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Listening to friends, family and colleagues since the election, I have heard hope in the air. People sense needed change may be possible. To help bring it about, we can use many insightful ways to look at our lives. Here are just a few.

First, we can remember the righteous anger Jesus expressed in overturning the tables of the money lenders. On Wall Street, financial wizards created a paper world, giving themselves untold millions and promising much to the rest of us via the stock market.

When it all crashed, those in high places easily kept theirs -- no wealthy titans jumping out of high windows this time around. Meanwhile, many of us suffer the loss of life savings and of the ability to pay our mortgage and send our children to college.

What we call a democracy has become a rich man's playground. Propagandists for the super-rich keep alive discrimination against women, people of color, the poor and many others. They keep all of us divided against each other, believing that we do not have the democratic power to kick them out. Some candidates in the recent election tried to whip up the divisions among us, to keep us angry at each other instead of at those living in multiple mansions.

As for the "anathema" of socialism, when it means health care, good schools and jobs for everyone, it is a horrible, unthinkable option. But when it means saving the system that serves the rich and powerful so well, it becomes a necessity overnight.

Enough. We took a huge step in getting past all this on Nov. 4. We did it as 53 million separate individuals. Between elections, we need to work together in groups. So let's take a huge jump and look at a truly basic alternative to Wall Street: working in communities. We can work with each other, not under powerful people determining our lives. Jesus told us to live in community, and human history is filled with people doing it.

Building community requires our learning to talk and listen to each other with courageous honesty and respect. It requires taking one challenging step at a time, day by day. When we see ourselves and others learning, we sense something promising happening - we are gathering in democratic communities. We find many commonalities beyond our familiar differences and sense our connectedness with each other.

As we do this, we need to turn to those who have no life's savings to lose, no mortgage to lose, and who cannot even dream of sending their children to college - those who barely get by on a daily basis.

As we seek out and genuinely listen -- not talk -- to them, we will see that we have more in common with those poorer than us than with those richer. Far from being opposed, our fates are intertwined.

The first steps are right before our eyes. We can encourage a friend or neighbor or office colleague to talk, as you listen with clear interest. Then after a while, we talk for a while, telling some of our story. Be honest and respectful. If you want to be adventuresome, check out the many new organizations in town, through the Hive, F4DC, and the Peace and Justice Network. Also, try talking and listening closely across lines of race, class and gender.

Let us gather together, among ourselves, with the poor, and with black and white people in alliances. Together, there is no stopping us. We can create economic and political groups truly responsive to all of our needs, not just those of the wealthy and powerful.

No more rich man's playground. We can become the democracy we want.

Barton Parks is professor and chairman of Justice and Policy Studies at Guilford College.