How Princess Leia teaches us not to lose hope as we head into another Trump presidency

It’s official. The United States has elected Donald Trump for a second time.

It is unclear what the future holds for all of us. Anecdotally, I know that so many people are truly terrified about what this means for us as a nation and as individuals. We’ve seen what a Trump presidency looks like, and it was enough to push Joe Biden through in 2020.

I may never understand the appeal that man holds to the people who vote for him. What I know is that he has promised to make us less free and I believe him.   

What I know about hope, I learned from Princess Leia

Times like these always lead me back to my Patron Saint of Hope, Leia Organa. Being a life-long Star Wars fan, my relationship to Leia is something that evolves as I go through changes in my own life. That relationship took a new turn in 2017 when I attended the Women’s March in Los Angeles. It was an important moment for me in my political life. The streets of Downtown Los Angeles were packed with people who knew that the next 4 years would not be easy.

It was an incredible sight to see, all the many creative signs and expressions. It was the very embodiment of taking your broken heart and making it into art. Among them, dozens of signs that used the imagery of Princess Leia as a symbol for Resistance. Something about that inspired me to think of hope as a strategy. I decided that day that I wouldn’t just go home and disconnect. The next four years would require everyone to do the work. As Leia showed us many times, hope is a decisive, concrete action.

Leia lost everything when her home planet is destroyed by the Empire. She saw injustice everywhere coming from a government claiming to bring law and order. A government that actively sought to squash the hope of anyone who would dare oppose it. Leia never gave up though. She picked herself up and looked for the next best move. Hope is an act of defiance.

Hope isn’t synonymous with optimism

I also turn to the work of Mariame Kaba. She is a grassroots activist and prison abolitionist. The work she does requires something beyond facts and figures and even community. It requires the practice of hope. In a 2018 interview on the Beyond Prisons podcast, Kaba described first hearing the idea of hope as a discipline from a nun. “I heard that many years ago and then I felt the sense of, ‘Oh my god. That speaks to me as a philosophy of living, that hope is a discipline and that we have to practice it every single day.'”

In the 2023 book she co-wrote with Kelly Hayes, Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, the concept is explained further:

This practice of hope allows us to remain creative and strategic. It does not require us to deny the severity of our situation or detract from our practice of grief. To practice active hope, we do not need to believe that everything will work out in the end. We need only decide who we are choosing to be and how we are choosing to function in relation to the outcome we desire, and abide by what those decisions demand of us.

Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes, Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care

Hope is not synonymous with optimism. Instead, it is the practice of keeping sight of the goal and getting up every day to move with intention toward that goal. To lose hope is to stop moving altogether and that is something we simply cannot afford to do.

How to Carrie on

This all reminds me of another Leia-ism that is told to us through Admiral Holdo. She says, “Hope is like the sun. If you only believe it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night.”

I worked really hard on this election and I worked beside many people who are dedicated to the idea of what America could be. It’s a hard pill to swallow that we failed. Talking to people at my local watch party and in group chats and on social media, I can see the anxiety pooling. A paralysis is setting in with many who would like to disconnect because it is 100 percent overwhelming. Make no mistake, the entire point is to overwhelm so that you lose the one thing that we all need to get through this.

It doesn’t matter how you find it within yourself to push forward with hope. Just know that you don’t push forward alone. Just know that when you wake up every day and speak of light, it empowers others around you to do the same. Even if you’re afraid – like me – you must actively exercise that part of your core that knows a better world is possible. It seems far, far away and the night is dark, but if we all make each next best move together, we can get there.

It’s okay to take a moment and grieve, but be sure to get up and keep trying.  

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Lauren Salerno

Lauren Salerno is a contributing writer at The Mary Sue. She is a literary citizen of Los Angeles and has been involved with such projects as the Shades & Shadows Reading Series, the Omega Sci-Fi Project, and The Seers' Table column of the Horror Writers Association blog. Some of her words can be found in places like the Los Angeles Times, the Office of Intellectual Freedom Blog, and The Rattling Wall. She holds a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science and stays up late at night skimming digital archives for fun. There is a special place in her heart for horror, Star Wars, and reality television. She can frequently be found haunting the halls of convention centers, perhaps moderating a panel or two. Follow her on most social media channels: @paranormalauren.