Blog Thoughts: Solidarity in the Ground – A Trimester In

by Lucy S.

Driving home Friday evening, I started thinking again about this blog and what it was I had in mind when I started it three months ago. I know I want to communicate with people here about labor in its multitudinous meanings, tracing connections and overlaps between creative-labor, reproductive-labor, care-labor, and paid and unpaid labor. I’m interested in how we experience those labors, the conditions in which we labor, the obstacles we face, our reasons for laboring, and our hopes regarding our labors. In what ways do labor, learning, and teaching intersect? What differences are there between being compelled to labor and laboring without compulsion? If the only reason we labor is for a paycheck – if the work is something we would not choose to do otherwise – how does that affect us?  Or is there a difference between labor that someone else compels us to do, labor that we are compelled to do by our own needs (bound to food, shelter, etc.), and labor that we are only doing because we want to (making art, for example)? And are there differences between labor that is purely for our individual selves and labor that is for others in some way?

I’ve also wondered for years how we can share our particular experiences, ideas, and beliefs without agreeing on everything, and find commonalities on which we might build genuine solidarity. How do we avoid, on one hand, getting locked in on the rightness of all of our own perspectives and the wrongness of those which do not align with our own; and on the other, simply nodding at every perspective and idea, proclaiming them all “interesting” in ways that don’t challenge ourselves or anyone we are communicating with? In the U.S., tolerance is touted so often as a value, but it strikes me that tolerance is often a brittle veneer spread over a quicksand of intolerance. We move lightly and quickly across these areas or avoid them when possible, or we only talk about what we know we are likely to agree on. Openly spoken disagreement and debate seem to make so many people uncomfortable. Yet I think we need them and we need to know how to enact them in ways that aren't at odds with what we are trying to do.

I’d like to say that I am shoring up the ground for growth instead of keeping the layer over the quagmire brittle, suitable only for skittering movements across issues we invariably encounter. I hope so. But there have been times when I haven’t been thick-skinned enough – when I’ve been too quick to see putdowns and take offense, rather than value discussion as a chance to develop not only personally but as part of a collective of many – to develop through relationship. There have been times when I should have done what I could to create or sustain dialogue rather than letting a comment or action which I felt strongly about go by without responding (out of a sense of inadequacy, or because I didn’t want to disagree with someone I liked and maybe cause ill feelings, or because I had decided there was no sense in ‘bothering’ with that person). Other times, I’ve been too dogmatic, not listening enough. And sometimes I have too little time or am too worn out. But I think we have to try. Instead of turning away from each other, we have to make the turn back toward one another, again and again.

To be honest, what I was hoping for, and still hope for, is to contribute to a rich soil which is sturdy enough to support our growth upward and outward, and permeable and soft enough to sink our roots into, where we can encounter and entangle ourselves with other roots.

Or to put it another way, I hope to help build solidarity. Solidarity can be defined as “unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards.” It can be defined as “social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals have on each other” (Wikipedia “Solidarity”). I love that solidarity recognizes that we are not and do not want to be independent. I love that I can depend on others and that they can depend on me. The Wikipedia article contains some quotes on solidarity, including these two:

Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations.

Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World (2000) p. 312

Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.

Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) p. 189

Our struggles are not inherently the same, at least on one level, but for solidarity to mean more than just a feeling, I think we have to recognize that on a deeper level, our struggles are similar and interlinked, and that we do have commonalities in our struggles, pains, and hopes for the future. Recognizing this may require a massive shift in our understanding of those hopes. Grasping what our struggles are and what kind of actions and relationships offer real hope may mean trying harder to see and understand our lives as they are bound to others. I love that Ahmed says commitment and work are needed, and a recognition that we live on common ground. Moreover, we live in common ground, intertwined, depleting or nourishing each other.

I agree with and have at times learned the hard way the truth in Galeano’s statement about charity and solidarity… and yet.  And yet…what are we supposed to do when confronted with people in need? Yesterday I saw that the at last spring weather brought out some people with signs at intersections asking for money. As I made my way through the line to get on the freeway, I saw a guy ahead and on my left holding a sign saying he was an out of work father of four kids, so I hurriedly grabbed a couple bucks to hand through my open window. Then the light turned red and I found myself just stopped there with the window down and him standing just outside. He said, “Actually, do you know what time it is?”  I said, “Yeah, it’s 7:30.” He said, “Okay, so maybe an hour more of daylight.” He seemed to be in such a friendly mellow mood – and I was in one myself – that I felt like we were somehow in a different situation for those moments. Maybe he felt it, too. I said, “At least the weather’s finally mild.”  And he said, “Yeah; when I first lost my job right before Christmas, I came out here for the first time and it was cold, but I made $900 in five hours, and I didn’t have to come back out for two months. Of course, that was because it was near Christmas. That’s never happened since then.”  And he said it all with a casual smile, as if he was just sharing some interesting information. I was just nodding and smiling back, and then the light changed and it was time to go. 

