Ideas - What role can solidarity play when confronting political and social issues?

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

In a time of rapidly changing politics and never-ending crises, what role can solidarity play in confronting political and social problems to create stronger bonds among people? A group of thinkers, writers, and artists tell IDEAS how solidarity is shaping politics and culture.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Enough is enough.

At a time of increasing polarization within a culture that prizes individualism, what does it mean now to be in solidarity with others? We've always organized around common cause or common goals. But often those bonds were formed out of a common experience or place. I'm a black male. I've gone through this my whole life. Never asked for any of it. It's a big problem. Today, solidarity crosses social, class and geographic boundaries with a common refrain that what happens over there happens over here.

Rather a sudden mobilization, part of a nationwide call in the light of the latest offensive against Rafa by the Israelis. Ideas in partnership with Another Story Bookshop in Toronto organized an evening of conversations about solidarity. I actually think of solidarity as being something that enables us to do things which feel impossible. I spoke with thinkers, writers, and artists about solidarity and how it shows up in their work. Solidarity is something we do. It's something we create together.

First, writer, filmmaker, and our 2023 Massey lecturer, Astra Taylor, talking about her most recent book, Solidarity, the Past, Present, and Future of a world-changing idea. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you for being here. It's wonderful to be with you once again. You and I have talked about all kinds of things over the years. We've talked about democracy. We've talked about insecurity. We talked a lot about insecurity. And now we're here to talk about solidarity. I'm wondering why write about solidarity now,

at this moment? Solidarity is eternally relevant. That's part of why we wrote this book. This moment, you know, we also should acknowledge this is May Day. This is International Workers Day. Solidarity would not be a concept, we can talk about this without the labor movement. We're also in the midst of an incredible uprising and the creation of solidarity encampments around North America. creation of solidarity encampments around North America. So, you know, in a way we could say solidarity is alive and well. Why write a book about it? You know, and I think part of the reason there actually aren't that many books on it is because solidarity is something we do. It's

something we create together. But I am someone who lives in between theory and practice. I really believe that we learn from doing things. And for the last 10 years, I have been an organizer with the Debt Collective, which is the world's first union for debtors. And what I've really been trying to do in that movement is to build solidarity, to build solidarity with and between working class people who might otherwise not see themselves as having anything in common. And through this practice, you know, I came to be curious about solidarity. What is it? What do we mean when we say that word? And it's a word that we don't, I don't think that we give enough credit to. In my opinion, solidarity is as important to democracy as its cousin's equality, freedom, justice, and yet it's something that gets short shrift. And I think that that is,

again, because it's actually something that you have to build, that is often built in the streets, in social movements, and because it's something that requires that you take a side, movements, and because it's something that requires that you take a side, and it requires a kind of investment and engagement that I think might make some, maybe some academically inclined writers or philosophers a bit uncomfortable. Okay, so that's solidarity in the moment now, and we'll come back to that near the end. Let's take it right to the beginning, to the roots of the word and its origin. You trace it right back to the earliest written occurrence, to ancient beginning, to the roots of the word and its origin. You trace it right back to the earliest written occurrence to ancient Rome, where it was referred to as a debt held in common. How does that definition shape your understanding of solidarity?

So I wrote this book with a co-author, Leah Hen Hendricks, and we met at Occupy Wall Street. And we come from different organizing backgrounds. And I think it's kind of interesting. It's the genesis of this book. I organize debtors, and the idea is essentially that our debts are somebody else's assets. They're on the balance sheets of lenders, increasingly of the government, and that we can build solidarity and economic power when we recognize that. In order to fight not just for debt cancellation, but the provision of public goods, Leah was born into wealth. She actually comes from an oil family and was one of these people who questioned that.

Why does our family have so much when other people have so little? And when she was in college, she actually, this was during the war on terror, she actually traveled and went and spent time in the West Bank, spent time in Syria, learned Arabic, and learned about solidarity. And started to hear this word and then went and did a PhD on the history of it. So we were talking on the phone and scheming, collaborating as we do, and she said, Astra, I've been meaning to tell you that the word solidarity actually connects to debt and that the word that we use goes back to ancient Rome. And there was a term called obligatio insulidum, and it meant a collectively held debt. So imagine farmers on the hook for a

debt together, so they have to bail each other out. So imagine farmers on the hook for a debt together, so they have to bail each other out. And so it's the sense of mutual obligation. And immediately I saw the sort of potential and depth of this concept. One thing I like about it is that it has a material component out of the gate. Solidarity isn't just a fuzzy feeling or affect, like, oh, I feel your pain, I empathize with you. It's, you know, we're on the hook together.

