THE FANTASY AND NECESSITY OF SOLIDARITY

The noted novelist, playwright, and activist writes of ways to forge social justice alliances in a time of torment.

“The opposite of oppression is not only freedom but also belonging,” writes Schulman, active in political protest since she was a child in the Vietnam era and even more so in the ACT UP and gay rights movements in the Reagan years. In a time of atomization and the consolidation of social controls in a few hands, belonging is not a given—but, she continues, “if people living in shared conditions can muster enough cooperation with one another, they often have the strength to better their lives.” One imagined community that has benefited from building solidarity is that of LBGTQ+ people, whose rights are again under assault; their movement for civil rights was initially built by “the people directly hurt by unbridled power,” but in time it found many external allies. A modern analog has been the cause of Palestine, with an initially small number of activists now augmented by millions of people who “literally take to the streets because they cannot stand by and passively watch the brutality” in the Gaza Strip. This movement has brought BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), formerly “an obscure strategy, difficult to publicize, and considered ultra-left,” to the forefront. In this, writes Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, one difference between the BDS alliance and the ACT UP of yore is that the former is “conscious in calling for radical democracy,” whereas the latter had not arrived at that yet; in that regard, Schulman insists, the bottom line is that “when you have to win, when you are desperate for change and must be effective, radical democracy is the only path that works.”

More theoretical than many works on political activism, but provocative in its suggested paths for unity against power.