Monday, November 9, 2015

What Solidarity Looks Like!

I have these moments, these parental moments, when so much pride swells within--that I wonder if it'll break me wide open.  Watching Fiona dance.  Listening to Hannah as she stands up for what she believes is right.  Their accomplishments are theirs alone...but all this fills me with delight.  Call me silly and sentimental, but it really does!

And then there's this.  Claire taking leadership and showing up at today's March for Resilience at Yale.  "This is what solidarity looks like."  She called last night, at some crazy-late hour, because she couldn't sleep.  Couldn't sleep for the tension on campus.  Couldn't sleep for the stories she's hearing, from friends, from people of color.  Couldn't sleep for the bitter realities of prejudice and intimidation in her community.  So she called, and she told me about today's march, and she told me she'd be there.  She had to be.  As an ally.  As a marcher.  As a peacekeeper.  As a leader.

 And so she was.  

 I'm proud of the anger I hear in her voice.  "This is what solidarity looks like!"  I'm proud of her curiosity and her desire to hear more stories, to know more truths, to learn the ways of solidarity with friends and colleagues.  It's a long struggle, and it will be an excruciating march over a very long season of days and months and years.  But I'm so proud of Claire for stepping up and stepping in.  The movement will be stronger and bolder for it.  "This is what solidarity looks like!"

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I'm struck by something in the news today.  There's all this bluster from some Christians about some Starbucks thing, maybe a decision to go with "Holiday" cups instead of "Christmas" cups this season.  Does a coffee cup really matter to us?  Does a two month orgy of buying and leasing and going into debt really matter to us?  Is that what the whole Christmas project really amounts to?

No way.  Those students and their allies at Yale, they point the way forward.  Call it their Passion for Justice.  Call it their commitment to the Beloved Community.  Call it their devotion to Neighborhood Morality.  Call it Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Agnosticism.  Call it what you will.  But what moves us forward is love, protest, the children of god coming together to show us how much they care.  Insisting on progress.  Crying out for one another's safety.  "This is what solidarity looks like!"

Forget the coffee cups, people.  Get out in the street and make some noise.  

 
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