We're interdependent. And I think it was in that phone call that I said, maybe we should write a book together. So this is the social debt that you're talking about. I wonder if you could talk about how far you believe that kind of debt, that bigger concept of social debt, extends across time and place. Yes. So what happened is this ancient idea of this little fragment of ancient Roman law then got incorporated into the Napoleonic legal code,

and then actually was picked up almost as a metaphor into social thinking in the late 1800s. And this was, of course, a period of intense tumult. It's the Industrial Revolution. There's all of these democratic upheavals. And people are wondering, well, what's going to hold society together amidst all of this change? And again, through a kind of metaphor, people turn to this idea of a collectively held debt of solidarity.

And I'm sure many people know of Emile Durkheim, the famous sociologist. You maybe studied him in college. Well, he was part of a group of thinkers, philosophers and statesmen, who actually called themselves the solidarists. And they theorized this idea of social debt. And they saw solidarity as a way of thinking about what we actually owe each other. So they, you know, wrote quite beautifully about the fact that we're all born debtors to humanity. That we are indebted to the people. You know, we didn't invent the language that we speak with. We don't, you know, pave the roads

that we walk on. And that we actually are born kind of owing this, again, social debt to all who came before us, and we pay it forward by creating a good society. And this became the basis in France of the welfare state, an argument for progressive taxation. And so these thinkers, they were intellectuals, again, statesmen. They were kind of upper class. Another leading thinker of this group was named Leon Bourgeois, and he was indeed bourgeois. And they were making the case to other affluent people, privileged people, and saying, hey, we actually owe society something.

We should build solidarity in our interests too. And then simultaneously the labor movement is gaining steam and bringing a kind of fighting spirit and more class-conscious conception of solidarity to the table. And so in our book, we kind of draw on both this tradition of the solidarists who are talking about social debt and interdependence, but then also the fighting spirit of the labor movement where solidarity is a rallying cry and a form of power. So interesting what you say, that as a concept, apart from those other sort of twin concepts of justice and liberty in democracy, that solidarity was not taken seriously as an intellectual pursuit or as a concept to be looked at. Could you speak to what happened in the 19th century that may be echoing today

that makes solidarity such a natural refuge, a place to go to? Again, it's this moment of incredible upheaval. People are being kind of pushed out of their traditional communities, kind of pushed out of their traditional communities into urban centers. They're working in these new factories. Another thing that kind of sparked an awareness of our interdependence and the need for solidarity was the spread of disease. So this was a moment where they were realizing, wow, we're connected even if we're not touching. And so people were asking, well, what's going to hold us together

in the absence of God or king? And so Durkheim and these other thinkers, you know, settled on the idea of solidarity. So there's a lot of echoes with the moment that we're in. And, you know, one way I've been thinking about the moment we're in is that we often talk about the crisis of democracy. That's something I've written about. And lately I've been actually thinking, you know, one way I've been thinking about the moment we're in is that we often talk about the crisis of democracy. That's something I've written about. And lately I've been actually thinking, you know, this actually is more of a crisis of solidarity.

The solidarity is a precursor to democracy. Because solidarity is a relational concept. It's about the bonds between us. And you can't have democracy if we aren't connected to each other. Democracy needs that relational concept, and it's important to revive it. You also argue that solidarity as a concept depends on difference, and that its goal is not unity. Can we talk a little bit about the difference between solidarity and unity? Yeah, so yeah, this is one point we're very adamant about. Solidarity and unity. Yeah. So, yeah, this is one point we're very adamant about. Solidarity is not unity.

And, again, there's echoes of this with these early thinkers of solidarity who often referred actually to the human body. So, you know, the human body is whole, but it's not unified. We have knees. We have eyes. We have a spleen. We have lungs. And all these different parts work together to create this whole. We have a spleen, we have lungs, and all these different parts work together to create this whole.

