A number of weeks in the past, strolling out of a bar in Chicago, George Aye felt a way of hope for the primary time since Donald Trump took workplace.
Aye and his associate Sara Cantor are cofounders of Greater Good Studio, a design studio centered on social influence. Like everybody else working within the house within the U.S. in 2025—whether or not at nonprofits or impact-driven companies or authorities companies—they’ve spent the final two months surprised by the Trump administration’s barrage of actions aligned with Challenge 2025.
Trump’s chaotic method was intentionally designed to overwhelm opponents, with bulletins timed to occur so rapidly that they’re laborious to trace and tough to know find out how to reply. Aye and Cantor wished to keep away from despair and paralysis—they usually knew others had been feeling the identical approach. That led to an occasion they dubbed Indignant Hour: the Pleased Hour for Pissed-Off Optimists.
Greater than 80 individuals confirmed up. “I feel both that’s an indication of how dangerous issues are, or how a lot I feel we’d all want this,” says Aye. This week, they partnered with AIGA, the skilled design group, to host the identical occasion in Brooklyn, bringing collectively dozens extra individuals. Different cities will comply with, starting with Philadelphia and Austin.
The idea is easy: Individuals meet in individual, get a drink, and discuss freely concerning the present challenges and what it’s going to take to maintain going. There’s no particular agenda, only a house to attach. (Within the case of Brooklyn, that house was a distillery in an outdated industrial complicated on the waterfront.)
A part of the inspiration got here from the truth that persons are more and more remoted. “As a tradition, we’ve been shifting in direction of much less and fewer contact with different people,” says Cantor, who’d just lately learn an Atlantic article referred to as The Anti-Social Century. “There’s 1,000,000 drivers of that. However I really feel that in the midst of my life, and see that with my kids. Simply feeling like, wow, I actually miss individuals. And it’s not wholesome for me or anybody to be in delinquent mode.”
Connection is much more necessary because the political panorama shifts. “I really feel like lots of the great steering within the days and weeks after the election was to carry your individuals shut, and keep in neighborhood,” she says. “That’s how traditionally teams on the mistaken facet of oppression have been capable of keep—maintain your individuals shut.”
I went to the Indignant Hour in Brooklyn, and it was clearly cathartic for individuals to vent. Everybody I spoke with had tales about how their work had already been affected. One freelance designer advised me that new initiatives began disappearing in November after the election. An industrial designer engaged on medical units mentioned her firm just lately needed to lay off half of its employees due to a loss in funding. A designer engaged on environmental justice initiatives mentioned that her group had been advised to reapply for grants with out utilizing phrases like “fairness,” and that they had been now attempting to determine whether or not state and native funding might preserve the initiatives alive. Another person advised me that his nonprofit was seeing fewer donations as a result of the Trump period had led donors to focus extra on their very own issues.
A few of the individuals I spoke to mentioned they felt powerless, and one individual advised me that he deliberate to pivot to a distinct sort of mission. However others had been indignant and motivated to double down on the work that they imagine is critically necessary, whether or not associated to healthcare or local weather or schooling.
They match the mould of what Aye and Cantor name “pissed-off optimists”—people who find themselves each righteously indignant about society’s issues and concurrently hopeful (with out being naively optimistic). As Aye defined in a recent blog post:
A Pissed-Off Optimist is somebody who sees the world’s injustices with clear eyes however views an equitable future as each essential and potential. They’re keenly conscious of systemic issues however stay undeterred by the tough work forward. They take the lengthy view on social change, channeling their rage into neighborhood slightly than despair or cynicism. They’re somebody who can maintain two contradictory truths concurrently: that human struggling is actual and deep, and that we possess the collective energy to create one thing higher.
On the occasion, nametags got here with areas to fill in what made you pessimistic and/or optimistic. “When you get that anger out, it was good to be like, OK, what’s bringing you hope?” Cantor says.
As a result of AIGA had partnered on the Brooklyn occasion, most people who confirmed up had been designers. However Larger Good goals in its work to carry collectively individuals within the social sector and design world who won’t usually work together. And the group takes a broad view of who a “pissed-off optimist” may be. “You could possibly be somebody who professionally identifies as an activist or organizer, a revenue chief, etcetera,” Cantor says. “Or you may simply work at a company job and be pissed.”
Not like a gathering of activists designed to prepare a particular strategic response, the aim of Indignant Hour is simply to assist construct connections—relationships which can be essential for shifting work ahead later. “We frequently work on designing new programs, and one thing that I’ve seen over many, a few years is that programs are simply made of individuals,” Cantor says. “And the relationships between individuals within the system are how the programs are made, damaged, and adjusted.”
Like Aye, the primary meetup made her extra hopeful, although it’s a long-term hope. “I do imagine that we’ll come out of this time,” she says. “And after we do come out on that different facet, we’re going to wish the infrastructure that we’re constructing now. We’re going to wish the relationships. We’re going to wish the connections. That constructing of infrastructure is an act of hope that there will likely be one other facet. And that after we get there, we’ll know who to name and produce them alongside.”
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