We belong to solidarities not of our choosing.
These words caught my eye yesterday while driving past the Lutheran church in our neighborhood. Normally their sign contains some light-humored, chicken-soup-for-the-liberal-soul sentiment (soul candy instead of eye candy?), but not this week.
Solidarities.
Now that's an interesting word.
(more below)
In googling the phrase, the primary attribution I see is to the current
Archbishop of Canterbury. The concept of differing agents moved to act in concert appears to be somewhat of a recurring theme for the Archbishop; it crops up several times in his speeches, and usually in an explicitly Christian context (as one might reasonably expect). In the earliest version of the quite I can find (the mid- to late-1990s, when he was Archbishop of Wales), the full quote reads "We have been caught up by baptism in solidarities not of our own choosing.". Despite my own lack of religious affiliation, I couldn't get that phrase out of my head. What does it
mean? How does it apply to our interactions on this site? In life?
Associations. Coalitions. Unions. Cooperatives.
Solidarities.
The Daily Kos is a solidarity. And it is not of our own choosing. At this point, it isn't even of any one person's choosing, probably not even of Markos'.
Each of us came to this site for different reasons; each of us comes to this site with our own perspective. Some of us are lifelong Democrats, born and bred; others come from Green Party or other Left-leaning affiliations, formal or otherwise. Markos comes from a technophilic, campaign-centric perspective; personally, I come from frontline sex and gender politics; others here are union organizers, environmental activists, party affiliates both local and national (two very different animals indeed), anti-war activists, disenfranchised moderates, and alienated centrist Republicans. We are newly-converted zealots; we are jaded, long-time participants.
We belong.
There are factions that demand their own forms of single-issue ideological purity - yes, there are the traditional 'interest group' politics, but what is insistence upon party loyalty over all else but a form of single-issue politics? Our self-identification with one faction or another is the sum of our experiences.
Our community is the sum of the sum of our experiences.
Our movement is the sum of the sum of our experiences.
Our solidarity is the sum of the sum of our experiences.
We disregard one another's points of view at our peril: the party fetishists give us a framework, a goal, a mechanism for governance; the single-issue zealots force accountability, consistency, reaction. The broad, sweeping demands for a unified philosophy under which we can operate will not work without the dedicated foot soldiers who focus on single issues. The single issue activists require the unity and direction that can be provided by well-articulated and coherent political frameworks. Both broadly defined camps serve needed roles: in areas of the country where the Democratic party is truly little more than the lesser of two evils, what alternative is there but to participate in single-issue groups? In the context of the wheeling and dealing of power politics at all levels, who gives voice to the weak, the disenfranchised, the unpopular? In areas where squabbling over priorities comes before concrete action, who can provide concrete mechanisms for enacting policies and executing plans but the larger party structure?
Solidarities.
Like it or not, we do belong to many solidarities. And, like it or not, most of them are not of our choosing.