First Your Liberation and Then Mine
Across the globe communities are realizing, acknowledging, and studying the interconnectedness of their ongoing struggles for liberation and civil rights. For many, our nation’s adopted political values and policies boil down to injustice for profit and are adversely impacting the health, education, and safety of generations.
In Southwest Detroit our residents are strong and engaged. For each other and in community. They are not only in service of their own interests. Many have become allies for others’ fights for liberation in the face of systemic injustices that are preventing them from living free under oppressive structures.
They are in solidarity in fights against a system that routinely prioritizes money over human wellness when making decisions about what is important. That system values profit over people—meaning it systematically harms people to protect profits.
That mantra—profit over people—makes many of us expendable within that system whether it be about our health, education, or public safety. However, it also unites communities in struggle, forging communion and challenging the chains that bind toward freedom and justice for all.
“So what exactly does it mean to be in solidarity?”
Does simply being “in the same boat”, or having similar issues, mean people are in solidarity with one another? Or do we make things harder on each other (and ourselves) by failing to connect the dots and purposefully work together?
Raúl Echevarria is processing what this moment in our history is presenting us and what it requires of us to overcome, together. He offers thoughts on solidarity that gets at some of these questions and beyond.
In Solidarity
Words by Raul Echevarria
“Raúl is a community development practitioner with more than 20 years of experience, primarily in Humboldt Park, a historical Puerto Rican community in Chicago, and is currently employed as the Director of Land Use and Economic Development at UNI in Southwest Detroit.”
-From University of Detroit Mercy, Master of Community Development website
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police Department and the subsequent uprisings in most urban cities throughout the U.S., the word solidarity has become popular in activist and non-profit circles.
True solidarity requires intention, shared mission, and action
It is important to highlight the true nature of the word and raise the expected actions based on its use. Solidarity is not a mere substitute or synonym of words such as "support." Solidarity has a deeper or profound sentiment and commitment. To be in solidarity is to intentionally intertwine action and mission with another based on common or mutual interests.
This requires some form of analysis of the issues that multiple groups of people confront.
Solidarity comes with expectation and accountability
When used in its original intent, solidarity effectively connotes “co-liberation”, which has greater implication than simply to support.
“If you use this term then there is an expectation that you show up for your sister or your brother. And if you don’t show up, there is an expectation that you should be held accountable for your absence in the movement. ”
To be in solidarity is not for the faint of heart. It is not a trend. If we cannot uphold the true intention of the term then perhaps we should stick with "support”. There is nothing inherently wrong with supporting others. It is a virtue to be sure. But words carry energy and with that energy responsibility to carry out its intention.
Solidarity Protects Movements From Divide-And-Conquer Tactics That Leave Us By Ourselves
Solidarity makes movements stronger, more solid. And every time that folks have embodied the true nature of this term, intersecting their issues and oppressed experiences, the forces of the state apparatus, those that abuse their authority granted by the people, have had to give way. Every time.
Indeed a common tactic of 'divide and conquer' is utilized by those in authority, lifting up differences among groups and distracting from those common threads discovered during the previously mentioned analysis. The division is easily accomplished if the analysis is weak or does not exist.
But if solidarity is truly embodied, the movements will not be so easily torn apart, because they are stronger in those places that unite, that bond. The stitchwork on the quilt of movements need to be tight. THAT is true solidarity.
First your liberation and then mine
And so to the Black community that is suffering under the weight of white supremacy, I say, "Tu Lucha Es Mi Lucha" (Your struggle is my struggle). First your liberation and then mine.
En Lucha,
Raúl