frustrations of a longtime global issues activist; comment on “ensuring global health equity in a post-pandemic economy”

Labonté’s first commentary1 concluded with what i wholeheartedly agree, namely that “we need an activist public health movement to ensure there is sufficient political will to adopt them.” in their follow-up commentary, moers and colleagues2 looked at things from a slightly different angle saying that to achieve equity will need radical changes in economic thinking and policies; they added that advocates needed to be strategic about framing and use hope-based communication and develop attractive and convincing narratives: “by doing so, hopefully we can bring these messages across to larger groups of people.” well, i think that, together with many others, i have been strategic and radical, but only to accumulate a large bag of disappointments and broken hopes in trying to ‘bring the message across.’ but i come back to memories of so many defeats that i, with others, have lived through. here, i describe my frustrations but explain why i do not give up hope.