Solidarity Redux
By 
My very first post on this site appeared days after the November 2015 constellation of deadly attacks in and around Paris. Mourners had transformed the Place de la République into an impromptu memorial with hundreds of candles and a flag emblazoned with the slogan, “Not even afraid.” I was struck in that moment by the choices made by French leaders and public alike—and the sharp differences between those who embraced deeper solidarity in the wake of terrorist violence and those who called for more surveillance and military strikes. To deny fear could mean to refuse to bow to Islamic State demands to end French airstrikes in Syria (the trigger for the massacres). Yet there was a deeper call to openness and antiracism that also rang through those November days: a sense that the real target was the possibility for living together that Paris might represent (as a longstanding destination for radicals, exiles, refugees, and migrants of all stripes) and that turning away from fear also meant turning away from hatred and violence.
Nearly nine year later, demonstrators are again washing over the Place de République. The solidarity they invoke—which the state and many other loud voices still reject—is with Palestinians. Questions at the heart of 2015 are now amplified, even weaponized. Racism and Islamophobia blind so many to the horrific human suffering in Gaza and the atrocities committed by the Israeli state. These protestors, like their allies around the world, have an even simpler call: to end genocide and resist systemic racialized state violence.
On a lot of fronts, it seems, things have only gotten worse: politics continues to veer right in many major countries, regimes have become both more brutal and less reticent to show off their brutality, and white supremacists and other racists are emboldened by their political allies. It strikes me, though, that so many of my posts since 2015 have highlighted the protest movements that these forces continue to encounter. And if I have any hope left at all, it is because organizing and popular movement building seem to be coming into their own again as well.
The student protests we saw in the US these past months have been giving real 1968 vibes. For me, of course, that means May-June in Paris 1968 vibes. While that spring gets all the headlines, then too students were riding a wave of organizing among labor and other movements. Those students were angered by campus policies, but quickly linked their particular experiences to much larger global trends. Connections among student groups—both formal, through associations, and personal, as students themselves moved to study in different places—forged a greater awareness of generational aspirations and an equally connected global order they dreamed of dismantling. Then too, a global antiwar movement was the inflection point for mobilizing for justice on many fronts.
Today, we see students, some building on their experience as campus labor organizers, leveraging broader alliances. As in 1968, heavy handed police repression has elevated the students’ actions and labor unions are stepping up in places like Toronto and California. Most importantly, they are keeping us focused on the ways that all of us are implicated in the mass destruction of Palestinian homes, on how forces of “order” and violence make us all less free, and on the need for real solidarity, organized resistance, and shared struggle to move us out of this mess.