Solidarity Forever
Today is May Day, a day with a long traditional history of Spring Awakening, now also celebrated as International Worker’s Day to commemorate the “Haymarket affair” in 1886. It is also Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust. Because Yom Hashoah is on the Hebrew Calendar, these days lining up does not happen often, and so I wanted to explore the significance of this, in our current political climate.
Most of us, at some point, come across the omnipresent Martin Niemöller poem above. While I have seen some thoughtful critiques more recently about the poem promoting a self-centered view of shared struggle, I think it remains an accessible and erudite entryway into the larger and ongoing conversation about how we build solidarity. We must speak for one another because it is the right thing to do, and also because our freedom self-determination is bound with one another, even when we don’t always see it. “An injury to one is an injury to all,” as the great labor slogan goes.
In the wake of yet another Synagogue shooting, as immigrant babies remain in cages at the border, and as the economic justice afforded to the vast majority of Americans continues to erode, it is imperative for us to continue to show up for one another. Even when it is difficult. ESPECIALLY when it is difficult. We will hurt one another. Let us build relationships strong enough to be worth repairing that harm.
As a Jew, I know we are called to the task of “Tikkun Olam,” or “repair of the world.” But we’re also told by the Pirkei Avot, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it” and “If I am only for myself, who am I?”
Today, the struggle for labor rights continues, as the recent Stop and Shop strike showed us. But our struggles to “repair the world,” go much deeper and require us to show up for one another- climate justice, racial justice, economic justice, gender equity, the freedom to love without discrimination and the most basic guarantees of health and human rights feel under constant assault. So now, more than ever we must do the difficult work of building relationships of love and trust worth holding on to even when it seems easier to close our doors. We must be for others even when we’re not sure they will be for us. We must not make completing the work the enemy of beginning it. And we cannot let fear stop us from doing what is right.
