January 5, 2026
One of the things I love about the turning of the year is getting a new planner. I buy paper planners, ones in which I can write by hand not only appointments and deadlines, but notes, habits, plans, and dreams. That’s a tradition left over from my school days. Though no one is grading my assignments anymore, I still try to keep my planner organized and updated.
Writing on the fresh January page of a planner is a deliberate action, one that says: We are going on. Making future plans means we believe there will be a future. It feels like taking back power, wrestling a year that, as we know from the recent past, may spin out of our control. But for now, it’s new, and for now, it’s ours: the person we want to be in the world and the change we plan to make in it.
In this installment of Justice This Week, it’s a new year, it’s a new us, and we’re done asking for permission. This week we present stories of taking back power, from a community self-organizing in California to lessons of historical resistance.
Every new year is a new chance, and we can be bold in it.
Dr. Alison Stine
Senior Editor
Climate Justice