And, you know, I think it's an interesting way of framing it. So solidarity, you know, again, is relational. It reaches across difference. So solidarity is also, it's not unity and it's also not identity. It transcends the boundary of identity, connects us to other people, bridges us. And that's another reason I think that it's so important. Why is unity, or maybe this isn't the right question, but why is unity the wrong goal or is it the wrong goal? Yeah. Well, I mean, unity is sameness. I mean, you know, I'm thinking of President Biden in the United States. He loves to give his speeches and call for unity,

which is sort of put the troubles aside, everybody get information. And the thing is, we're not all the same, but that doesn't mean we're not connected. It doesn't mean that we don't have common interests. And I think being able to engage across differences, one of the challenges of our time, and solidarity actually is a concept

that can help us do that. Yeah. Let me just pick up on what you were hinting at there. to engage across differences, one of the challenges of our time. And solidarity actually is a concept that can help us do that. Yeah. Let me just pick up on what you were hinting at there. And again, very well explained in your book. You say that solidarity is polarizing, but you say that that polarization can be generative and not destructive. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means exactly?

Yeah. The thing is, there's so little work on solidarity. This is part of the fun of it. So if you go to an academic library or you go to a bookstore, there's all these books on democracy. There's all these books on equality. There's all these books on freedom. And there really is a dearth of work on solidarity. There's a few books on maybe the Polish solidarity movement or Latin American solidarity. And so there's this big hole. And so we got to develop a kind of theory of solidarity. We hope lots of other people develop their theories. But we distinguish between transformative and reactionary solidarity. I think it's important to say that solidarity,

in a way, is group cohesion. It's not always good. So reactionary solidarity is a solidarity that otherizes, polarizes in a way that is exclusionary, that sometimes aims to exterminate the other, whereas transformative solidarity aims to expand the circle of inclusion. The boundaries are porous. But that doesn't mean that there's not an us and a them. And, you know, there always is an us

when we're talking about a them. Sorry, there always is a them when we're talking about it. Sorry, there always is a them when we're talking about us. But we have to be careful about how we polarize and how we treat that which is outside. You know, are we seeking to annihilate it? Or are we seeking to transform the social conditions, transform social relations? So we don't think that you can get around polarization. transform social relations. So we don't think that you can get around polarization.

But we have to be really careful who we pick as enemies because in that process, we remake ourselves. I'm interested in that process. I'm wondering how it is that you bring a broad spectrum of people on agreement on who the them is. Yeah. Well, I think that this is, again, the work that we're trying to do in the debt collective, right? And to say, you know, contrary to many of the stories we're told where, you know, our poverty is because immigrants are coming and stealing our jobs, right?

Or because people on welfare are taking advantage of government benefits. people on welfare are taking advantage of government benefits. We're organizing folks to say that the economy is structured in a way so that you're underpaid at the job by your bosses, and then you have to borrow to make ends meet, and you're charged interest, so you're robbed twice, first by your employer and then by your lender. And to organize people around a structural understanding of their social and economic conditions, right,

as opposed to one that misdirects their attention and blames people who are, you know, more vulnerable for their woes. Yeah. Back to the idea of kind of this difference, of the solidarity rooted in difference. You, in the book, write about an American Jewish man named Jeff Harper, and you drew some lessons about solidarity from his work. Can you talk about him and what he did?

Yes. So this was an interview that Leah conducted when she was in the West Bank. So Jeff Harper is an American-Israeli activist who organizes, or I think he actually founded the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. And so he has spent years trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes and the theft of Palestinian land. And he's not Palestinian. And I just think in the brief

interview that we share with him, you know, one thing he says that really stuck out to me is that the kind of solidarity he's practicing does require a level of analysis. It requires a level of imagination, right? Because he's in solidarity with people who aren't exactly like him. He won't ever exactly know what their lives are like,

but nevertheless, he sees a connection and actually sees his own well-being as tied up in theirs. So that suggests a relationship between solidarity and the common good. Yeah. Yes, I think this is, you know, he's not doing this. This is important with solidarity. He's not doing it just out of pity.

You know, he's not doing it just out of selflessness, actually. You know, he does not want to live in a world where his affluence is contingent on the dispossession of other people. This is part of why it was powerful to write the book with Leah, who comes from a privileged background. She really does believe that it is actually in her self-interest to restructure the economy.

