A few decades ago, I heard an interview with basketball legend Kareeem Abdul-Jabbar. When I tuned in, he was speaking about basketball and justice. I peeked up because these two, in my mind, make a great coalition. Abdul-Jabbar said that what he has learned in his life is that we are all working toward the goal of a greater justice, even if we only see our part in the puzzle. We may not be experiencing the same struggles, he suggested, but each of our freedom is linked and we are all part of the greater movement for change – part of the same effort. This was in an interview about a book he wrote after coaching basketball on a Native American Reservation for a year. He said that whenever he sees someone working for that change, he supports them, even if there is no apparent bridge between their world and his because he knows that no one gets free till everyone gets free. It was one of those moments listening to the radio when I wished I was a person who wrote notes and drove at the same time so I could write his words down. But, I am not, and in the end, I didn’t need to because they have stayed with me for years.
His kind of solidarity is a thick and rich bridging of difference. One built on spending a year in a community and doing work with a team and a people. This is a kind of thick solidarity that is based on bridge building, empathy, and presence. It is not the thin kind of solidarity available in instagram posts where the endeavor costs nothing and the action never reaches anyone who needs aid and care.
The “how” of thick solidarity, of meaningful coalition building, of showing up for people even when there are ways you will never fundamentally agree is one of the big questions of movement making. And answering it is like answering the question: How do you know how to fall in love? or How do you know how to develop a friendship? It involves some qualities we can name and then a factor of willingness and openness and the ability to be honest about goals, beliefs, and motivations. There is an element of mutual aid, and a bit of goal oriented healthy self awareness. But most of all there is empathy. Thick Empathy.
According to the two writers who coined the phrase, “Thick solidarity is based on a radical belief in the inherent value of each other’s lives despite never being able to fully understand or fully share in the experience of those lives.”
I know this kind of solidarity is possible because I have seen it in action in various places and movements in my lifetime. As a student of movement history and a student of change, I find my way through learning from folks who have done the work and if they are not around, from reading and studying them. While I would love a checklist of the “how,” the complexity of the systems are too great. So instead, I lean into the stories of the people who have made it possible.
First off, there is Grace Lee Boggs. “Born to Chinese immigrants, Ms. Boggs was an author and philosopher who planted gardens on vacant lots, founded community organizations and political movements, marched against racism, lectured widely on human rights and wrote books on her evolving vision of a revolution in America,” according to the New York Times. As an Asian American woman, and a philosopher, she had a view of her position and of coalition building that informed generations of movement builders. There are films about her, her own books about her life as an intersectional movement strategist and activist, and there is this discussion about her that will introduce you to her work and its importance. She was steeped in the theory of social change but the practice that evolved in the living room of her house, with her husband James Boggs was one of action, of making humans more human. Their community and the changes they supported were coalitional in practice and informed by their knowledge of who they were and where they stood. It shows us the importance of the politics of place and the willingness to be uncomfortable and still present.
“Racism is Satanism,” was the belief Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel held that moved him into the American Civil Rights movement. And his friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. was unusual and deep. I can’t say it better than his daughter Susannah did in this article where she describes pictures of her father and Dr. King: “We’ve become so used to these images that it’s easy to forget how unusual the friendship between Heschel and King was in its day. The two came from very different backgrounds – King had grown up in Atlanta, Georgia, while Heschel arrived in the United States as a refugee from Hitler’s Europe in March of 1940 – “a brand plucked from the fire,” as he wrote. Yet the two found an intimacy that transcended the growing public rift between their two communities. Heschel brought King and his message to a wide Jewish audience, and King made Heschel a central figure in the struggle for civil rights. Often lecturing together, they both spoke about racism as the root of poverty and its role in the war in Vietnam; both also spoke about Zionism and about the struggles of Jews in the Soviet Union. The concern that they shared was “saving the soul of America.” They both believed that racism was an evil anathema to people of faith and their connection on that point created a coalition that changed history. This book on his life sums up his outlook in the title: Radical Amazement.
And finally, the story from the beginning of this post. To learn more about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his season with the White Mountain Apache you can listen to this interview. And to learn a little about the friendship that started the connection, this article describes it: “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is known to most as one of the greatest basketball players of all time and, of late, author and columnist of several publications. But to Edgar Perry, a White Mountain Apache Tribe member, he was a fellow history buff and friend. The two met in the mid-1990s when Abdul-Jabbar first visited Fort Apache while researching the history of the Buffalo Soldiers.
Abdul-Jabbar turned to Perry, the tribe’s cultural director at the time, for assistance, kicking off what would become years of an unlikely bond between one of the tribe’s most prominent elders and one of the world’s most prominent athletes.”
What I take away from all these stories of connection, bridge building, friendship, and coalition is this: First, it is possible. Second, it is not easy. Third, the qualities of empathy, curiosity, and the ability to see the goal we serve as larger than ourselves are the necessary ingredients. This is something way bigger than tolerance or basic solidarity, it is a thick empathy, a thick solidarity, a building of bridges that feel dangerous to cross but we do it anyway because we are in this to save ourselves and our world. We learn to see difference differently. We learn to understand and accept that there will be places we do not see eye to eye and even the folks we most need to see things our way just may not ever “get it.” People I respect have given me some amazing advice about acceptance and the power of love. Accepting that we need to critique our own attitudes, actions, beliefs in order to show up as more loving can sound a little woo woo but it is backed up by research on empathy and on change. What we need to develop is a kind of solidarity that is built on love and empathy but backed up by learning and deep historical analysis. In other words, don’t post or frantically share on insta until you have talked to folks, read books, and understood issues from the point of view of the people involved. Then, we need political awareness – the kind that goes way deeper than saying what others say for fear of being canceled or called out. Political understanding born from a willingness to be led by the people impacted by any issue – not by the people with whom we might share a political bubble. Love and care and awareness and attention can become a practice for all of us as they were for Grace Lee Boggs or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I run all my actions through the ethics they have taught me and that makes sure love comes first and leads to deep coalition building. There is an emotional, strategic, but also spiritual call to do this coalition work and to grow as humans who realize the world will not be remade in our image, and that is a good thing. It drives us to love those we cannot change but with whom we can change the world.