Song of the Week: “Solidarity Forever,” by Pete Seeger - “The union makes us strong”
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, as we dealt with isolation, boredom, and feelings of powerlessness, Taylor and I watched a lot of movies.
We watched comforting old favorites, like the Indiana Jones movies, the Back to the Future trilogy, and Jurassic Park. We had “trash nights,” where we ordered pizza from Dominoes and watched our way through the increasingly ridiculous Fast and the Furious series.1 And, we watched a lot of film classics that we had somehow missed out on - including the irreverent Monty Python comedy Life of Brian (1979).
Life of Brian tells the story of an ordinary man named Brian living in first century Judea who is mistaken for the messiah. While the movie’s blend of low-brow humor, dark comedy, and clever satire kept us laughing throughout, one running joke stayed with us for months.
As Brian goes about his daily life and tries to scare away the acolytes who insist on following him, he encounters multiple groups whose stated purpose is to fight against the oppressive Roman Empire. In practice, however, those groups spend more time squabbling with each other than they do figuring out how they can work together to achieve their common goals.
“Are you the Judean People’s Front?” A curious man, interested in resisting the Romans, asks a group of assembled people. “F*** off!,” their leader (John Cleese), replies. “We’re the People’s Front of Judea…the only people we hate more than the Romans are the f***ing Judean People’s Front.”
Not to be confused, of course, with the Judean Popular People’s Front, the Campaign for a Free Galilee, and the Popular Front of Judea (one lonely guy sitting by himself). Throughout the course of the film, the various revolutionary groups are so focused on their superiority to each other that their attempts at revolution fail, and they ultimately kill each other without doing any damage to the Romans.
These scenes, of course, are poking fun at real divisions among contemporary political groups: specifically, the more than forty different left-wing parties active in 1970s Great Britain. As Monty Python member Michael Palin reflects in Monty Python Speaks, the various Judean separatist movements were based on “modern resistance groups, all with obscure acronyms which they can never remember and their conflicting agendas.”
Struggling Together
The jokes about the Judean People’s Front resonated with us so much because, forty years later, we still see so many examples of people with shared political goals spending most of their time and energy fighting with each other instead of actually working to change society for the better. This is particularly egregious on websites like Tumblr, TikTok, and the website formerly known as Twitter, which encourage hot takes, anger, and binary thinking. So often, modern “activism” amounts to policing people’s language online or chastising people for not already being educated on a topic, rather than looking for points of connection and mutuality.
Many critics have observed that this tendency is why, across North America and Europe, leftists have struggled to mobilize and make lasting change compared to individuals on the far right. Though they may share noble goals that should be widely popular - universal health care, safe working conditions, ecological preservation, and social equality - they often struggle both with outreach and with internal division.
One of my favorite depictions of the struggles and triumphs of this kind of organizing work is the 2020 Hulu series Mrs. America, which dramatizes the 1970s conflict over whether to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment that would forbid discrimination on the basis of sex.
Episodes follow prominent members of the feminist movement, including Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan, as they do the grueling work of fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Though they share a core commitment to advancing women’s equal rights in the United States, they frequently differ on ideological issues (gay rights, economic policy), and organizational ones (legislative priorities, and who should be the public face of the movement).
Mrs. America contrasts the feminists’ struggle with the rise of right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly (a terrifying Cate Blanchett), who uses a nation-wide crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment as a vehicle for her own power. Driven by her own egotism and single-minded obsession with destroying the ERA, Schlafly uses fear tactics to recruit local housewives, organizes STOP ERA chapters around the country, and forms strategic alliances with leaders of questionable groups like the John Birch Society.
Of course, Schlafly is so successful in part because she is willing to build alliances with fear-driven hate groups, and because she is willing to strong-arm others into doing what she wants.
The pro-ERA group’s cultural and intellectual diversity is a strength, and often the critiques raised among members are over vitally important issues, such as the larger feminist movement’s continual neglect of Black people. The pro-ERA activists are also committed to nuance and to fact - a strong contrast to Schlafly’s reliance on fear tactics and outright lies.
And, when they do manage to set their differences aside, they share powerful moments of solidarity and community: such as when the more than 20,000 attendees of the 1977 National Women’s Conference spontaneously join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome.”
And yet - they lose. Schlafly and her supporters succeed in preventing the passage of the ERA. It still has not been passed.
Mrs. America raises fascinating questions about compromise, coalition-building, and political efficacy. Is it more important to be ideologically pure or to get things done? How do we work together with people we disagree with, and which disagreements are worth fighting over? How can we find allies in people who are different from us?
One of my favorite TikTok creators is Rev. Oliver Snow, a trans pastor living in West Virginia who makes videos about community-building, deradicalization, and deconstruction. Snow is particularly concerned with the ways in which his fellow leftists act out of fear, smugness, or a desire for revenge, valuing their own moral purity and academic correctness over a desire to build bridges with people and change their minds. “You want to call yourselves community organizers, but you can’t even get along with your roommates,” he warns in one video. A common thread throughout his videos is that “socialism requires being social” - including with people who might disagree with you.
“If you harbor fear towards anyone who is not like you, you are not going to be able to build solidarity,” he cautions. “I promise you, in the long run, you will do more good for the world by having potlucks than posting on social media, because at those potlucks you can meet people who are different from you, and you can discuss ideas. And you do that in a space where you can look each other in the eyes.”