I mean, climate change really illuminates the stakes, right? Nobody is safe on a burning planet. But this element of, you know, you phrased it as the common good, but I would say recognizing that we all have a stake in deep social transformation. And actually, you know, tapping into that, as an organizer, I'll say that tapping into people's self-interest is a powerful way of keeping people involved in an effort over time you're saying it's not a selfless act

to be in solidarity yes it's it's not a selfless act and that that doesn't mean it's selfish but i think it's an important thing to deeply reflect on the way our our liberation is actually connected with the liberation of people who live in very different places who have very different experiences than us Yeah, and who don't share identity to don't share our identities. So when you look at the world the way our world is today You know look right across the globe. I wonder what you think some of the main barriers are to solidarity Mm-hmm. I mean we have a whole chapter about the way about the many ways solidarity is actually undermined, from sort States right now, from crackdowns on abortion providers, you know, to crackdown on activists and trumped up charges. So, you know, but I think we do live in a very individualistic culture and that

can make solidarity difficult. You know, we're also told over and over that our causes are not connected. And sometimes as an organizer, you're criticized for bringing other causes to the table. And I think that we really need to resist that, partly because so many of— it's striking to me that many of the people who were fighting the debt collective and trying to block student debt relief are now also cracking down on protesters defending Palestine and calling for a ceasefire. They're also the people who are trying to crack down on labor organizers. So, you know, they see all of these causes as connected, and I think in response,

we need to do the work of yoking different causes together. Are those barriers, do you think, sharp enough to cause a chill on solidarity? Is that fair to say? Yeah, I think it is fair to say. I mean, I think, but we also see incredible bravery. I mean, this is part of the benefit of studying history is you see how, you know, just the incredible, the incredibly difficult conditions that people organized

within and against. And I think today we see an incredible amount of courage. You know, I mentioned the student encampments. I mean, students are risking expulsion. They're risking suspension. And I think courage is actually one of the, you know, a core virtue of solidarity. I think solidarity does require courage. And, you know, certainly there can be a chilling effect too, but it's also important to just recognize how brave people are. You argue that the need to move beyond welfare state to create a solidarity state what is this can you just i'd love to imagine it with you what is a solidarity state look like yeah yeah so i really i so you know solidarity isn't a given solidarity is constructed and that that

holds is true for the reactionary forms of solidarity. I mean, you know, people have to be taught to hate, and they have to be trained to kill, right? So I think solidarity, you know, in both variants is something that is made. It's not just found. And, you know, so it's something that we can practice as individuals in our relationships. Again, solidarity is a relational thing. It's something that we can practice as individuals in our relationships. Again, solidarity is a relational thing. It's something that we can build into our organizations, into our labor unions, our tenants' unions, our debtors' unions. But I also think it's something that we can embed into policy. And so, you know, the concept of the solidarity state, we have a whole chapter about the idea of a solidarity state. And it was actually a thought experiment kind of inspired by all the ways that laws and economic systems at this point are structured in ways that undermine solidarity. And so I, you know, what if all of that capacity actually went to the opposite, to fostering solidarity, to fostering connection? And so what does that mean? I, you know, we've talked for a

long time about the need for a welfare state for a state that redistributes wealth and that provides, you know, a floor below which nobody can fall. But I think we haven't paid enough attention to how those programs make people feel, how they make people relate to each other. Those programs make people feel how they make people relate to each other. I think that there are ways to encourage people to see themselves as more invested in state services and to see themselves more connected to each other. Like right now, if you are poor and you need some kind of government benefit, typically it's very stingy and stigmatizing, right? If you're affluent, you get a lot of tax breaks and you don't even have to recognize that

you're receiving some kind of state benefit. The solidarity state would kind of change that dynamic and bring those relationships, bring our interdependence into the fore. And so I think that interdependence into the four. And so I think that policies create feedback loops and encourage and shape the way that we interact as people. And I do think solidarity can be more embedded at the level of governing. Yeah. During the Vietnam War, Coretta Scott King and other thinkers imagined a state that focused on some of the things that you're talking about, like housing and care as an alternative to the warfare state. What do you think is the most urgent

in that kind of thinking today? Yeah, yeah. Coretta Scott King sort of took up the mantle of her husband, Martin Luther King, after he was assassinated, stepped in and helped lead the Poor People's Campaign, so a movement in 1968 that attempted to unite poor people of different races to demand public services in and into the Vietnam War, to combat what Martin Luther King called the three evils of poverty, racism, and militarism.

