Solidarity is not “doing for” or “doing to.” Solidarity is about joining with.

Our times call for a rediscovery of what true solidarity means. Lack of solidarity with the most vulnerable among us is like pure oxygen for the fires of fascism in our land.

Solidarity entails realizing that freedom and justice for one are inextricably linked to freedom and justice for all, and it calls us to join with persons whose experience of freedom and justice is most vulnerable to attack and to protect them from persons and systems that do not respect their rights and would do them harm.

It is important to realize that when religion is used as an excuse to be politically neutral, it is not actually being politically neutral but rather is an expression of solidarity with the purveyors and perpetrators of injustice by not actively being in solidarity with the most vulnerable and the oppressed.

In their book,, Liberating People, Planet, and Religion, Joerg Rieger and Terra Schwerin Rowe write, “[R]eligion will have to decide whether it will continue to be a justification for the status quo and a source of tranquility for the few or a mode of agitation and solidarity for the many” (p.1).

And Pope Francis wrote these encouraging words about solidarity: 

“To all people of good will who are working for social justice: never tire of working for a more just world, marked by greater solidarity!  No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world!” 

In her book The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir writes, “to will oneself free is also to will others free” (p. 73). Freedom, including the freedom to search for truth and meaning, comes with responsibility. A responsible search for truth and meaning at a minimum entails doing no harm to others, and ideally it would include doing positive good in relation to others. Doing no harm and doing positive good in relation to others includes willing them to be free just as we will ourselves to be free. Just as we want others to respect our free and responsible search for truth and meaning, so too should we respect their free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This respect for the freedom of others calls us to be in solidarity with the oppressed and to actively pursue their liberation.

If I were magically given the opportunity to spend a day with a person from the past to gain insight and wisdom about what to do in our present times, I would choose James Baldwin. 

James Baldwin in an open letter to Angela Davis in 1970, wrote these words that convey one the greatest challenges to true solidarity in our time for those of us who are white: 

“Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness—for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps—they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of—and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.”

Solidarity calls us to see that every person on earth, in fact all life on earth, is one of us.

Solidarity means joining with our black and brown siblings who are bearing the brunt of the death throes of white supremacy and the rise of White Christian nationalism in our country. Every black and brown sibling is one of us, and we join with them in solidarity!

Solidarity means joining with our transgender siblings whose lives are not being respected and whose existence patriarchal Christian nationalists are attempting to erase. Every person who is transgender is one of us, and we join with them in solidarity! 

Solidarity means joining with our immigrant siblings, both documented and undocumented, whose humanity and human rights are not being respected. it means joining with them to keep them from being sent to concentrations camps in El Salvador or to concentration camps next next door or to concentration camps anywhere. Every immigrant is one of us, and we join with them in solidarity.

Solidarity means joining with persons who are losing life-saving aid, who are losing their livelihoods, and whose benefits and well-being are under attack because the richest man in the world who can’t keep himself from giving two nazi-style salutes at a political rally has deemed them to be inefficient. Every one of them is one of us, and we join with them in solidarity.

Solidarity means joining with both human life and other than human life to live simply and sustainably so that others might simply live. It means preserving a livable climate for this generation and all future generations. Every part of the family of life is one of us, and we join with them in solidarity. 

Cornell West famously has said on numerous occasions that “justice is what love looks like in public.” I would add to this insight that the path to justice is paved with solidarity, and solidarity is expressed most powerfully by joining with the most vulnerable among us. May we all cultivate the love and courage necessary to keep building the path of solidarity that leads to justice for all. 

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