understanding how the world truly works, do they? – independent media outlets continue to do what they do best, operating on meager resources and taking on the mantle of educating and informing the public. Rising Up With Sonali, formerly the broadcast arm of YES! Media, is lifting up solutions journalism through hard-hitting interviews. When you subscribe to Rising Up With Sonali, you’ll receive 3-4 interviews a week in your inbox, with full access to video and transcripts of all conversations.

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Community Is the Common Solution

David Korten warned us two decades ago that imperial power-holders will not lead the world out of a terminal crisis – it is up to us. Today, the resistance we are seeing in the form of rapid response networks, mutual aid, union solidarity, and countless other initiatives is showing us that, indeed, another world is possible.

May future generations remember these times as the beginning of a great transformation, in which we built communities and institutions of nurturance – and made empire obsolete.

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In solidarity,

t r u t h o u t