The Three Asks of Solidarity
When solidarity “asks," I consider a few things: my response-ability, how to decide what is the “right” choice aka the “perfect” choice, and how to be in process - active, relational participation.
Solidarity is an act of call and response. Solidarity asks things of you, your participation mostly. It’s difficult in today’s culture, to know where and how to best spend your energy and attention within all the ungrounded vacillations between hypervigilence and overwhelm.
Digital technology has ushered society through a thirsty portal of voyeurism, which has a huge impact on choice-making in solidarity - our senses constantly influenced under the gaze of consumerism, our human emotions & whims indulged in dissociative curiosity as we scroll through the lives of others through lightning speed handheld devices. Our Collective Psyche is unconsciously programmed through seconds-long soundclips, visual-bites and trends. Daily we are asked to make decisions of morality inside this deluge on a global scale that is intensity incongruent with our humble mammalian capabilities. It is truly an overwhelming time in humanity, clearly and understandably so.
Yet the existential ask to do something, to make a contribution towards reshaping the world in a generative way is ever persistent. Solidarity asks things of us, be it out of avarice, fear, scarcity, rage, compassion, pity or love. When the pull & sensation of this “ask” of solidarity comes into our awareness, when we have any amount of privilege, or any amount of empathy and compassion, or unfortunately any amount of perfectionism, guilt, pity or any other marker of internalized white supremacy culture, solidarity asks us to choose. The seemingly insurmountable persistence of the alt-reich certainly doesn’t make this “ask” seem optional… or that we can take our time answering. There are a lot of asks on the line, urgently, right now.
When put to the ask of solidarity, I check in with myself about a few things:
My responsibility - my ability to respond
How do I decide what is “right?” - that call to make a “perfect” choice
Process & participation - that my effort is ongoing and engaged
There’s weighty decisions to be made, and I think it’s why most folks end up not doing much of anything - again, we’re talking about vacillating between hypervigilence and overwhelm. Most of what my work entails in Somatics + Solidarity, is supporting folks to make the best embodied decisions that they can make, and within inter-relational dynamics. In my expressions of solidarity, I work with folks feeling stuck, in denial, weighted by apathy, and I also work with folks constantly making decisions, looping judgment, perfectionism, feeling the jaggedness of decision paralysis.
Being a guide through somatics + solidarity isn’t about telling folks what decisions to make, rather it’s accompanying them on the journey of sifting through their own internalized oppression, trauma and nervous system fatigue along the how of making decisions. My lane is tending those pathways of questions, how to ask yourself about how you want to respond, how to be in radical choice-making with others.
If there’s one thing solidarity asks of you, it’s to consider another’s perspective without immediately putting your own evaluation or judgment upon it.
Real talk, no one holds one monopoly over the “truth.” There is no such thing as one right way to do things, just as there is no one way to be a human being. Truth, reality and consciousness are moving targets, they are subjective, complex and plural. One of the hardest thing about enacting solidarity within such a time of crisis is that we have to also hold contradictions and multiplicities of perspective. Evaluation and judgment so often come as reactions to what is “not fair,” entangled with history and narratives of “morality.” When coupled with our own internal experiences of trauma, oppression, bias, ignorance, and and all of our own personal lived experience, we humans can easily lapse into the autopilot of our subjective, individual experience. What is true if we ourselves haven’t experienced it? We ultimately don’t know what another has been through (we don’t live in their body), and that’s actually a beautiful thing and very important to this ask of solidarity. I often hear “that’s valid” spoken through discussions in social justice spaces. “That’s valid” is an evaluation - it’s saying I hear what you are saying but I am needing to place my own experience of validity on top of it because I’m unconsciously listening with a need for you to prove your own experience right. Whew, that’s a lot to go on subconsciously when we’re in places where we’re actively trying to make the world a more equitable and safe place.
I also gotta say, as someone with Healing Justice as part of my actual job title, I don’t actually want anything to do with “justice.” Who the fuck am I to dispense justice? I consider myself both anarchist and abolitionist, yet here I am in this role, leaning into this ask of solidarity, writing about questioning judgment. I hear a lot, and understand the “well we’re creating a just and fair society because the one we have now is truly unjust” argument, and yes, I agree with that - I don’t need to judge or evaluate that perspective. And, what I’m getting at, is that judgment comes along with the binary of right/wrong, good/bad, ethical/unethical, black/white, me/you, us/them - an intrinsic polarized divide. Separation. ANDjudgment also comes along with each of our own subjective, individualized versions of story and narrative about “justice” as an institution, what “justice” actually means in our words, and our intergenerational inherited stories of morality entwined with “justice.” Decisions of morality are interwoven in our nervous system with the mammalian, primal urges of choice-making survival instinct, millions of years of biological programming to create safety for ourselves & our “tribe.” When I started off this topical ask of solidarity, I specifically stated “considering another’s perspective without IMMEDIATELY putting your own evaluation or judgment upon it.” What I am emphasizing about the how of choice-making here, is the space between reactionary judgment and responseful choice.
