By Brian Holmes — I’d like to begin this text with a little anecdote. Recently, I spent some time in New York City. Having lived outside the US for some fifteen years now, one of the things you wonder about when you come back—one of the little anxieties—is “what exactly am I gonna eat?” The food system in Europe [...]
By Mary Patten — Depending on who you’re talking to, forms and expressions of solidarity include the general strike, the hunger strike, the die-in, and the march; the human billboard, the mask, the wheat-pasted poster and the stencil; the refusal to testify before a grand jury; flowers at the site of disasters, the giving of blood, the writing of [...]
By Daniel Tucker — Our scale determines our goals. At the recent international meeting of the Peoples Global Action (PGA) alternative globalization network in Haridwar (India), there was an explicit call for pga-affiliated groups to literally map themselves on the globe. Articulating the scale of its own organization and the various relationships to local contexts across the globe, the [...]
By Christopher Hayes — As the summer war between Israel and Lebanon threatened to spiral out of control, a rarely-used word began to wend its way into news accounts and editorials: solidarity. Groups from Orange County, CA, to St. Louis, held “solidarity vigils” in support of Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert praised the “spirit of solidarity of [...]
By Daniel Tucker — In 1979, when the Nicaragua Solidarity Committee of Chicago (nscc) was first organized to build popular movements around the struggles in Nicaragua, what kinds of organizations evolved doing similar work in Chicago? In addition to the nscc, there was Citizens in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador; there was also Pastors for Peace here [...]
By Ryan Hollon — We—activists, organizers, and aspiring movement builders—have been taught that creating positive social change means responding to the political possibilities and limitations of our context. While this is perhaps inevitable, the Mexico Solidarity Network (msn) believes we must also challenge the ways these possibilities and limitations are created. The following interview with Tom Hansen, co-founder and [...]
By Anonymous — I’m a teacher, so mostly what I do is to make students feel aspirational anxiety about what’s valuable about them. This situation can’t be good for anyone. So I’ve developed a thing to say in class about what it means to see a classroom as a solidaristic space. I say, I could lecture you via [...]
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