The conclusion of Michelle Alexander’s recent article in The Nation (Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now).

A beautiful mural now adorns the Israeli Separation Wall at the northern end of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. It was painted by a Palestinian artist who was struck with inspiration after watching the protests in the United States following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer who placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. The artist painted a giant image of Floyd next to the image of Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi and slain medic Razan al-Najajr. When the artist was asked why he added Floyd to the mural, he said, “I want the people in America who see this mural to know that we in Palestine are standing with them [in their struggle for justice], because we know what it is like to be strangled every day.” Photos of that mural went viral and were featured in news outlets around the world, something the artist never dreamed would occur. A wall that once symbolized only apartheid now also symbolizes international and interracial solidarity in the struggle for freedom.

Obviously, tweets and spray paint cannot alone change the world. But they are important reminders that everything that we do or fail to do matters, and that all of us have a role to play.    We can never know if our small acts of love or courage might make a bigger difference than we imagine. The fact that Black activists today are showing up at marches organized by Jewish students, who are raising their voices in solidarity with Palestinians who are suffering occupation and annihilation in Gaza, is due in no small part to thousands of small acts of revolutionary love that have occurred over the course of years, acts that I hope and pray are planting seeds that will eventually bloom into global movements for peace, justice, and liberation for all.

2024 just might be the year that changes everything. But the way that things change is ultimately up to us. It can be a time of world war, genocide, the collapse of democracy, and the loss of hope. Or it can be a time of great awakening—when we break our silences and act with greater courage and greater solidarity, a time when the existential threats that we are facing finally lead us to embrace humanity and perhaps even glimpse the spark of divinity that exists within each one of us, and all creation.

Something new is in the air. And it’s not just dread. In virtually every community, people are coming together in remarkable ways—learning about each other’s histories of struggle, marching together, co-creating with each other, planting seeds of something new together, making another way possible: a way out of no way. People are casting off old ways of seeing the world and being in the world and recognizing that everything depends on us rising to the challenges of our times, speaking unpopular truths, and acting with courage and with love and with the fierce urgency of now.

In the words of Grace Lee Boggs: “These are the times to grow our souls.” Let this be the moment that we commit ourselves to doing precisely that