In Solidarity
This year in the Faculty of Math, we have held a monthly Queer Film Night, featuring a LGBTQ+ movie, an educational introduction and post-movie discussion, and freshly-popped popcorn.2
Last night, I had the privilege of providing the introduction for one of my favorite films of all time: the 2014 British film Pride.
Pride is set in 1984, during an era where the Thatcher administration cut social services and prioritized economic growth, LGBTQ+ people were the frequent targets of violence from both the police and their fellow citizens, and the AIDS epidemic was beginning to kill thousands of people a year. In the name of economic efficiency, the Thatcher administration announced they would be closing many of the country’s 170-odd coal mines, leaving entire towns without their livelihoods. In response, the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike for almost an entire year, despite facing harassment and violence from the police as well as immense financial hardship.
Pride tells the true story of how a group of young lesbian and gay activists in London decided to devote themselves to the miners’ cause, drawing attention to their plight and raising money to support their families. The group, very practically named “Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners,” decide to specifically support the tiny Welsh village of Onllwyn, and after a series of comedic misunderstandings, they travel to visit the striking Welsh miners themselves.
At first, relations are awkward - even hostile - on both sides; many of the gay activists have faced violence and homophobia in rural communities like Onllwyn, and many of the miners are suspicious of outsiders and blatantly homophobic. Gradually, however, things start to thaw: the gay activists give the miners both material support and legal advice, and the villagers in turn welcome them into their homes and provide them with community and parental warmth that many of them have lost.
“I’ve never understood the point of supporting gay rights but nobody else’s rights, you know?” says gay activist Mark Ashton. “Or worker’s rights but not women’s rights. It’s illogical.”
Dai Donovan, one of the leaders of the striking miners, replies with an illustration from the history of the labor union: “There’s a lodge banner down in the [community hall], over 100 years old…It’s a symbol, like this.” He clasps Mark’s hand in his. “Two hands. That’s what the labor movement means. Should mean. You support me. I support you. Whoever you are, wherever you come from. Shoulder to shoulder. Hand to hand.”
The coalition between the gay activists and the Welsh miners is able to succeed for a few reasons. First, and foremost, there are leaders on both side who exhibit humility, grace, and an openness to learning about experiences they haven’t personally had. “I don't believe the things the tabloids say about us,” Dai says at one point, “so why should I believe what they say about them?”
They share food and drink together, host each other in their homes, and bond over old Welsh songs and modern dance music. They approach each other in good faith, and are willing to laugh at small misunderstandings and missteps that happen along the way.
Secondly, they are able to identify common struggles - police harassment and a desire for dignity - and a common goal. This is not tokenism or the toothless peacemaking of the infamous ad in which model Kendall Jenner solves conflict between police and generic protestors carrying signs saying “love” and “join the conversation” by handing out Pepsi.
The relationship between the gay activists and Welsh miners is also not the kind of performative lip service that feels good but costs nothing, like a business posting a black square to its Instagram in summer 2020.
It is not marked by fair-weather friendship, or a desire to help only as long as it is socially or politically advantageous.
My brother, an archaeologist, is part of the construction workers’ union, and when he first started at his job his team’s union rep was a self-righteous and loudly political man that they nicknamed “In Solidarity Joe,” because he signed each email update with “in solidarity, Joe.” That pledge of solidarity, however, rang hollow when Joe left the job to take a more lucrative position - as a union buster.
[spoilers ahead]
By contrast, the friendship between the gay activists and the mine workers continues even after the strike ends. One Welsh mother supports a young gay man as he’s rejected by his family, and helps take care of another gay man who is hospitalized after being beaten by homophobes. In turn, the injured man’s partner convinces the young woman to go to university; years later, she went on to be the first female MP from her district.
And, at the end of the film, in a heart-swelling show of true solidarity, busloads and busloads of coal miners from across the country show up to march in support of gay rights at the 1985 London Pride parade.
That year, for the first time, gay rights became part of the UK Labour Party’s official platform - in large part because of a unanimous block vote from the National Union of Mineworkers.
It can be scary and vulnerable to work with people who are different from us. It can require patience, compromise, and grace. But if we want to make lasting, widespread change that makes things better for everyone, we have to be willing to work together. There is power in a union.
When it comes to coalitions, what should I add to my syllabus?
I want to hear from you, whether it’s in the comments on this post or in emails to me directly at roschmansyllabus@substack.com!
Someday I swear I will teach a unit of a class titled “We’re family: The Fast and the Furious and Eve Sedgewick’s theory of triangulated homosocial desire.”
The first month of the series was particularly exciting because the popcorn machine triggered the fire alarms and the entire computer science building had to be evacuated. Since then, our events manager has popped the popcorn elsewhere and brought it to the auditorium in a box.
It's been a few years since I watched Pride, and that end scene has me sobbing now just as much as then. In the Tik Tok, I love his metaphor of "planting trees you will never sit under.". It's so important to remember that any small progress we make today will be a foundation for future progress.
I would get so frustrated by people where I worked in Maine bad-talking their unions (mainly due to the fees), because when a union is working, it's doing SUCH good work. I was talking to someone today having issues with her employer, and if she could be part of a union, the employer's behaviour should be stopped well before it got to me as a medical provider. I compare her case to that of people in the teacher's union here, and they get SO much more support and have lawyers and resources to aid them. Meanwhile the first person had to hire an outside HR consultant to get advice.
Very thoughtful. We all need to learn to listen more and spend time in person , not online, solving conflicts and coming up with solutions to work together better.