All of us have our own baggage. Our own suffering, trauma, internalized oppression, internalized cop, priest, warlord, overbearing mother… This programming gets so embedded in our nervous system because it has been embedded into our own DNA generations before we were even born - it gets passed down through family line, reinforced by cultural and community dynamics, and sold to us in an oppressive framework of racialized capitalism. It is easy to place judgment on everything we hear because we live in a world rife with things that are “wrong.” But I think the important takeaway here is that when we are in relationships specifically to find pathways of making the world a better place for everyone (which hello, is all relationships, all of us, no captains on Starship Earth, only crew), we really need that pause between evaluation, judgment and skillful response.
To refrain from immediately evaluating or judging another’s perspective, their experience, is to be able to listen with deep compassion, to hear them on their terms, to listen for the meaning they are conveying without placing our own filter over what we take in. On a good day, this practice supports authentic connection. On a very challenging day, it can be the make or break between choice-making based in reactionary fear, scarcity, avarice, or un-metabolized grief - choices that typically end in more strife, more suffering, more disconnection - and choices that invite us to pull back, deploy discernment through plurality of perspective*,* and strategize pathways that are skillful, inclusive, collaborative. Choices that provide us the best possible response of our ability. Which leads me to the next ask…
If there’s another thing solidarity asks of you, it’s to make a choice that is good enough for now, safe enough to try.
If there is one biggest detriment to enacting solidarity it’s the monster of DOUBT. Doubt is an energy vampire of the worst kind. Doubt comes through choice-making sounding like the “but what about-isms.” Doubt, much like reactionary evaluation & judgment comes with attachment to stories: previous times when stuff didn’t work out, when other folks let us down, when we put our vulnerability out there and it wasn’t reciprocated. Doubt comes when enough trust hasn’t been established yet and you don’t know where someone is coming from. Doubt gets entwined with memories, experiences and narratives of unresolved conflict, trauma, ongoing experiences of oppression & marginalization. Doubt gets built around our conditioned survival strategies. Doubt gets reinforced by callout culture, influencer culture, internet culture in general. Doubt is a very wise nervous system response (of safety-making) and happens to everybody. DOUBT IS NORMAL. However, staying locked into doubt does not = progress.
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I see it all the time, a discussion ensues, folks get close to the line of making a decision, and then inevitably someone’s fear response, their internal critic, internal perfectionist, internal savior or internal never-enough-ness-doubter comes through with another “what about-ism” and the decision is delayed to the fringes again. Doubt is so fucking normal y’all and what I’m highlighting in this ask of solidarity is to make some choice. A choice that was given time to look at from multiple perspectives, a choice that was not rushed and made through intentional engagement with varying stakeholders that also makes the choice safe enough. A choice that is good enough for now directly counteracts that monster arm of white supremacy culture - perfectionism.
Sooooo many great bridges of solidarity, and thus, quicker actions to mitigate harm get throttled by doubt. I started off this whole post writing about hypervigilence and overwhelm. Doubt loooooves to thrive in this space and it’s nourished by comfort (well, and also fear). Choice-making in solidarity in times of such crisis is inherently risky. No risk, no reward. If we wait around until everyone is comfortable before making a decision, we will have landed ourselves in the Narnia of the same place “safe spaces” exist. Perfect is literally a myth, it doesn’t exist. It was crafted by patriarchal society emboldened by all the “isms” that makes “one right way to do something” = supremacy and control.
Making a decision that is good enough for now safe enough to try, in collaboration, with others (or even with yourself - if self-solidarity is your starting point of practice) means that we give up our attachment to control in order to have a rawthentic environment of informed-enough choice. The beauty of choice-making, and building pathways & bridges of solidarity, is we can always make more choices. That “good enough for now” includes the process of adaptation, and the “safe enough to try” means we’ve done what we can to mitigate un-accounted for risks. All choices are thresholds, we don’t know what will come. We can choose to lean into our imagination, our curiosity, our willingness to break the mould and try something different, and that little somatic urge of discomfort is a surefire sign that we’re on the right track towards cycle-breaking harm. The entire reason and purpose behind the BIG ASK of solidarity to begin with.
