Welcome to the class blog! The John Jay - Vera Fellows Program is a collaborative effort between John Jay College and the spin-off agencies of the Vera Institute of Justice, combining an internship and participation in a seminar taught by faculty from John Jay's Interdisciplinary Studies Program. (To see a video about the John Jay - Vera Fellows Program, click here.) Part of the seminar experience is weekly participation in the class blog, which keeps the conversation going from week to week and will be a place for you to share your thoughts and concerns about the materials discussed in seminar as well as the internship experience. The opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Vera Institute of Justice or its spin-off organizations. While the blog is open to the public and anyone, theoretically, can comment, only class members and invited guests will be able to post. You can also look for us on our student and alumni page on Facebook.
Each student has been assigned one week to write the "post." Please post within 24 hours after class. Every week, each student must comment on the post (feel free to comment more than once). Please comment by Monday afternoon to allow time for further questions and responses and so that we can read all the entries before class.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Solidarity!

Hey guys! Thanks for being a part of my workshop on solidarity. I hope you enjoyed the class as much as I did. As I mentioned during the seminar, I have often found myself struggling to work in solidarity with my clients and coworkers. In one scenario I found myself extraordinarily upset at one of my bosses and a schlew of clients for showing up an hour and a half late to  a presentation that I had worked very hard to put together only for the boss to not acknowledge that she was so late to the workshop and for the clients to fall asleep during or not pay attention when I was speaking. I felt extremely disrespected and wondered why the clients didn't respect my effort more. The truth is that I wasn't really seeing them or their experiences, but rather holding them to the expectations that I grew up learning as a person of a privileged position. I expected my clients to know the things that I had been taught  growing up as I did. But they didn't, of course, because most of them didn't get the sort of opportunities that I did. I wasn't seeing this, wasn't thinking about our differences as constructive. I got caught up in what separated myself from them and became angry and disrespectful instead of using it as an opportunity to grow and learn. I let differences "divide and conquer" instead of "define and empower".

My question for the blog is, how do we see solidarity in our experiences in our internships? How will the ideas we discussed and explored in class impact the way we interact with our coworkers and clients? What does it look like to live in solidarity with everyone we encounter despite our differences?
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12 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Bekkah, Thanks for great class. I really enjoyed that. And I got questions too:).
First, I have a problem with the definition of solidarity. For me, solidarity appears naturally. It is not something constructed that people in society have to work on. The way we discuss this issue today inspires me to believe that solidarity is something that we have to work on. However, from my perspective, solidarity is something that appears naturally in our society. For example, we can talk about the gender solidarity. Women suppose to have a mutual understanding naturally without the need to build that among each other. It is sort of given to them. (Not all of them. I am lacking it badly.)
Therefore, I would say that in my internship there is solidarity between the co-workers in my program connected with their passion. All of them are clearly passionate about addressing the issues of mental health and substance abuse. That is what unites them. That is what build their shared views. ( etc. according to the words written on the board). However, they do not necessarily like each other or each other's social status. I do not know that. My point is that when people have some issues that they are really interested in, their differences does not really matter. It might be called solidarity. Perhaps.
In my view, the question is wether they are working in solidarity with their subjects? As Bekkah pointed out, we do not always think about what other people know, what other people are capable of. Do they really work in solidarity with these people? I have never saw the subjects. However, I have seen people working hours in that office. How are we making sure that researchers are helping people, sharing the values and understanding of the problems? How do we know that they are in solidarity with their subjects?

March 13, 2015 at 11:02 PM
Unknown said...

This was a great class! Thank you Bekkah.

Solidarity- this idea is part of the reason for why things at CASES. I have a great deal of respect for many of the staff at cases because they very quickly recognize their privilege. They're very aware of the work that needs to be done both for and with the students to get them where THEY want to be- while making sure it's a.appropriate and b. plausible within the resources/access that these students have. I think that's so interconnected with solidarity because it's really easy to have a "savior" complex and want to "fix" people instead of working with their strengths and improve their weaknesses.
There isn't much imposition (at least in the departments I've interacted with) and we collaborate with students to improve their situations. Again - staff doesn't seem to be there to save people but to work to change situations and circumstances which (at least in my mind) hopefully slowly but surely begin to have greater ripple effects. Who knows, maybe I'm just being idealistic.

March 14, 2015 at 5:03 PM
Unknown said...

