Solidarity: the political version of love

West Kildonan

The late American poet and scholar Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz famously wrote, in her 2007 book The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, that solidarity is the political version of love.

The book discusses the need for broad coalitions within civil society, with nobody considered ‘better’ than anyone else. When people of diverse backgrounds stand shoulder to shoulder for a cause they can all believe in, regardless of what else divides them, that is truly a political form of love.

Here on Turtle Island, while any one of us who is not Indigenous is by definition a settler, the fact remains that some of us (including many Indigenous people) are more marginalized than others. Whether it’s the colour of our skin, our religious or gender identity, or anything else that sets us off from the majority, it is always a little fraught to be different. For those who are hyphenated Canadians or otherwise suspected of dual loyalty, it can be even more fraught, and that is where the concept of ‘diasporism’ comes in.

Kaye/Kantrowitz writes: “Diasporism is committed to an endless paradoxical dance between cultural integrity and multicultural complexities. Diasporism depends not on dominance but on balance, perpetual back and forth, home and away, community and outside, always on the edge except perhaps at intensely personal moments in the family created by blood or by love, or at moments of transcendent solidarity.”

Here in Winnipeg, we have sometimes been blessed with that kind of solidarity – from our pride in the 1919 General Strike to the recent raucous rallies outside City Hall against a restrictive bylaw that would have prevented most protests. I have often thought it ironic that the monument of the overturned street car is just across Main Street from city hall – is it there to remind them that power truly lies with the people? They may need more frequent reminders.

If you are a double-barrelled Canadian of any sort, whether your diasporism is of the geographical kind or something else, I invite you to embrace this concept of paradoxical dance – love of Canada and all it can be, while protecting our own unique way of life.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel very fortunate to live in this vast and beautiful country, which has not always welcomed difference. We must never forget that multiculturalism, protection for LGBTQ+ and Indigenous folks, religious freedom, and democracy itself must not be taken for granted – the forces of reaction and fascism, which we can see at work south of the border, are here as well.

Still, I am optimistic – as long as we remember to love each other, politically as well as in every other way, the people, united, will never be defeated.