chavisory:

fierceawakening:

queeranarchism:

Solidarity, not allies.

The more I look at it, the more I think one of the worst thing to happen was that people started replacing the concept of solidarity with the concept of allies.

Solidarity was this amazing idea that we’re all getting screwed over by the systems and the way we fight back is by working together. And that means doing work against forms of oppression that you don’t experience and following the lead of people who experience that form of oppression because it’s their struggle. But you’re there as a partner, as a comrade. And you know they’ll be there for you if you need help in your part of the struggle. That’s solidarity.

Allyship has none of that. it’s a one-way relationship that carries in it a form of authority, and where there is authority there is harm. The failures of this system are everywhere.

• You have the exploitative savior ally who is always looking to find the most oppressed group to ally themselves for in order too look like the coolest person, pushing themselves into spaces and exploiting people’s struggles for ally points.
• You have the perfectionist ally who will only ever do work once they’re sure that they’re found the most perfecrt ‘grassroots’, never problematic in any way movement, rehardless of where their help is actually needed and useful.
• You have the drone ally, only ever following directions and wasting all their potential to contribute anything meaningful, terrified of doing any thinking or acting for themselves that may at some point set them ‘called out’. 
• You have the oppressed person or group who sees allies as convenient punching bad to work out their rage on, piling on them the hatred and contempt they wish they could pile on the system.
• You have the oppressed person or group that treats allies as defined entirely by their allyhood, ignoring that they have struggles of their own and treating them as disposable. Shouting ‘allies to the front’ when the police brutality hits without a thought to the previous traumas and vulnerabilities of individual allies.

In all of these ways and more we are hurting each other, feeling unsafe around each other, becoming estranged and embittered with oneanother.

The concept of privilege has brought us some very useful things that help us be better activists and better humans to each other, but when I look at the way that is translated to the concept of allies, I mostly see us being worse activists and worse humans to each other than we are when we act out of the concept of solidarity. Being in this fight together means taking care of each other.

“Ally” really is a buzzword.

An actual alliance is a friendly relationship of mutual benefit where each ally has pledged to defend the other. One ally may be more powerful than another so one may rely on the other more intensely or more often, but the ideal is of mutual aid.

In SJ terms it seems to mean “I expect you to defend me in exactly the way I dictate whenever I say and never disagree with me. Also, I will never defend you, so never ask.”

Ehhh?

See, for the longest time, I thought queeranarchism’s description of solidarity was what allyship was supposed to mean.  That different but similarly marginalized people were joining forces for mutual support and goodwill.

It shocked me when I re-engaged with activism and found what the expectations of “allies” had become.

And it’s one of those things that’s so effective at fracturing communities that I can’t help wondering whether it was introduced both deliberately and not in good faith.