Looking back from 2050, it seems strange to think that personal change and politics were once seen as separate worlds. Who knows exactly when the tipping point occurred, but around 2025, and spurred on by spiraling inequalities, rising corporate influence, civil society action and the imperatives of climate change, large numbers of people began to place solidarity at the heart of their decision-making instead of competition, and to see democracy as a way to use and share power in liberating ways. One hundred years after the birth of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, Martin Luther King’s “beloved community” finally started to shape itself in deep democracy’s embrace.

Author: Michael Edwards