without creativity we cannot revolt

“Creativity is not just about writing novels, or composing a piece of music. Creativity means to revolt against injustice. The revolution against injustice needs creativity. Without creativity we cannot revolt. Creativity means a way of life, a philosophy in life. In your relationships: even in love relationships, you need creativity; in friendships, you need creativity; in any human work or endeavor, you need creativity. And creativity is not just something coming from heaven to fuel genius people. No, we are all creative. Everybody in this hall was born creative…Men and women, poor and rich, Black and white, Swedish or Egyptian, we are all born creative.”

-Nawal El Saadawi, “Creativity, Women, Dissidence” at Clandestinofestival Press

If you’ve been keeping up with Club Rambutan at all, you might have seen promotion for our event ICEBREAKERZ, and our declarative statement: “Art is political.” This may seem like the first time CR has declared an outwardly political stance, but to me and those on our team, art has always been inherently political, and creation has always been inherently revolutionary. 

It’s been hard not to feel despondent recently. In an expanding landscape of AI slop, goonmaxxing, ragebait, and real-world violence, the widening gyre of capitalist hellscape and despair is seemingly unending. I had a conversation with a friend recently and it spanned, as it often does, from the ongoings and discontents of our personal lives to our agitation with the world and politics. We spoke about our issues with the new Wuthering Heights (2026) movie and somehow got to the topic of Ursula K. LeGuin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and an agreement that revolution requires imagination. Our conversation reminded me of a class I took briefly at UC Davis that focused solely on utopian fiction. It was fascinating. 

I read fiction voraciously growing up when I think many of us did, during the wave of Young Adult dystopian fiction that would shape our childhoods—The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, etc. Dystopian fiction has been generally well received in pop culture for a plethora of reasons. Aside from proving itself as a highly profitable genre, it can more directly and cathartically mirror the risks, injustices, and dangers of pre-existing society. It is imaginative in the way of warning, speculative in ways that validate existing fear, and builds potential atrocities upon historical events. Margaret Atwood, when criticized on the violent events of The Handmaid’s Tale, famously said that she never wrote or included violence that did not already happen to women in history around the world. And given the current state of politics, people have been pointing to dystopian fiction now more than ever (and I’m glad that they are). There have been TikTok montages of The Hunger Games’ Capitol transposed against last year’s Met Gala, especially in contrast with the broadening class disparity, current unaffordability crisis, and genocide in Gaza.

There were also Instagram posts with quotes from George Orwell’s 1984 regarding rhetoric and propaganda in the wake of media denial and demonization surrounding the deaths of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Keith Porter Jr., as well as other victims of ICE:

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

We heed the warnings of dystopian fiction because they mirror fear and injustice we’ve probably already seen, felt, or experienced. Even the insane popularity of Wicked and Wicked: For Good highlights the power of propaganda and rhetoric to mobilize fear of otherness into hatred and vitriol (and I could write a separate article about that).

But within structures that are already unjust, utopian societies are not something we often consider. They are unreachable, unattainable, unrealistic, and ‘unproductive’ to imagine. They feel so impossibly out of reach because

1. We all know that Hannah Montana taught us that “Nobody’s Perfect!”

2. Idealism is more difficult than cynicism in a world where unjust suffering and tragedy exists, and 

3. Achieving perfection is truly impossible.

But that utopian fiction class taught me something important: if all these conditions are true, why would anyone write or try to conceptualize a utopia? If we were solely thinking logically, why waste all that time for something that can never be possible? 

Don’t those questions point us directly to the problem? We’ve been conditioned by capitalism to consider things that don’t produce a “useful” (useful meaning profitable) “output” as unproductive, and therefore a waste of resources. More importantly, we are stopping ourselves before even allowing our minds to dream of what an ideal, perfect, or utopian society could be like. Regardless of whether or not it’s actually ever possible to achieve, there is a structure of violence that imposes itself in our own minds before we even let ourselves imagine an alternative. We don’t even consider letting our minds wander at the possibility. That’s what has built our cynicism, accumulated our hopelessness. If we are convinced that nothing can ever change, or (oh god) (my least favorite sentence ever) ‘that’s just the way the world is,’ then there is no mobility, there is no action that can be taken except to succumb to our fear and despair.

Without our ability to conceptualize a better reality, we are forced to accept the one imposed upon us.

The goal is not perfection, or utopia. It is about having the wherewithal and the strength to be creative and imaginative.

The courage to imagine a different reality.

We cannot let cynicism stunt our desire for growth and social change.

That’s why I believe that imagination is necessary for revolution, and that creativity is already inherently a radical act. Why, as the writer and activist El Saadawi says, “Without creativity, we cannot revolt.” Art has always historically been linked to political and social justice movements, used and created for organizing, protest and solidarity. It has always been a tool to speak up and against injustice, violence, and tragedy. It has always served as both a weapon and object of comfort, as a tool for anger and joy, as a method of both mobilization and celebration. If you need examples, you don’t have to look very far at all— the Harlem Renaissance, the birth of Jazz and Blues, the use of screenprints in the Chicano Movement, just to name a few.

Not to mention that art and any mode of creation is inherently radical in a landscape of consumerism and capitalism. Creation is a natural antithesis to consumption. As creatives, (whatever that means for you), we can take radical

frameworks by their horns because we’re already seated atop the bull. We exist in positions that already place us outside of mainstream conveniences, careers, and frameworks. As a fiber artist, I’ve been personally touched and inspired by the wave of knitters and crocheters who have organized to knit the “Melt the ICE” hat as of January 2026, a pattern designed and sold by a local yarn store in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The proceeds from the $5 pattern are donated to organizations that aid immigrants in Minnesota, and the design itself—a pointed red hat with a tassel—is meant to mirror the red knitted hats made and worn by Norwegians as a form of revolt against the occupation of Nazi Germany. Norwegians were then historically persecuted for wearing, making, or distributing this hat, and now in 2026, knitters all over the world are knitting it to show solidarity with those affected and unjustly victimized by the gestapo-like methods of U.S. ICE agents and an increasingly fascist government. As we know, a red hat these days can often be seen as a symbol of hatred, but the resurgence of these hats attempt to show how symbols can and have always been reclaimed and used to resist and honor historical resistance.

We have an inherent appreciation for beauty in the arts because of the nature of art--it explores our collective humanity through expression, shared perspectives and empathy. We, through choice, career, identification, or pure feeling are aligned at the margins of “normal” or “logically productive” society, placing us at the fringes in which we can observe, interpret, and express our world. To interpret our “epoch’s special pulse-beat,” as E.E. Cummings put it. Thus to be an artist is inherently radical and revolutionary! If we lived under a different sociopolitical system, maybe it would not be. But for the conditions of our reality, it’s already what we are. And some would say it is our responsibility to be...

Toni Morrison writes in her essay for The Nation (2004) about the role of the artist in times of political distress, and it was both empowering and comforting for how I’ve been feeling in the wake of the news recently:

“Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.

I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls to wish me happy holidays. He asks, “How are you?” And instead of “Oh, fine–and you?”, I blurt out the truth: “Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the election…” I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work– not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”

I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed…

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.

We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. 

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.

Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge–even wisdom. Like art.”

I’ve been repeating these quotes to myself, and I hope you might too. I hope you embolden yourself to dream, to imagine, to create, to speak out, to revolt. To be radical in your existence as it already is. 

The CR team at ICEBREAKERZ <33