Poverty, racism, and militarism. And I think Coretta Scott King correctly identified the welfare state's dependence on war as a core problem. And she actually said something that we quote. She said, we've never taken seriously the challenge of thinking about a peacetime economy. And it's true. If you look at the history of the welfare state, I won't go into it here, but it's so imbricated with war. That's why we talk about the guns and butter economy. And it's true. If you look at the history of the welfare state, I won't go into it

here, but it's so imbricated with war. That's why we talk about the guns and butter economy, right? And yet, when it comes to funding the things that we need, like healthcare, education, and jobs, we're told there's never enough money for those things, unless they're jobs connected to policing. unless they're jobs connected to policing. So I think that a profound break needs to be made with that model. And so I think at the center of a solidarity state would be a deep commitment to peace, a deep commitment to care work instead of violence work. And... Thank you.

And a deep attention to making visible the ways that we are interdependent and owe this social debt that these thinkers were talking about. Before we end here, I do have to ask you, you mentioned how we live, and we all know that we live in this really hyper-individualized world where, you know, all things individual are, you know, held up as an example of how we should be living.

I wonder if you think that we are too deep into that individualized world to imagine anything like the kinds of solidarity that we saw during the Vietnam War era and those MLK time. I think I... So my response to that is actually solidarity is everywhere. There's small acts of solidarity all the time. And if there weren't so much,

then the forces of reaction and authoritarianism and white supremacy and economic exploitation wouldn't have to invest so much in dividing us, right? And so I think there's incredible, you know, solidaristic potential. And what I want us to do is to nurture that, to channel that, to create institutions, structures, and social policies that bring out those inclinations and capacities and make them more robust. There's so much to be worried about and to agonize over at this moment. But again, this is the power

of the historical view is people coming together in solidarity have won everything good. The abolition of slavery, the weekend, the eight-hour workday, let's go for six or four, the right to vote. We've won, just by organizing a small group of debtors, about $150 billion of debt cancellation in the last four years in the United States. And so I'm bullish on solidarity. You know, I'm bullish on solidarity. I really do think that it's the only thing that can save us. Bullish on solidarity. Bullish on solidarity, y'all.

Astrid Taylor, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. Find us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA,

the news you got to know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. Demonstrating common purpose in the face of individual differences is at the heart of solidarity. But at a time of intense polarization, showing solidarity can sometimes be seen as the same old, same old partisan politics. solidarity can sometimes be seen as the same old, same old partisan politics. That cynicism belies the fact that we live in solidarity every day, with neighbors, co-workers, friends, and strangers. So now we'll turn to a group of artists and activists for whom solidarity is at the center of their work. Dania Majid of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival,

writer Taya Lim, neurologist playwright Suvendri Nelina, and performer Rula Said. I'm going to sing a Mahmoud Darwish poem in the next set, who some of you may know is the national poet of Palestine. So this is a translation mostly from Fadi Judah. I am from there, and I'm in Hunek. I am from there, and I have memories. I was born like anyone is born.

I have a mother and a house with many windows. I have brothers, friends, and the cold window of a prison. I have a wave that seagulls snatched away. I have a view of my own. I have an extra blade of grass. I have a moon at word's end, a generous supply of birds, and an olive tree that never dies. and an olive tree that never dies. I have walked and crossed the land before the crossing of swords made a meal of a body. I am from there.

I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries. And I cry for a cloud to know me upon its return. I have learned all the words befitting the court of blood. I have learned all the words and I have pulled them apart to form just one homeland. Thank you. This panel will be nowhere near long enough, and no stage is big enough to contain all this thinking. So let me just start and try to get through as many of these questions as possible. And I want to start by getting some reflections

about the state of solidarity today. And you can answer however you like. And please jump in if you need to after this first round. Taya, please. You know, in thinking about what solidarity is and preparing for this panel, I realized that I guess because of the artist organizing that I've been doing in the past few months, I actually think of solidarity as being something that enables us to do things which feel impossible. So in listening to Astra Taylor talking about, you know, working with the debtors movement, I thought about what are the parallels to artists, you know. Artists work within this inherent contradiction where, you know, our work is very precarious. We're constantly reminded that the