At CJA, plexiglass is placed between the defendants and the interviewers. I believe it is intentionally placed to remind both parties of their differences. While CJA interviews defendants in an effort to make the defendant look more "release worthy," I feel this is just another way to place individuals into categories. To ask a person if they work or do not work does not give the judge a good picture of the qualities and characteristics of the defendant. It just puts the defendant into the category of either "worker" or "unemployed."

After Bekah's class, I hope to accept the differences (or the plexiglass wall) between the defendants and myself and use our differences to create a lasting solidarity. CJA was created for the purpose of decreasing pre-trial incarceration. If both interviewers and defendants could look past differences, I believe lasting change could be made within the agency to help make the interview more reflective of the defendant and less categorical.

Solidarity is not an acheivable entity, but a process. We must continually work TOWARDS solidarity. The only way we can accomplish this is by first accepting the differences within ourselves, accepting the differences within those around us, and accepting these differences to find unity through our commonalities.

March 15, 2015 at 2:51 PM
Danyeli Rodriguez said...

Hello everyone !
Mary told me class was great last Thursday, so sorry I had to miss it ! I was not feeling very well. This is even more frustrating because Audre Lorde is everything !

Moving on to the post:
Since my placement is so closely related to me, undocumented immigrant to undocumented immigrant, there is not a time when I cannot feel solidarity. I am personally in tune with their struggle to work, when single parents juggle two to three jobs at a time, when they have to cancel or show up late because they had no one else to pick up or take the kids to school. I feel for them. I understand and I always remain calm and understanding of their situations because growing up, I was the child of an undocumented single parent and then became an undocumented adult myself. However, there is usually a line in which I cannot completely connect with my client and that is when we begin to talk about the crimes they are victims of. While I stand in solidarity because I know that the immigrant community is incredibly vulnerable to crime, I still have to recognize that there are certain experiences I cannot be fully aware of.

I guess the first step to solidarity is to recognized and check our own privileges and then understand that there is only a certain extent of solidarity that one can offer. Like Monica pointed out, there ought to be a line so we do not fall into the savior complex of things.

March 15, 2015 at 3:27 PM
Unknown said...

I love that Danyeli summarized our realizations from class even though she was not there! Great insight!

Jobpath lack solidarity with in the company. People from different departments barely know each other and rarely work together on a common goal. Support workers do know anyone in the office or most of the other support workers in the field. Jobpath acknowledges the problem is currently trying to find way to fix it, but I dont see any change anytime soon. In addition, there is a lot of office politics where people from different parts of Jobpath focus only on each others differences and ignore their similarities. I my job aspect. I have solidarity with a few of my coworkers, but that is not true over all. The way our job is set up is that we have to check each others work and report any mistakes straight to the supervisor, which causes all of my coworkers to be suspicious and fearful of all other staff.

In the internship component I am lucky to be working with the MSC department which coordinates all the services. The MSCs have the most solidarity. They accept each other and help each other in addition they are involved in all the other departments so I ave a chance to work with the other departments.

I hope the Jobpath is able to remedy its segregated way of operating and be able to work in solidarity with one another.

March 15, 2015 at 6:32 PM
bekah giacomantonio said...

I think this thread is interesting for many reasons-
1. That the majority of folks are seeing solidarity as a process or a way of being (including danyeli who wasn't even there)
2. Lauren's comment about the plexiglass... I wonder what the clients think about that... I wonder how that makes them feel/act/answer. Why is it there? What purpose does it serve and for who is there? Surely, someone will claim that this is for the protection of the interviewers, but is it really?
3. Marina's comment about how solidarity should be assumed. Perhaps it should be, but with the exact example that Marina mentioned(solidarity between women) Audre Lorde explains why solidarity is s hard and how it is an ever evolving process for people working together. It should have been natural for black women to be embraced at that conference because it was about women, but it wasn't. There was a pathetic black representation at the gathering.

Is solidarity something that is assumed? should it be assumed?

March 15, 2015 at 7:37 PM
Unknown said...

Hi Bekah,this was a great class.

I believe the staff at CEO is solidarity when it comes to helping participants to improve their interview skills or their resumes. The purpose of the program is to help participants to secure jobs, and most of the time our participants share the same goal. I believe the problem lies when there is a participant who does not want to either make an effort to succeed in the program nor let the staff help them. When this happens, it gets more complicated for the staff to relate to the participant as I-you. Perhaps staff members feel that participants are not doing enough. Job Developers at CEO have to build a relationship with participants, as well as employers, and every time an employer fired a participant the relationship between Job Developers and employers is negatively affected.

