Thinking Dialectically About Solidarity

The recent visit of two Afro-Columbians to the
Boggs Center started me thinking dialectically about the paradigm shift
in the concept and practice of Solidarity made necessary and possible by
corporate globalization.

In 1997 these Afro-Columbians, members of a small
farming community in Araba, Colombia, were among those displaced when a
joint paramilitary and U.S. -backed military operation, under the
pretext of fighting guerrilla forces, took over their resource-rich
homeland so that global corporations could produce palm oil for the
world market and carry on large scale cattle ranging and logging.

Determined to reclaim their territory, the
farmers created "humanitarian zones" in the neighboring area as enclaves
of peaceful civil resistance. These Humanitarian Zones are
internationally recognized and protected by the Inter-American Court
on Human Rights. They are supported by Witness for Peace.

After we had heard their story and viewed a DVD of their struggle we gave them a tour of our east side neighborhood.

Visiting the Hope District, Earthworks and the
Feedom Freedom Growers, these South Americans got a sense of how in a
North American city which has also been devastated by corporate
globalization, we are resisting by growing our own food, struggling to
bring the neighbor back into the hood, creating Peace Zones out of War
zones, and redefining Work to mean making a Life and not just a Living.

They were thrilled, honored and encouraged to
connect with grassroots Detroiters who are also reclaiming our land,
community and humanity.

Reflecting on this experience, I was able to
recognize and appreciate the paradigm shift in the meaning of Solidarity
that globalization has made both necessary and possible.

For most of the 20th century, Solidarity has
meant "Workers of the World Unite" and/or "the union makes us
strong."

But in the age of corporate globalization and the
outsourcing and downsizing of jobs, Solidarity is beginning to mean
connecting grassroots communities who are resisting corporate
devastation and displacement by creating ways of living that give us
control over our lives.

The emergence of the Zapatistas in 1994 at
Chiapas in response to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was
the first announcement to the world that grassroots people are creating
new self- healing civic groups in response to corporate globalization.

A decade later, according to one estimate by Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest,
there may be as many as half a million of these groups, most of them
small and barely visible in every country around the world.

In two widely-read books, Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004),
political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri emphasize the
singularity or diversity of these groups. They do not fuse into some
unity like "the people" or the "workers of the world." Nor are they
connected in centralized organizations like the 2^nd or 3^rd
Internationals, as in the Marxist-Leninist era. What they have in
common is that they are each imagining and creating the new social
identities, the new political subjects that will take the place of the
cogs and consumers to which global capitalism seeks to reduce us.

These self-healing civic groups and communities connect mainly through networks.

So Solidarity is beginning to mean the linking or
networking of these communities in North and South America and around
the world.