Building Cathedrals: The Slow Work of Social Transformation

When Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, both supporters and critics saw it as a watershed in political and social transformation. But a year later, a seemingly unstoppable tide appears to have reversed and surged in the opposite direction. Many progressives feel frustrated, even betrayed by policies that seem only marginally different from those that came before while conservatives have found new energy in strategic obstruction and militant resistance. Over the years, in the United States and around the world, the ebb and flow of politics, revolution and reaction has broken more than a few hearts set on human progress. But social activists who have committed their lifetimes to the task say one needs to take the long view, looking not at the tumultuous and often cyclical dynamics of partisan politics but at deeper currents of change that stir from below. Some liken it to the labor of building a cathedral, a task that sometimes took six hundred years and engaged the lifetimes of thirty successive generations. This week we hear from a chronicler of social activism and a legendary social activist who provide a different time sense for those impatient souls hoping for rapid yet profound social transformation.