Solidarity is the living out of this fundamental truth: that we are born for community, created to be members of a network of mutual care and mutual obligation. Solidarity is an act of recognition of the inalienable dignity of the ‘other’ (be that ‘other’ a person, a group of people or a nation). It sees them “not just as some kind of instrument, with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as our ‘neighbour’, a ‘helper’ (Gen 2.18-20), to be made a sharer, on par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God.”…We are all one family in the world. Building a community that empowers everyone to attain their full potential through each of us respecting each other’s dignity, rights and responsibility makes the world a better place to live…. It is extremely important to register that solidarity is a two-way street. It calls all, rich and poor alike, to work together, collaboratively, to end injustice and to give grounds for hope….Fundamental to this is the nature of solidarity as, firstly, a movement of the Spirit, a recognition of the other as brother or sister, as a child of God with inalienable dignity and value; secondly, a reaching out to affirm, to support and to receive from the other, a taking of risks in the light of this underlying belief and insight.
-Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis
Deep Solidarity requires a new sensibility, a new conversion, Dr. Joerg Rieger said. In fact, Rev. Sekou…talks about Rev. Lampkin who was injured by a rubber bullet shot by the Ferguson police. Rev. Sekou says when black people said thank you to her because she, a white person was engaging in the black people’s struggle, she replied, no, it is her struggle as well. She recognized that her own salvation as a white person is caught up in the salvation of African American persons, including that of Michael Brown. Deep Solidarity requires the middle class persons to understand that their salvation is linked to those who are homeless than to those who are in the 1% whom they may seek to emulate. Deep solidarity requires those of us who live in this great nation to realize that our salvation is linked with those who are here without documents, that they are indeed fellow travelers to be welcomed with hospitality and honor rather than be reviled and deported. Deep solidarity brings us to the understanding that those who are protesting, those who are struggling without jobs, without food and shelter and caught up in the prison industrial complex are our sisters and brothers, that our salvation is linked with theirs. Deep solidarity is the Theology of the Other on steroids. We need nothing less today. Solidarity is no longer a matter of the privileged helping the underprivileged. It is about understanding what we have in common and how we all need to work together to organize and to embrace a different power.” -Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana, In the Context of Ferguson, a Theology of Deep Solidarity