Hope and change.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Editorial

In many ways, America seems to be unraveling. Donald Trump is a serious candidate for President. Economic insecurity plagues families everywhere. Racism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatefulness, which our country seemed to have set aside, fleetingly, at the beginning of the first Obama Administration, are back with a vengeance.

Globally, environmental catastrophe, war, and a river of desperate refugees across the Middle East and Europe seem to be overwhelming the prospect of democracy, peace, and progress.

And yet ... the seeds of change are visible everywhere.

Here in the United States, the truth is out about our stratified and unfair society. The myth of a rising tide that lifts all boats is busted. If we are going to do something to make the American Dream real, we must begin by acknowledging how it has failed.

There is no putting the Occupy genie back in the bottle, says Adbusters Editor Kalle Lasn in this issue. "We can create global big bang moments that change things," he tells Jake Whitney.

The Billion People March after the climate change conference in Paris, which was about to take place as we went to press, is one of these moments.

John Nichols and Robert Reich elaborate on the idea that, with economic and technological change, massive pressure for a more just economy is bound to come.

"The radical ideas advanced by socialists, social democrats, and others on the left can transform mainstream politics," Nichols writes. "And that transformation is going to be necessary as America experiences a digital revolution that will be every bit as disruptive as the industrial revolution."

Social and economic transformation, says Reich, is "not something we might want or wish for. It's inevitable."

Elsewhere in this special issue of the magazine, progressive visionaries share their hopes--for an environ mental revolution (Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Scott Russell Sanders, and Lester Brown); for a true grappling with...