For some reason, I liked that he’d explained the ‘business’ side of his work to me. And I don’t know what to call it but work. We already have a society in which people are paid to hold advertising signs on corners (as I wrote about here: http://labor2beardown.blogspot.com/2013/01/signs-of-scarcity-in-meaningful-work.html ).  Since we have not structured our society in such a way that people can simply work to contribute to their society and count on sustenance, and since the work that is available is often inane or worse, isn’t this guy working? And isn’t this part of his care-labor if he, in fact, is raising four kids? (And if he isn’t – well, I don’t have it in me to get too moralistically worked up about that. In our society, compassion can be another scarce resource for which people must compete. Some are deemed more worthy of it than others. But I’m easy about giving him the benefit of the doubt regarding the kids.) Could he be a comrade? Is he a fellow care-laborer? Does he have the right to make some demands on other people in his society for some material support, since he is one of us? Maybe this is a kind of protest work – an unwillingness to be invisible in one’s poverty.

One question I have been thinking about is: why do we tell each other our stories? Whether we write them down or just verbally express to someone else what happened to us or someone we know, what impels us to do this?  I think for me it is sometimes because I want to bind to the person I am talking with by sharing part of myself. Sometimes it is because I yearn for some comfort and consolation from that person. Sometimes it is because I want them to help me make sense of it. Sometimes it is because I am overflowing with joy and can’t wait to share it and even re-experience it by putting it into words for someone else. Sometimes it is a kind of testimony.

When it is a testimony, is it to say that I or the people I know and love have it worse than anyone else or that we are somehow better people than others? Or is it to find commonality with others, so that we can make sense of our pain and try to create better conditions, so that we can feel both 'love and rage' at what goes on, and renew our determination to confront these injustices and change them? Is it also to understand that these efforts are not simple, and that there are pitfalls we must avoid if we are to build genuine solidarity with others?

In my response to someone on another one of these blog posts, I noted that in Raymond Williams’ novel Border Country, one character expresses to another the importance of having an idea and working for it. And he means working in solidarity with others for a more emancipatory, just, fulfilling society. Maybe I am being grandiose, but I would like this blog to participate in some way, however small, in that effort. How do we actually change the structure of this society? How do we change ourselves into people who are capable of changing its structure? How do we get beyond charity to active solidarity? I see nothing wrong with materially helping each other, but I want these relations to be, “Hey, I’ve got your back, and I know you’ve got mine,” for all kinds of tangled up reasons.

Solidarity forever.

***

“Solidarity Forever” is a song that originates with the Wobblies (IWW). The IWW has been around for more than a century. I am a member, though I too rarely go to meetings or other actions – at least, that has been the case during these overwhelmingly busy, anxious, yet amazing years in graduate school. I am going to try harder to finally become a much more active member.

Here is a link to the song, which is sung to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  This song is still sung all the time at union meetings and events. http://www.iww.org/en/history/icons/solidarity_forever

I like this added verse:
They divide us by our color; they divide us by our tongue
They divide us men and women; they divide us old and young
But they'll tremble at our voices, when they hear these verses sung
For the Union makes us strong!

***

Postscript:  I just read an interesting article on Alternet called "Slaves to Our Stuff: A Creative Vision to Break Away From Consumer Culture's Destructive Grip." http://www.alternet.org/environment/slaves-our-stuff-creative-vision-break-away-consumer-cultures-destructive-grip?page=0%2C0  

At the end, the author says to Billy Tallen, author of a new book called The End of the World: "You did lots of environmental research for your book. What did you learn from the Dr. Tony Barnosky study from UC Berkeley?"

Tallen replies: "Barnosky’s conclusion is that the earth is a single living thing. He’s saying there is a grand ecosystem here, an earth system and it can experience a catastrophic collapse. His worldwide team of natural scientists from around the world concludes that this more general collapse is imminent. The fact is that we cannot survive without other life .... The belief is that we can exist alone. This is the operative belief of our nation’s systems, our religious systems and our military systems. Clearly the deadly evidence is that yes, we can keep ecosystems in pocket parks off of highways or a little museum of existing creatures of an otherwise extinct species standing there in a little zoo but that scenario is a prescription for death for all of us. Humans certainly. We can’t survive that. People have a sense of wanting life. The psychological construction of the average person is much different from that of a corporation. We want to live and we’re looking for a way to live."

Solidarity in and with our common ground.