To someone unfamiliar with activism, it can seem puzzling that one group would let a different one take over its own rallies. In one such case, the Harvard Graduate Students Union held recurring “teach-out” sessions during its strikes where other activist campus groups presented lectures connecting their struggles to labor issues. These kinds of tag-team efforts stem from the common tactic of solidarity, wherein protest groups with overlapping or similar goals bolster one another’s efforts. While some groups may not have enough power individually to exact the changes they want, they think uniting under a broader alliance will give them the collective strength to succeed.
Today, it is common to see Harvard’s activist groups promoting one another’s efforts and events online, occasionally hosting joint sessions or posting statements of solidarity. The most prominent recent effort is the creation of the Harvard Endowment Justice Coalition, a self-described “coalition of the Harvard divestment campaigns (Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine and Harvard Puerto Rican Debt Divestment Campaign) fighting for our endowment justice within and beyond our university’s walls.” Harvard protest groups are now acting on the framework that all of their issues are interconnected, and they seem poised to continue building bonds as newer groups emerge.
On some level this move seems obvious. It is a common stereotype that activist groups oftentimes have intense splits over relatively small differences, unable to unite when they all basically want the same thing (perhaps made most famous by the comical squabbling among anti-Roman resistance organizations in “Life of Brian”). If activist groups on campus do not have to worry about competing for attention with each other, then they can boost all of their causes at the same time, and Harvard will be more inclined to accept all their demands.
However, there are limits to solidarity’s usefulness when it papers over substantial differences between campaigns and inadvertently undermines some of their individual arguments. For example, a major point of FFDH’s campaign is that climate change poses a global challenge to the sustainability of the human species and the planet, so it is therefore incredibly urgent that Harvard stop investing in any mutual funds with fossil fuel companies. But that case’s urgency is lessened when the group trying to avert the impending destruction of the world puts itself on par with groups fighting against private prisons holding 8.2% of U.S inmates, convincing the university to withdraw from a hedge fund holding some debt in Puerto Rico, and trying to budge the almost intractable Israel-Palestine crisis.
This is not to diminish each cause; many lives and long term ramifications are at stake, but that is inherent in the nature of all political issues. Some matters are simply more urgent than others because of their scale, immediacy and consequence, and this unavoidable fact gets flattened if the groups view themselves as fundamentally inseparable. Suddenly, one group’s case is not an unprecedented crisis that warrants radical reaction; it’s typical college protest shenanigans, where all have their own important causes but have little way to elevate them as true crises.
The divestment groups try to address this dilemma with a vision statement; their campaigns are united under the tenets that “an institution’s investments should reflect its moral and political principles” and that “endowments belong to the people.” While useful as slogans, these observations are so broad they become banal, so vague that they could cover almost any kind of investment that someone takes issue with. There is no particular impetus or limiting principle describing what kind of investment is so wrong that it necessitates such immediate action, and it drains the urgency of the involved campaigns when their main unifying ideal can include almost any kind of political issue.
At the same time, the groups presenting as inextricably linked makes it harder for outsiders to reconcile their legitimate ideological differences. It is not unreasonable to believe there are some who think halting climate change is urgent but are wary of HOOP, which advocates for the controversial goals of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and says it will “not remain silent in the face of Zionist liberalism,” or others who worry about predatory debt in Puerto Rico but feel hesitant about “the complete abolition of the carceral state,” as advocated by HPDC in the teach-in announcement. It is easier for the administration and others to ignore the coalition if, in order to accept any individual group’s demands, they must also accept groups with much more radical goals with higher reputational difficulties than the others.
Furthermore, even beyond the variations among individual groups, the indirect pressure of solidarity can quickly turn toxic when it becomes used to chastise others who do not join a cause. Peer pressure is, to some degree, a necessary component of activism, but solidarity can quickly turn menacing if handled too bluntly and harshly.
One example is from November 2019, when an open letter lambasted Asian student groups at Harvard that chose, either due to member disagreements or a desire to not get involved in politics, not to co-sponsor a pro-DACA rally attended by other affinity and protest groups. The letter included accusations that they “outed [them]selves as non-safe spaces for undocu+ people within the Asian American community,” and that “by foregoing political engagement and activism,” they did “a disservice to the title ‘Asian-American.’”
Rather than primarily encouraging groups to unite around a shared cause, the letter exploits solidarity to denigrate those that happened not to participate with charged language that accuses them of being unsafe and threatening to others for having any hesitance. The letter turns solidarity from a unifying and uplifting volition into a graceless “with us or against us” crudeness, one more likely to make their prospective allies defensive and fracture any potential kinship.
To be clear, this does not chastise how individuals choose to exercise their advocacy. If there are students who agree with multiple causes, there is nothing that should stop them from supporting them all. Shoutouts of support and solidarity statements shared among groups can still raise awareness and increase participation. But activists are wrong to present their goals as a necessarily conjoined front that can potentially undermine their case without tactful messaging, and solidarity can quickly become stifling if it is used to shame people into supporting a cause rather than inspiring them.
Image Credit: “IMG_0853” by stand4security is licensed under CC BY 2.0
