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Message A SOLIDARITY MANIFESTO:what global solidarity has taught me★ solidarity is love, freedom, and empathy.★ solidarity cannot mean sameness, because we cannot knowwhat it means to be someone else.★ solidarity is a verb, it is an action we choose to do.★ being an ally means choosing and doing your solidarityevery day.★ my solidarity is my teaching, my friendships, and my art.★ solidarity is intersectional, it is all the layers of whowe are.★ each person will have their own, unique solidaritymanifesto.—---------------------------------------------------------------if solidarity is love, then what is love?10 different people can give you 10 different definitions oflove. bell hooks wrote:imagine how much easier it would be for us to learnto love if we began with a shared definition. theword “love” is most often defined as a noun…yet… wewould all love better if we used it as a verb¹love is not something that happens to you. love is not somethingyou can possess, or take, or win. love is an action, somethingyou choose to do. hooks continues:Erich Fromm… defines love as the will to extend oneself

for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’sspiritual growth… love is an act of will…we choose to love²if love is an action and a choice, then solidarity is also anaction and a choice. solidarity means: i want you, me, and ourcommunity to find our higher selves. together, we will reach forour higher selves every day.it’s October of 2023, and the message to my friends is short:just checking in, how’s the fam?we’ve known each other for almost a decade. we’ve had longnights writing essays for class, hours together at protests,untold cups of coffee and wine and conversation. and we’ve donethese check-ins many times over the years.before i met them, i knew little about Palestine, of Al Nakba,of the lies of Lord Balfour, and the long history of Black andBrown activists linking their freedom to Palestine’s freedom.Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, and June Jordan all made thatconnection. because solidarity means i cannot fight for Blackliberation without fighting for global liberation. when all ofus are free, i will be free.hooks also wrote:all the great movements for social justice…stronglyemphasize a love ethic³this love ethic is how solidarity is made, how activists fromdifferent experiences bond with each other. this love ethic iswhy Martin Luther King Jr wrote to Cesar Chaves, months beforeKing’s murder in 1968:the plight of your people and ours is so grave, thatwe all desperately need the inspiring example andeffective leadership you have given⁴this love ethic is also why Delores Huerta said:most of the field workers are Mexican-American,

Filipino, Negro, and Puerto Rican… [the bosses] tryto play one race against the other…it is not just aquestion of wages. it is a question of human dignity,of equality⁵Huerta and King understood that solidarity cannot mean sameness.the experiences of each community they mentioned were different.and yet there is power in these communities supporting eachother. they also understood that there were serious issuesbetween these communities, and that many of those issues stemmedfrom a system that pitted these groups against each other.for Huerta and King, their organizing and speeches were how theychose to love. for me, i love by teaching my students aboutHuerta and King, staying aware to what is happening around theworld so that i know how to support those people, and makingsure that i remember to say: how’s the fam?—---------------------------------------------------------------if solidarity is freedom, then what is freedom?like love, we don’t have a shared definition of freedom, and itwould be easier for us to learn to be free and extend thatfreedom to others if we did.A student told me this story:she was the only one on a train asked to show her ID.the officer told her, she could not be both Black andwhite. she had to pick a side. So many people in herlife, including strangers, have told her to pick aside. But she exists in the middle.solidarity doesn’t mean the cliche of walking in someone’sshoes. that is impossible to do. even if someone has shoes towalk in, you cannot feel that journey like they do. instead, iwant her and others who have similar stories to be free to existin the middle. as she told the story, i thought of La Frontera,where Gloria Anzaldúa writes:

to live in the borderlands means you are…caught in thecrossfire between two camps, while carrying all fiveraces on your back, not knowing which side to turn to,run from… you are the battleground where enemies arekin to each other…to survive the borderlands you mustlive sin fronteras⁶the middle space for me has been between cultures. i canunderstand the Geechee cadence of my grandmother’s voice, but icannot speak it, because i couldn’t “advance” in a whitepatriarchy and sound like that. i have “advanced” so far, that ihave the highest degree possible in my field of visual art. mygrandmother reached 8th grade, and i have a Masters degree. ithink about what it means to be an academic who was raised bysomeone who couldn’t get into Academia. i think about what itmeans to be Black and Queer when my predecessors like theCombahee River Collective, were asked to pick between theirrace, their gender, and their sexuality.freedom is not having to pick. freedom is being able to thrivein the intersections of your identity, without fear of losingyour friends, family, health, security, or your life. i don’tknow what it’s like to exist between national borders. i don’tknow what it’s like to exist between racial borders. Mysolidarity with those who do live sin fronteras is to pushagainst the binaries, to reflect in my art the beauty of themiddle.—---------------------------------------------------------------if solidarity is empathy, then what is empathy?empathy is bearing witness to someone’s life, carving thephysical and mental space for someone to share their story.empathy is saying: i’ll never know how you feel, yet i see you.often, i’ve felt like Octavia Butler’s Lauren, cursed with thedisease of hyperempathy:i feel what i feel others feeling or what i believe

they feel. Hyperempathy is what the doctor’s call‘organic delusional syndrome’... it hurts, that’s alli know⁷i am grateful that people trust me with their stories. and yet,at times i get overwhelmed. i have had to take days off fromwork because the pain students share is palpable. a friend alsohad to take time off of work because the pain of those underoccupation in Gaza was palpable.i am learning that this empathy is not a weakness. it is astrength because empathy is a key part of solidarity. it is howi try to understand the experiences that i have never or willnever have. it is how i build relationships with strangers whobecome family. they trust me with their stories and i trust themwith mine. we note the similarities and differences, and we usethose notes to help each other.————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-sometimes i falter in my journey. i don’t always live up to mymanifesto. sometimes there’s so many problems in the world, thati don’t know where to put my focus. sometimes i want to helppeople and don’t know how. and sometimes i’m just tired.solidarity is a marathon and my lungs get weak.i write this commitment down so that i always have a guide. sothat in the moments where i falter, i remember what solidarityis and why i do it. how we treat ourselves, each other, and theplanet is all connected. to abuse one is to abuse the others.each person is unique. they will define solidarity in their ownway and make their own manifesto. this is my solidaritymanifesto.ENDNOTES1. bell hooks, All About Love, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers,2001), 4.

2. Ibid.3. Ibid, xix.4. Paul Ortiz, An African American and Latinx History of the UnitedStates, (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2018), 155.5. Ibid.6. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza, (SanFrancisco, CA: Aunt Lute Book Company, 1987), 194-5.7. Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, (New York: Hachette BookGroup, Inc, 2019), 12.