A 10-year-old girl looks out to a bare and large soccer field of her elementary school. Standing on the elevated platform, she can see all around her meaningful landmarks from her first decade of memories in Ilsan, Korea, all she’s ever known.

A long time ago, the first chancellor of post-war Germany, Konrad Adenauer, joined a TV interview where a journalist asked him the following question: “You were often called ‘The Great Simplifier of Politics’.

Whether we want to or not, we all participate in a capitalist system that places the majority of wealth and decision making in the hands of very few. The world’s richest 1 percent own more wealth than the rest of the global population combined, while those in poorer countries see their natural resources exploited.

I recently moved to New York for my first job. For the first time in my life, I am somewhat financially comfortable. Yesterday, a direct deposit into my savings account made me feel independent and safe from having extra money sitting around.

There is a difference between hope and hoping. I prefer using the active form “hoping”, rather than the static noun, for its present, continuous form; hoping is a mode of resisting the oppressor’s marginalizations from without as well as resisting the personal forces from within. Institutional, cultural, and economic systems are in a continuous dialogue with the internal dynamics, thereby making liberations more challenging.

GROWING UP IN INDONESIA as an ethnic Chinese girl, I was often told to “go back to your country” by strangers on the street. For years, I was often reminded that I was a minority in the country I called home.