The next time you’re making a decision of solidarity, and you feel your what-about-ism creep in, check-in with yourself.
Have I been an active participant in this process, with the best knowledge of my perspective?
Have I shushed any part of myself that wants to minimize me because it thinks I’m not good enough?
Am I nitpicking someone else’s contribution because I feel a need to control them or the outcome?
Does this choice have room for emergence & adaptation?
Is there anyone missing from this process of discernment who this decision would have a major effect on if it goes awry?
If your answers are “yes, no, no, yes, oh shit we’re missing the perspective of so-and-so in the room,” then you’re almost there mate…
If there’s a last thing that solidarity asks of you, it’s to not make your decisions in an echochamber.
Social media by nature of techno-fascist algorithms, is an echochamber. BFF friend circles are by nature, an echochamber. Community groups, organizations, nonprofits, and cultural groups can easily become echochambers (and even sometimes, tiny cults). Solidarity however, by nature is cultivating commonality of purpose across lines of difference. To make skillful, harm-mitigating change within such a time of pervasive collapse, we actually need the perspectives & experiences of others, we need each other. Getting out of your own echochamber helps ensure that the choices you are making are grounded in folks’ humanity and lived experience, not our imagined ideals, assumptions or biases of them. When the ask of solidarity comes knockin’, having relationships with like minded folks, an affinity with a social identity, location or group is without a doubt important. Like-minded spaces support sooooo much in finding common ground and are essential towards the impact of solidarity - collective not individualized support. But there’s a thread here in this third ask of solidarity that is intrinsically about being different that I want to tease out with my point.
Challenging a room of white folks by asking why there not Black & Brown folks present, or challenging a management team of neurotypical folks asking if anyone neurodivergent was consulted before making a policy are things I have experience in - on all sides of these asks. It’s no surprise that saviorism is prevalent in nonprofits, charities and board rooms. And guess what, self-aggrandizing is prevalent in activist circles, influencer capitalism and community groups. Identity politics?…Oh those are prevalent everywhere. If we are going to resist doing the state’s job for them - e.g. intra-organizational unresolved conflict, surveillance and punishment - then we actually have to make difference a seat at the choice-making table of solidarity.
Crisis places us in binaries, boxes, polarity and side-picking, what if we chose the “side” of humanity? Of Mother Earth? To my knowledge, Earth is actually round, it doesn’t have a “side.” And if we’re getting down to the root etymology of solidarity, then we’re talking about “from Latin: solidum, whole sum.” That means every, damn, body - yes, even folks you don’t like or get along with. It’s easy to “point out the white folks who aren’t learning anything, those racists over there, these neoliberals on the internet.” Speaking up to my fellow white folks out there, is choosing what is easy the choice we should be making in solidarity???
Choice-making in solidarity has a gorgeous history of folks acting across identity lines, my Substack isn’t for the purpose of teaching you about those (you can research that). The point I am bringing in here because I am about the somatics in relation to solidarity, is that differences in identity mean different expressions of mistakes learned from. Different possibilities that don’t exist in siloed in affinity groups. Different bridges that can be made out of knocked down ladders producing different outcomes, especially when we are willing to risk our own discomfort, lend our privilege, maintain our humility, and approach solidarity work with tremendous grace.
Solidarity is not a romantic ideal, it’s active choice-making. It’s response-ability, it’s relational, it stays in process, and resists the temptations of perfectionism and doubt. When the ask of solidarity calls to you, my ask of you is that you start somewhere. I didn’t jump into the middle of somatics + solidarity without first learning, studying, practicing, engaging, trying, failing, integrating, redeveloping, and deepening my *response-*ability by choosing to stay a little bit risky, challenge my growth edges & echochambers, and stay a little bit uncomfortable. The reward is that I’m able to have intensely uncomfortable conversations about race, class, ability, gender, nationality, etc.. I’m able to not submit to my own inner doubt-er, recovering perfectionist, or inner savior complex. I’m able to lean directly into the space of supporting folks through generative conflict, trauma recovery, and strategizing systemic change that cycle-breaks the root causes holding oppression in place.
What we need to remember most when solidarity asks things of us… is to respond. Tell me in the comments… how do you respond? What’s one thing you read in this Substack that helped spark your response?
Learn how to transform your reactivity, inner doubt-er, inner perfectionist, and looping echochamber vacillating between hypervigilence & overwhelm into skillful response and solidarity with me through: my weekly virtual somatic practice sessions, monthly virtual mentoring group, and STL Queer Sangha if you’re a St. Louis local.
In Solidarity ❤️🔥
-Deanna Sophia Danger-
