I treasure the courage, truth-telling, compassion, inspiration, wisdom, and fierce love that Rebecca Solnit embodies. And the most important change is indeed collective, and, yes!, the Sangha — the community, our civil society rather than an individual savior — is what holds the power, courage, wisdom, and fierce love that is needed to radically transform ourselves and our world. — Molly
By Rebecca Solnit
Well this happened. I don't have the heart to read the interview, but I glanced at it and I think it was edited in ways that make me sound like I'm jumping from topic to topic without transition. But I guess I survived the photo session. As for the excerpt below, I got asked at a book event last night about whether there's evidence we're not the selfish beings we're often told we are, and I got to say "I can answer that in one word: Minneapolis."
Q: "Whether it has to do with environmental degradation or degradation of our politics or of people, it seems as if the public is hungry for an individual to be a counterweight to Trump and Trumpism. I don’t know whether that person is Zohran Mamdani or Gavin Newsom, who is clearly trying to position himself that way. But for whatever reason, that person has yet to be identified. Why do you think that is?
A: One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh said before he died a few years ago that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It’s this idea that we don’t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an Übermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society.
[and then I'm pretty sure there was a cut before this bit, which is definitely quite a bit shorter than what I said about war versus caregiving, and then there must have been a lead-up to the windsocks.]
A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war. I denigrate politicians I don’t respect as windsocks. I just want us to understand that most of the important change is collective."
[But also sometimes it's nice to be able to say things like this in a space like the NYT, and they have been among the overly polite about Trump and Co.]
Q: If we’re talking about counternarratives that can lead to positive change, one of the defining counternarratives of the last few years could fall under the umbrella of “the resistance.” I would like to hear your perspective on whether any of the strategies against President Trump and Trumpism have been counterproductive. That is, if calling him or the movement fascist, sexist, racist pushed people into their respective corners?
Me: That’s the least of our problems. They are racist, they are authoritarian, they are misogynist, they are homophobic, and tiptoeing around it protects them and not the targets of the hatred and discrimination. I get so tired of the idea that progressives have gone too far in asserting that every human being deserves human rights when people are being shot in the streets of Minneapolis. We are facing such horrific brutality. Politeness is not really the problem. I think we got into this situation in part by a lot of people in the mainstream thinking it was more important to be polite than to call things by their true names. There’s a wonderful historian and scholar of nonviolence named George Lakey who says polarization is good. That’s when you have clarity. Sometimes people have to pick sides. You do not get authoritarians to behave better by being meek and gentle and polite. You get it by being strong.
This is the link to the full New York Times interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/magazine/rebecca-solnit-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RVA.cTcY.-rsColv0z4fU&smid=url-share
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