value of our work fluctuates wildly out of our control. And yet our job is actually to tell the truth, to disrupt the ordinary order of business, and it becomes incredibly difficult to do that when you're economically insecure. And yet, in the past several months, I've been part of artist movements that have asked why so many of our festivals and our prizes, including Hot Docs and the Giller Prize, why the lead sponsor is Scotiabank, who is the largest foreign investor in Elbit Systems,

which is an Israeli arms manufacturer. And I think the reason why I say this is a thing that seems impossible is it did not seem possible for us to ask those questions until we were able to do it together. And I think when we talk about compulsion, I think it has become a compulsion because in asking these questions, what we have to recognize is that our prizes

and our festivals are actually very important to our funder. Otherwise, why would they spend, you know, millions of dollars? And that we as artists are very important to our festivals and our prizes because they don't exist without us. So I think that what that allows us to do is to sort of actually, you know, recalibrate our reality. Is it really true that we have no power after all? So Vendram.

Thank you. People are choosing not to look away from what is happening in Palestine and the occupied territories, and Gaza specifically, but what has been happening for 75 years. So they're choosing not to look away. And the question is why, I suppose. I mean, the scale is unimaginable, but not a break from history, certainly not from the Nakba. So I want to suggest that I think youth are a really important voice that are coming to the table and shifting geopolitics in a certain way

because of their connectivity, because of how they talk to one another and what they hear, who they're attuned to, and the kind of speaking truth to power that they're doing in so many ways, and I'm so inspired by it. So just one quick thing on that. Before the pandemic, the global climate organizing was on a scale we had never seen before, and they weren't kidding. And I think that if the pandemic hadn't interrupted it, I love to think about what might have happened. And I see those strands connecting now. So that's the other piece, I think,

that youth are showing us a kind of bravery and courage that we need to see and emulate. Thank you very much for those reflections. Dania, I want to go back a little bit to what I talked to Astra about as well, which is that solidarity is almost impossible without polarization. Could you talk about that in terms of how that fits with your experience? Is it necessary to have polarization to enable solidarity? I don't know if it is, because in doing this work, all I have been experiencing or seeing is the opposite of that. I've seen so many different groups of people actually come together. These are groups of people that we are told or fed

by mainstream media, whether it come from anti-Palestinian racism or Islamophobia, that we are people who cannot get along together and work together. people who cannot get along together and work together. So I think we need to move away from this obsessive use and weaponization of the polarization narrative, which is actually being used to try to shut us down under the guise of safety. When, in fact, when we see at the encampments, everyone is more than safe. We are seeing groups of people who have historically been portrayed as not being allied, but completely allied. So, Taya, if I can ask you to kind of follow up on from that. What is the difference, to bring back another theme that we talked about

earlier, between solidarity and unity? Are they different things? I think they are different things. I mean, I think that solidarity is necessarily political. It's looking at what do we owe each other? What do we owe to other groups? You know, what are the terms under which when we have privilege, we have it? And what does that mean that we should do for other people? What is our obligation to other people? So Vendrini, what are your thoughts on that idea of polarization, whether it is necessary or even exists in a situation like what we're watching in the States? So I was thinking about Audre Lorde, who had this thought about this discussion about difference, right? I mean, polarization is sort of the extreme of difference.

But she always argued that it was an opportunity for creative dialogue. And I think that, for example, in the Israel-Palestine polarity, trauma histories are something that are shared. Just imagine if dialogue could occur rather than defensive kind of post-traumatic stress response with weapons. Polarity doesn't help anything, right? We need to find ways to always bridge difference,

but it needs to be, like example of South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, it needs to be grounded in truth, right? And on both sides, always truth. There can be this sense that solidarity somehow just happens. Can you talk about, I mean, we earlier talked about it, the need for it to be constructed. Can you draw from, you know, from your own experiences as to how easy or difficult and what makes building solidarity easier? I've stepped into spaces, I suppose, where there's been a lot of polarity in my life. I married someone who's Jewish, which pushed me into the pretty strong polarity within myself.

Places that I just refused to go, even cultural spaces, spaces of worship. I would go anywhere else but there. I would go anywhere else but there. So that was like going through electrical fences of fear. And, yeah, fear. I have seen, especially of late, more solidarity with allied Jews than I have even in the last 24 years of moving in some of those circles, standing with women in black across from the Israeli consulate, to call for an end to the occupation, long before I ever had Facebook or Twitter, or I don't do Twitter even to this day, or whatever it's called.

