The lost art of solidarity — and how to find it again

Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor on a taken-for-granted idea -- what it means, how to grow it across difference, and why it can change the world

As activists, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor found that the concept of “solidarity” was taken for granted. As an organizing principle, an expression of collective purpose, or a slogan, they found it everywhere, but the meaning of the idea and the path toward building it had never been clear, nor had it ever been explained for a general audience. They began researching the concept, and that led them to write a new book: Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea.

While Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor have roots in academia, and they dig deeply into the philosophical background of solidarity and its historical impact, this book is meant to encourage action. Solidarity is a tool for readers interested in making change, and the authors encourage you to use it not just to understand the way movements have overcome divisions in the past in order to get people to work together to build power and move towards common goals, but for making sense of how to do it again now, and in the future.

We talked to Hunt-Hendrix about the genesis and purpose of the book, what we can learn about solidarity from labor, how Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and the Occupy movement drove the evolution of Democratic politics, and how to think creatively about identity in order to push back against the right-wing politics of division that threaten to tear American society apart.

And then, below, we’re very proud to offer you an early excerpt from the book!

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We talk a lot more in this country about what it means to be an individual citizen than about what it means to be part of a group, or about what democracy means in terms of relating to others. What does it mean to shift the conversation to talking about building relationships, to group identity?

So I’ve spent the past 10 years in organizing, and also in writing books and making movies. I’ve worked on student debt cancellation and debtor organizing. And in those spaces people often mention “solidarity” and sign their emails “in solidarity.” But we don’t often think about how we can build it, how we can resist divide-and-conquer strategies, and how we can create collective identities, like the identity of “worker.”

Meanwhile, on the right, we see the creation of the identity of “white men” or the use of nationalism to construct identity. But we can participate in creating collective identities that are broader and more inclusive.

The book is meant to be a constructive contribution. In a world where it’s easy to critique and it’s easy to find reasons to despair, we’re trying to offer a tool. And the thesis of the book is that we have to actually pursue solidarity if we want to sustain our democracy.

The right has a good sense of how to build civil society organizations: hunting clubs, megachurches, and homeschool networks. In a way, that is also building solidarity. How does that differ from the working definition you have in mind about what solidarity is?