March 16, 2015 at 1:47 AM
Alisse Waterston said...

Thanks for all these great comments, and Bekah, thank you for bringing such a great topic to the class. The "idea" and "practices" of solidarity are important to explore. As Bekah's story attests, sometimes the idea of solidarity sounds great but in reality it can be so difficult to put into practice. Lauren refers to it as a process. Marina seems to think it should "come naturally" (does anything really come naturally? Also what are the dangers of believing something "should" come naturally? What gets lost, hidden, erased by believing that?).

Related to Bekah's questions about "assumptions" in relation to solidarity, I wonder if you are familiar with the word/idea of "essentialism" and "essentialist thinking"? I'd love to hear what your thoughts about that.

March 16, 2015 at 9:47 AM
Unknown said...

Thanks Bekah for an awesome seminar. You raise an interesting issue that I have witnessed at FedCap. There isn't much solidarity between the clients and the case managers. It is difficult for the case managers to stay informed and remember each individuals case. There is a lot of frustration, however, the group does work well in creating dialogue into the areas in which there can be improvements. Solidarity to means a group of individuals working together for a common goal. At Fedcap that goal is to assist the individuals so that they can remove themselves from a specific struggle (homelessness, in search of a job, child care etc). Through these experiences I have been able to recognize the various forms of privilege.

March 16, 2015 at 2:34 PM
Unknown said...

Thanks for a great workshop session. Kudos!!!

In regards to the blog questions, at Common Justice I have observed solidarity among the staff and clients by the way that they interact. As we deconstructed solidarity in class as, some of its element includes “unity" and "common goal". At CJ, case coordinators, who are in direct contact with the clients are always working hard to look for services suitable for our clients. As for the common goal, CJ aims at reducing mass incarceration in the country. To meet this goal, Common Justice has established connections with other agencies, whose mission statement aims at reducing mass incarceration as well.
To whether solidarity comes naturally or it is assumed, I would say that it is a process that begins when members who believe that they share a common interest and are facing a common challenge agrees on putting their efforts together in order to overcome this challenge. In other word, it is not a goal that a community works to achieve but a conditions in which a community lives in.

March 16, 2015 at 11:12 PM
Gina Moreno said...

Thank you for a thought-provoking class Bekah! The first time I really explored the concept of solidarity was when I learned about the Wobbies, a radical labor union that sought to unite all laborers into one social class fighting against oppressive chokehold of capitalism.
After your class, as I reflect upon my understanding of solidarity, I think it represents a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, in that it draws from members of different castes and creeds to create a united entity that stands for something much greater than the differences that might potentially divide the sub-groups within the entity.

At my internship, I work alongside folks from quite diverse backgrounds, and I see solidarity in the sense that we’re working in service of a cause that we collectively believe in. With regards to Verans standing in solidarity with the clients we serve (i.e. justice-involved individuals) I’m not so sure we have solidarity in the sense that Danyeli says; we might not have experienced first-hand being at the short end of the justice system’s stick but we we’re united against the injustices that the system produces.

This brings me to a point I would like to raise: is empathy an essential part of solidarity? Can one stand in solidarity with someone/ or a collective group of people without having experienced any of the trials and tribulations they have faced?

March 17, 2015 at 1:33 PM
Unknown said...

Great class and blog post everyone! On solidarity, Audre Lorde said, "I am not free while any women is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." What does this mean to you? How does it answer your questions posed in the blog? Marina mentioned that you don't have to have similar identities to have solidarity about a cause. Gina asked if you have to come from the experience to truly have solidarity. Very important questions. Some of you gave examples from your agencies that seem like you perceive "Solidarity" as being in a relationship with...but is this because you have solidarity about what you think should happen politically and programmatically? There may be people there you don't "identify" with but you may be in solidarity. There's a great book by Suzanne Pharr called Homophobia a Weapon of Sexism, where she distinguishes between solidarity because we need to fight for people's rights with anyone who believes in the cause no matter what their identity is; and support groups where we need to go and be with people who reflect specific aspects of our identities to heal from shared trauma. This is a VERY important distinction. Let me know what you think!

March 18, 2015 at 4:03 PM

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