And I have learned so much myself from listening to the historical relationship of those Jews who have deep roots in social justice and solidarity with many social justice movements and with the struggle of people to afford life as well. So for me, that's what I have to say. Dania, please. Yeah. Building a movement takes work, and so it starts with great organizers, foundational principles,

and then from that organizing work comes the solidarity because solidarity building is part of movement building work. The other aspect of it is the Palestinian movement is not a bubble. We learn from other movements, so there's a lot of exchange of knowledge between other movements from the past to the present, there's an exchange and transfer of knowledge as we educate one another. And then we build those co-solidaries because the roots of oppression faced by Palestinians are, in many instances, the same roots of oppression faced by other communities or other causes. So there is that transfer of knowledge that helps grow that solidarity because, you know, if we

are victorious, we're all victorious. Could you actually, just staying with you, Dania, talk some more about that cross-pollination because it has gone both ways, or more than both ways, but there are several ways. Can you talk a bit more about those different groupings and how they've transferred knowledge? Yeah, I mean, it goes back to 1960s, 70s, during anti-imperialist movements where you had different movements, whether it be black liberation movements, indigenous liberation movements, the Irish, the Vietnamese,

and Palestinians kind of all getting together to exchange knowledge, tactics, and principles. And when you watch those movies from, you know, because of TPFF, I've seen a lot of movies that come out of the era, you will see those very unifying principles that sound very fresh and current today, but those were the principles that those movements came together across, and they were pushing to end imperialism. It was sort of a broader movement. More recently, and why we think we see the rise of solidarity in Canada is because of the immense work that the black community

around Black Lives Matter, the indigenous community, pushing back against pipelines, the Indigenous community, you know, pushing back against pipelines, truth and reconciliation, residential schools. They have both those movements, and I should also mention the queer movement, because they have also done a lot of work in movement building. But we have learned so much in terms of understanding anti-racism discourse and settler colonialism discourse within the mainstream society. So when things came up with Palestine and we started seeing, again, the movement, and I would say probably in 2021, I think that's when we really did see the change. People were versed in anti-black racism and racism discourse, and they were already versed

in settler colonialism discourse because of what we've learned here, and they just applied it to Palestine. They didn't need all 70, 100 years' worth of history to understand what was happening in Palestine was wrong because they knew it was wrong here, and then they applied it to the Palestinian cause. And I think that's why we've seen such a rapid building of movement

because that knowledge exchange happened very recently. I'll tell you. Do you mind tackling that question before we move on to the next? Just your experience in terms of building solidarity. I mean, I think one of the biggest barriers to solidarity is the fact that we are all products of our environment. right? We live under late capitalism. We've been conditioned to believe that there can only be one, you know, that we live under this logic of scarcity and that

we're constantly in competition with each other. And I think even that way of thinking can sometimes filter into organizing when people are at loggerheads because they feel that there's only one way to do something. But I think that that is what is exciting about solidarity because it enables us to sort of re-understand how we think of value. Last November, the writer Shani Mutu wrote an op-ed where she asked, like, what would happen if, for example, the Scotiabank Giller Prize didn't come with a huge purse? You know, what would happen if it was less money? Would the prestige go away?

And I think the answer is absolutely no. So I think what we see in these solidarity movements is it allows us to think through this idea that we are so sort of under the thumb of our working conditions may not be true. You know, that there's other kinds of value that we can find in community and each other that will

hold ourselves up when maybe we don't win a $100,000 prize, which is the reality for almost all of us. We talked earlier about it being not a selfless act, that it is in self-interest that people build solidarity and they come together to solve problems. So I come from a Sri Lankan refugee family and a colonial occupation and a 30-year civil war and a genocide. So those patterns are recognizable to me, and I feel something when I see it perpetrated in other ways. So I also feel like the continuity of that kind of violence, extractive approach to transactions, that does violence to me as a human. And so because of those feelings, that's where my solidarity comes from.

It doesn't mean that I don't need to understand details of situations that are different. I do. But the feeling actually is a basis. Rula, what about you? Can you talk about the connection between solidarity and the common good? Can you talk about the connection between solidarity and the common good?

