What is Solidarity?

With 3 Solidarity Brown Bags under our belt, we are pausing to reflect. Some inklings and then a poem.

We say we are “building a bigger we”.

We say, “Whatever happens in the other Washington, we on Whidbey can protect what we love, connect with our neighbors, create change and organize - together.”

We say, Solidarity because we grew out of a project called Solidarity over Supremacy, and because (in my parlance) “reciprocity-and-mutuality” are the nature of reality. it’s a relational world.

But what is it?

Is solidarity resistance? A stand against domination?

Is solidarity a value, an aspiration, a ground of being?

Is it a stand for? A stand with? A stand against? A stand beside? Is it sitting down so others can stand up? Tricky.

We fight the “overlords” (my term for what- or who-ever has us by the short hairs) by fighting those we see as upholding the Big Brother structures. The Republicans. The Democrats. The Woke. The MAGAs. “The overlords” are skillful, so skillful, in turning us against one another to protect themselves.

Red Pill/Blue Pill is a meme from the Matrix because we all sense there’s a big lie that’s running our lives. The Truman show resonates because we sense we’re mere extras in a show controlled by … by… whom?

We lash out against the perceived enemy, allowing ourselves to be cut to pieces in our crazed attempt to find the head of the beast we are trying to subdue.

Who is in our circle of “we”?

As soon as you have an identity, you have a boundary.

This is true for any “thing”, from a cell to a body to a club to a nation. As soon as you name something, there is an “other”. The United States of America is a 250 year conversation about who is in and who is out, who is part of us and who is apart from us. In-out. Up-down. The incessant effort to discern… food or poison… friend or foe… We can be so easily played by being convinced someone is against us, and take up arms against them.

This administration is driving so many of us crazy by trying, unilaterally, to redraw the circle of “we”, breaking communities, breaking bonds, breaking the laws we thought protected us, while telling us they are righting the wrongs of the “woke” who redrew the old lines. So there!

In our sense of threat, amplified by social media targeting our vulnerabilities, does our circle of we shrink? Is that intentional, the “overlords” picking us off, from the least defended to the most. You’ve seen videos of a pride of lions hunting a herd of gazelles. They target the slowest and weakest at the edges of the galloping herd. Perhaps a mama stops to defend a calf, but the herd thunders on.

With a generalized sense of threat in our social environment, do we simply run if we aren’t the one targeted? Can we become aware that once the weakest one has been taken, the rest are more exposed?

Solidarity is with the weakest link because they are part of the chain that links us all. As Niemeuller is translated

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

In these days of division and upheaval, the thing most under siege seems to be our goodwill. Civility—the basic human agreement to treat one another with care—is unraveling before our eyes. And when our sense of connection breaks down, cruelty grows easily in the cracks. We forget that we need each other to live meaningful lives. Without that truth at our core, indifference becomes the default, and apathy the new normal.
From Stephanie Raffelock

How have I been othered…let me count the ways?

I was cut out of the herd of popular girls, banished, thoroughly. I was taunted for being fat. I was a Jew in a WASP community. I am a woman and thus was sexual prey. I am a woman who navigates power carefully as the patriarchy lays claim again to dominance. I have a mental illness passed down through my father’s line. And now I am old.

How have I othered others, let me count the ways… but I can’t…because I have no idea the harms I’ve caused by exercising my own unconscious privilege.

Thus this is also about “coming of aging”

As I find the many ways ageism is rooted deep in my psyche - othering the old and thus myself as I grow old - I see how the “old” are drawn out of the circle of we, how the old become a problem to be managed, no longer part of the hubbub of life-making.

My friends remind me that everyone who is excluded knows excruciating pain, but in this political moment, the most excluded are the targets of the overlords. They break our solidarity, pick off the weakest, let us feel safer by saying, “At least I’m not a ….” while we cooperate with weakening the social fabric.

** Solidarity is knowing the social fabric itself makes us great. **

Protect what we love, connect with our neighbors, create change and organize - together. This isn’t a statement against “the overlords” as the current administration, but against the lies used to control us, to break our common humanity and steal from the common wealth.

The flint of this moment will sharpen our minds, deepen our hearts, and teach us during this turn through darker times.

Solidarity is holy work.
Solidarity the biggest work I’ve ever undertaken.
Thank you

COULD WE BE HAPPY?

Vicki Robin - October 17, 1999

For an anthology, Sustainable Planet

And we will all be noisy

We will gather in the streets talking about recipes and politics and philosophy and love

We will show each other our bruises with the innocence of children.

Convinced of our safety, we will wear brightness and smile as though anyone could be a friend.

The malls will be commons of kindness

With shops for healing broken hearts and stands for conversation breaks.

The poor won’t be so poor and will take the rich to lunch.

No one will feel left out.

The natural world will hum with life giving itself to life for the sake of life -

Just like in the old days.

Every species will have a human who, like an older brother,

Helps it cross the divide between death and deliverance.

We will hear the sounds of animals and trees

And have the distinct impression that we understand.

We will see paw prints and want to follow.

We will walk in silence, worshipping.

Oh we will worship shamelessly everywhere.

As we get the morning paper we will kiss the ground and greet the sun.

We will chant morning prayers in a thousand tongues right there on our door stoops.

We will say rosaries and make prayer ties on the bus in the morning.

And do business as if we will live a thousand life times with the outcomes of our actions.

We will admit that we are hopelessly in love with the divine Divine.

Yes, we will be showered with blessings and drip with wet gratitude.

We will all have enough. We will all have hope, even the poor poor who didn’t choose to be poor.

Our imaginations will be on fire with “what if”,

As though no one had told us to forget it and fail gracefully.

No life will be capped with despair. No child unloved and crying naked and dirty.

Even the rich will want to live in such a world,

Will want to come into the street and sing and drink beer.

And the guards and the prisoners will tell stories about childhood until they become brothers.

And that tight place in our chests where our hearts are in hiding will soften and melt.

And we will finally be free.