It’s been two-and-a-half years of relentless attacks.
And I think that is actually the plan.
The plan is to keep us exhausted and flitting from here to there,
so that we actually can't focus on what we want.
That’s why the Solidarity Summit is a great space
because it actually makes us reflect and stop being in this crisis mode.
And think about what do we want to build?
The folks who come to the summit are frontline activists
who are doing the hardest work on some of the most difficult issues
when it comes to racial justice in the United States.
Some are executive directors, some are community organizers.
Each of us brings a different perspective
and a different piece to the work.
The summit offered a way for us to build relationships,
to learn about each other’s issues, and to say,
“Okay, we can actually talk about these issues
even if we don’t come from those communities.”
So someone who’s Latin-X can talk about Islamophobia.
And someone who’s Muslim can actually talk about asylum-seekers at the border.
It’s the antidote to disunity.
Unless you’re sitting and breaking bread with people
and hearing what they’re looking for and what they’re struggling for,
it’s only then the lightbulb goes off and you go,
“Okay, well, that’s actually what we’re looking for, too.”
We have had income inequality in this country
and poverty and school segregation— these issues have always existed.
And it took people to feel personally persecuted
to then feel like they could stand up in the moment.
And that’s not what solidarity is.
Sometimes solidarity is when you are not personally persecuted
and you show up for a persecuted community.
Solidarity means that we have to believe that our own liberation
is tied up with the struggles and the liberation
of people in other communities,
and people in other movements, and other sectors.
This is the fifth summit that I’ve been to and through this process,
I’ve created relationships with individuals
who work at different organizations.
We were under attack earlier this year
and some of the key organizations that came to our aid
were based on relationships I formed at this summit years ago.
Being here at Solidarity Summit reminds me that there is community,
that there is an opportunity to redefine what solidarity looks like.
And so I hope that this conversation
can become something that we demonstrate to the world
in how solidarity truly is.
Part of the idea of building solidarity is really about a practice
of showing up and loving for people even during those moments of conflict.
Our organizations operate in different lanes,
with different missions, with different theories of change.
I disagree all the time and I welcome that.
It makes me think more critically about my own position.
And I hope that part of what I bring when I disagree
is that someone else reflects on theirs.
There’s some pieces of vision that we all share.
So it’s been really interesting to hear from people
doing that work at a national level, a hyper-local level,
in different organizing traditions, doing that work through base-building,
through advocacy, and respecting all of the different ways
that people come into the work.
But also hearing about what the strengths and limitations are
of all these different models.
Part of what’s happening here is that people’s idea of community
—who am I a part of—
is evolving, in part, through the relationships.
You cannot be a person that pushes for black liberation
without understanding what’s happening to undocumented people,
without understanding what’s happening to queer and trans people,
without understanding what’s happening to women.
Whenever you can gather people together
in the kind of political environmental that we’re in,
to have these kinds of deep, open, honest discussions
about our strengths and weaknesses as communities and community organizers,
the stronger the movements will be.
The work of creating a more perfect union is continuous and constant,
and every generation plays its part.
And we’re playing our part here.
You can have a message of solidarity,
but unless you’re able to act, nothing is going to shift.
It really needs to be a verb, and it needs to be a practice.