I think orienting ourselves toward a world of kind of a co-thriving just resonates with me as a human being, as an artist, as a friend, as a mom, as someone who has the riches of this earth to avail myself of and to hopefully develop some sense of reciprocity with all those elements that I have relationship with. So I feel like that is the only way forward, is to orient ourselves towards a co-thriving that does benefit all of us and to shift away from a kind of domination, extraction, using of resources and of one another. Just as a last round, Dania, starting with you, when it comes to the work of solidarity that you've done, is there an instance in the past,

either something positive or something, perhaps that was a challenge, that kept you motivated in the present, that kept you believing that solidarity is the answer to the problems you're trying to solve? I mean, I just don't think we can solve the problems of, you know, or stop the genocide in Palestine without solidarity, because it's not going to,

as we see, it's not coming from our government. Instead, they've gaslight us all to believe that calling for an end to genocide is either anti-Semitic or we're the ones that are violent and perpetrators of violence. And so we know change doesn't come from the top. We have been seeing the occupation and oppression of Palestinians for decades. And we keep waiting for those international bodies and our government to represent our voices to reflect that change. And they haven't put that pressure. So the only way that pressure is going to happen is from the grassroots. is from the grassroots. And it's all those students on campuses who are being brutalized right now

by campus administrations who claim to respect academic freedom are inspiration. It's all the artists who have signed open letters in support. Yeah. You know, artists, academics, who have signed open letters of support, have spoken out on public stages and concert halls, you know, in line of the, you know, calling for the, you know, in support of boycott, divestments and sanction and an end to a genocide. That is critically important. We're seeing that movement coming from the bottom.

And that's the only way we're going to liberate Palestine, is through global solidarity. And that's what keeps me motivated. So for the rest of you, the same question. If you could just recount an experience, a challenge that keeps you motivated. Well, I think the sort of deep dreariness of feeling like you're only worth how much your last book sold, that

you have to accept certain funding that maybe you have issues with, that you have to do any contract that's offered to you. I mean, it's a very challenging way to live. And I think what this moment has helped me to realize is that I actually don't have to live that way, that there's other ways that I can rely on my community. If I turn down those things and if we turn down those things together, there's other value that we can have in each other, you know, and ultimately they can't disinvite all of us, you know, so if we stand together, we can get somewhere. I think the challenges are huge. And although there's growing solidarity and resistance, the forces that we're aligned against

are powerful, aligned, coordinated. And so I think that we need to be really sure and clear that we're just going to keep going and that we're going to keep going because we're going to keep going. I read Fadi Jude as a Palestinian poet who I greatly admire, has a piece in the back of his most recent book that was written during all of this called It's a Dedication, you know, the way that there's a dedication often at the end of the book.

And in it, there's a line about natural gas and how he hopes that it's a spear in the heart of vampires. And this line somehow strikes me because it looks so far forward to thinking, what's this all about and who will we be if we don't stop it? Right? We'll be a bunch of dead vampires. So we need to, all of us come together speak about what we see not stop even if it's hard even if the results don't seem to be there that we want it's

not about instant gratification it's the long haul and it's not palestine has to be free and so many other peoples need to be freed to to shape their future differently so yeah the last word is for you oh my goodness the last word is for me. Well, I'm, you know, I'm maybe the least sort of naturally political person that you'll ever meet to be up here speaking about solidarity. I was raised by a single mother where we never spoke about politics in my home and I was raised in an atmosphere of love and nurturing and for me that is, maybe that is a political act unto itself and maybe there is in the effort made to love to the best of our ability in the face of hate, in the face of divisiveness, in the face of blatant lies, in the face of ugliness that which would erase the beauty that actually is the most nurturing thing that maybe we have to give one another and to give this earth,

that we keep nurturing that in ourselves and in each other and in our connections and in our solidarity and in our fight that we never lose our hearts and our interbeingness, interconnectedness, and that we learn from the interbeingness and the beauty of the earth, our mother and our teacher, how to be ecosystems that thrive together and uphold each other and that birth some kind of future for our world, for our children, for our grandchildren. That just flew by.

But thank you so much for your insights. I hope we can gather again and have a longer conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you to Astra Taylor, Taya Lim, Suvendran Ilina, Dania Majid, and Rula Saeed.

Also, a special thanks to co-organizer Angela Gogia and Another Story Bookshop. This episode was produced by Philip Coulter, Pauline Holdsworth, and Nahid Mustafa. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval. The acting senior producer is Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.