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As a new year dawns, it’s hard not to feel anxiety about what’s coming next, especially when it comes to American democracy. At times like these, one can feel the urge to check out or hunker down, to turn inward. But it’s important to remember that all this flux and tumult can create important openings for transformation. How we act and what visions for the future we advance when those openings occur are critical.

My way of not giving in to despair and apathy amid all this uncertainty is to look for sources of hope, to find in uncertainty itself reasons for hope. Happily, once you look for the places where hope and imagination live, you find it in ample supply. As part of the research I conducted for Democracy Funders Network’s Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy report, I talked to dozens of visionaries who were imagining and creating new and better ways of being with one another, with nature, with technology, and with the planet. The final section of that paper, titled Inspiration, is my curated compilation of examples of what better futures could look like in real life and in the imagination. Whenever I feel the pull of pessimism, I turn back to those examples.