Quotes About Solidarity

We are all we have

Stars do not shine on their friends alone.

Be the fire when they feel cold, you go out, they are without

Thomas Sweeney, The Harem

Don't lose the one who fights with you to be with you!

As I expected, my retirement sent shock waves through the system. But not in the way I intended. In the three months after I retired, seventy other geiko also quit the business. I appreciated the gesture, though it seemed a little late to be showing solidarity with me at that point. And the powers that be didn't change a thing.

Lonely fights are the worst, she said. She'd rather lose a lonely fight. She'd rather join a losing team than win a lonely fight.

People don't die because of loyalty." They don't?" She smiled. "Religion? Government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?" Eddie shrugged. Better," she said, "to be loyal to one another.

The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.

But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before.. ..I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? - I'm almost... drawn to them.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. "But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning—birth—and we all have the same end—death. So how different can we be?

But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--I'm almost... drawn to them.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks. Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about the family the way we care about our own.

That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another

Those supporters pay dollars but make us pay with blood.

They were on a first-name basis now, united in female solidarity after a twenty-minute conversation about cats. How women cemented alliances over less than nothing impressed him anew.

Oh, claro Vietnam, si cae la bomba sobre el mar lleva tu árbol y tu escudo hasta la puerta del país. Ciérrala firme. (de En El País de Vietnam)

And most of all, it means continually drawing connections among these seemingly disparate struggles—asserting, for instance, that the logic that would cut pensions, food stamps, and health care before increasing taxes on the rich is the same logic that would blast the bedrock of the earth to get the last vapors of gas and the last drops of oil before making the shift to renewable energy.

During extraordinary historical moments—both world wars, the aftermath of the Great Depression, or the peak of the civil rights era—the usual categories dividing "activists" and "regular people" became meaningless because the project of changing society was so deeply woven into the project of life. Activists were, quite simply, everyone.

I email a friend in Seattle, a prominent environmentalist, to ask him how he is faring in the smoke. He reports that the birds have stopped singing, and he is mad all the time. At least I'm not the only one.

In truth, nothing has done more to help build our present corporate dystopia than the persistent and systematic pitting of working-class whites against Blacks, citizens against migrants, and men against women. White supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia have been the elite's most potent defenses against genuine democracy.

la crise du climat pourrait susciter un sursaut citoyen, une secousse venue de la base, capable de répartir le pouvoir entre les mains du plus grand nombre et d'élargir considérablement le domaine des biens communs, lesquels cesseraient ainsi d'être vendus au plus offrant, morceau par morceau.

To build a truly inclusive movement, there needs to be a truly inclusive vision that starts with and is led by the most brutalized and excluded.

And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.