what does solidarity actually look like?

To­day mil­lions of peo­ple across the US ral­lied against an in­cen­di­ary au­thor­i­tar­i­an regime. I use the word ral­ly be­cause that’s what it was. 

It was not a protest. Protests in­volve civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and mak­ing things in­con­ve­nient and un­com­fort­able in or­der to pres­sure change. That be­ing said, most of the ac­tivists I know start­ed by at­tend­ing a ral­ly, not chain­ing them­selves to­geth­er or block­ing freeways. 

Peo­ple are scared of protest­ing be­cause it can in­volve putting your safe­ty at risk. I know I felt a lot safer putting my­self at risk protest­ing once I was part of a com­mu­ni­ty. And com­mu­ni­ty is built at ral­lies like the one that hap­pened today. 

I hear a lot of peo­ple on the left crit­i­ciz­ing the ral­ly, and that’s a valid role too. Every­thing should be ques­tioned, and we should not be con­tent with these ral­lies be­cause they are not cre­at­ing any ac­tu­al change politically. 

The weirdo in chief post­ed a video with a crown on his head drop­ping brown liq­uid on pro­test­ers to mock the mil­lions of peo­ple who went out beg­ging to be heard by their leaders. 

What the ral­lies are hope­ful­ly do­ing is cre­at­ing some community. 

I heard to­day about some­one I love go­ing out to their first ral­ly ever. This is an el­der, white con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian. Some­one who has put their trust in this gov­ern­ment and its lead­ers their whole life (un­til the or­ange-utang ran for of­fice). I’ve been say­ing for awhile that when the old white folks show up to the ac­tions it’s get­ting real. And it’s here. 

Every­one needs an en­try point to com­mu­ni­ty, and to ac­tivism, and from that en­try point they can learn the val­ues and pro­to­cols of the movement. 

Just like start­ing a new job. It is the work of those of us who have been here for awhile and have the band­width to ed­u­cate with em­pa­thy. Do not read over that line about band­width. There are mar­gin­al­ized mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty who do not have the band­width to do the emo­tion­al la­bor in­volved in ed­u­cat­ing, and they should not be asked to. 

For every­one who just ar­rived, wel­come. One of the most cen­tral val­ues to po­lit­i­cal re­sis­tance and so­cial jus­tice work is to fol­low the lead of the peo­ple most af­fect­ed. To ask what they need and how you should show up and use any priv­i­lege you may have to ben­e­fit them. 

Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics are dan­ger­ous when prac­ticed blind­ly, but this is part of the rea­son com­mu­ni­ty (like the one that was built to­day) is so im­por­tant, so that you can find voic­es to lis­ten to, fol­low, and am­pli­fy. The im­por­tance of this val­ue can not be un­der­stat­ed. This is the dif­fer­ence be­tween build­ing WITH and build­ing FOR. 

bell hooks said
“Fem­i­nist sol­i­dar­i­ty root­ed in a com­mit­ment to pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics must in­clude a space for rig­or­ous cri­tique, for dis­sent, or we are doomed to re­pro­duce in pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ties the very forms of dom­i­na­tion we seek to op­pose.”

The same can be said for sol­i­dar­i­ty of any struggle. 

Sol­i­dar­i­ty doesn’t mean we al­ways agree on the tac­tics or even the de­sired out­come. It means ac­tive­ly work­ing to find our com­mon ground and push­ing to­wards it. Sol­i­dar­i­ty re­quires uni­ty, not uniformity. 

The forces we are re­sist­ing don’t agree on every­thing, but they hold tight to what they do agree on and don’t fight with each oth­er where they don’t. That’s why they have been so effective. 

If you at­tend­ed a ral­ly for the first time in the last few months, go find a move­ment men­tor. Some­one who has been out here for a decade or more. Find lead­ers from his­tor­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties (Black, brown, LGBTQIA+, women) and lis­ten with an open heart and with­out ego to their pain and ex­pe­ri­ence and let that be your guide to action. 

To­day was a pow­er­ful dis­play of dis­ap­proval and huge op­por­tu­ni­ty to build com­mu­ni­ty across the na­tion. There were also start and end times, and every­one was home for lunch and his­tor­i­cal­ly it takes a lot more than that to cre­ate ac­tu­al change 

Two things can be true. 

There is beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty be­ing built and there is so much work left to do. 

GEN­ER­AL STRIKE TIME. 

Sol­i­dar­i­ty.

I love you and you can’t do $&!? about it.

 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2025 An­dru De­f­eye. Top foto source.

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