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SOLIDARITY IS THE CORE OF OUR MOVEMENTS — IT’S ALSO MESSIER THAN
WE OFTEN ADMIT  
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Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
April 15, 2025
Truthout
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_ When “resistance grows, but the killing does not stop,” it’s
time to become more strategic, methodical, innovative, collaborative
and dedicated to justice regardless of the whims of corporate power,
institutional oppression, or societal approval. _

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“We are all led to solidarity by a complicated array of emotional,
political, material and coincidental experiences,” novelist,
activist and AIDS historian Sarah Schulman told me recently as we
discussed her new book, _The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity_.
“What really matters in the end is what we conclude from all these
influences.”

Her reflections on the importance of solidarity are timely in this
moment, as solidarity with Palestinians has become increasingly
criminalized. Over the past year and a half, university
administrations have used every means at their disposal to repress
campus-based protests against the U.S.-sponsored Israeli genocide in
Gaza. Instead of showing solidarity with their students, these
administrations have collaborated with police to brutalize protesters,
banned Palestinian and Jewish activist groups, and suspended and
expelled pro-Palestinian students and professors with a relentless
zeal. It’s now hard to imagine a different path, one where
universities stood by their alleged values of free expression, and
extolled the virtue of their students’ right to protest as a vital
aspect of the learning process. Instead, the bipartisan consensus
between the Democratic and Republican parties, the Israel lobby and
Evangelical Christians has led to Orwellian new laws defining
anti-Zionism as antisemitism, and now the Trump administration is
using powers available since the Patriot Act to abduct foreign student
activists, send them to private prisons and threaten them with
deportation.

Schulman’s new book, _The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity_,
centers on the importance of the Palestinian solidarity movement,
examining “solidarity as a practice, as a creative endeavor, as
performance art, as new forms of relationships, as a series of
strategies and responses.” She looks to the work of activists,
artists, writers, critical thinkers and iconoclasts past and present
to understand the relationships that allow for solidarity to take
place.

Schulman resists the notion of solidarity as something pure, instead
revealing intrinsic power dynamics. “As long as we think of
solidarity as saintly, we will not be able to fulfill it,” she
writes. If the “purpose of this book is to make solidarity
doable,” her method is unconventional — expose the contradictions,
the limitations, the fantasies — in order to show the ways that
flawed individuals under duress can still take meaningful action to
challenge tyranny.

When “resistance grows, but the killing does not stop,” Schulman
writes, it’s time to become more strategic, methodical, innovative,
collaborative and dedicated to justice regardless of the whims of
corporate power, institutional oppression, or societal approval. This
interview addresses the complications of solidarity and the hypocrisy
of the culture industry, as well as institutional bias, abortion
activism, trans suicide and Schulman’s own experience coming to
terms with the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and
clarity.

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE: I WAS STRUCK BY YOUR RESPONSE TO THE
REPRESSION OF PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY PROTESTS BY UNIVERSITY
ADMINISTRATIONS, WHERE YOU WRITE THAT “THE KNOWLEDGE GAINED BY THESE
ILLUMINATING INSTITUTIONAL BETRAYALS LASTS FOREVER.” WHAT DOES THIS
KNOWLEDGE ALLOW?

SARAH SCHULMAN: Hopefully a kind of alienation from the institutions
of what I call “criteria” — the institutions that have been
mythologized into a power that maintains hierarchy and exception from
rights.

YOU WRITE THAT “CRITERIA” IS A EUPHEMISM FOR BIAS. IN THIS SENSE,
WOULD YOU SAY THAT THIS TYPE OF BIAS, WHICH TREATS STUDENTS AND
FACULTY AS STATUS OBJECTS TO ACHIEVE FOR THE UNIVERSITY RATHER THAN
COLLABORATIVE PARTNERS, IS PART OF THE CORPORATIZATION OF THE
UNIVERSITY THAT PREVENTS MEANINGFUL SOLIDARITY WITH STUDENT PROTESTS?

Perhaps originally universities were places where the primary
relationships were between teachers and students. But as they have
grown into top-heavy hedge funds and what Lisa Duggan said about New
York University — “a real estate company that offers classes”
— faculty [are seen as] this annoying whining entity, with no
participation in governance, that administration doesn’t know what
to do with.

SINCE THIS BOOK IS FRAMED BY THE CALL FOR SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE, I
WONDER IF YOU COULD TALK ABOUT WHAT PREVENTED YOU, LIKE SO MANY
OTHERS, FROM FACING THE REALITY OF THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION UNTIL 2009,
AND WHAT ULTIMATELY ALLOWED YOU TO COME TO TERMS WITH THIS AND CHANGE
YOUR LIFE TO TAKE ACTION?

As I have said before, I am ashamed and embarrassed that it took me so
long to face the reality of the Israel/Palestine relationship. What
changed is what I document in my book _Israel/Palestine and the Queer
International _— like most people absorbed in unconscious supremacy
thinking, I needed a personal experience to let in what Palestinians
had long been saying. I was invited to present at Tel Aviv University
on familial homophobia, based on the book _Ties That Bind_ that I
had just published. My Jewish colleague told me that there was an
academic boycott, which I had never heard of. I wrote to Judith Butler
and Naomi Klein to ask for advice — Butler got back to me within
hours and sent me material. Once I read it, I understood that I could
not accept the invitation. This was the beginning.

YOU ALSO WRITE THAT YOUR EXPERIENCE OF GROWING UP IN A JEWISH FAMILY
THAT SAW ITSELF OUTSIDE OF AMERICANISM, AND YOUR EXPERIENCE OF
FAMILIAL HOMOPHOBIA AND MISOGYNY, HELPED YOU TO CONNECT THE ISRAELI
OCCUPATION WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OF SUPREMACY MASQUERADING AS REALITY.
BUT MANY WHO GROW UP ALIENATED FROM SYSTEMS OF POWER DO NOT MAKE THESE
SAME CONNECTIONS.

I actually think that a lot of people understand that what is
happening to Palestinians is wrong. Millions of people all over the
world are in the streets protesting this brutality. But it remains a
protest from below as the power elite side with and fund Israel. What
has allowed each of these millions of people to figure out the truth?
Some mixture of character and common sense.

YOU WRITE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE HELPING WOMEN CROSS BORDERS TO GET
ABORTIONS IN EUROPE IN 1979, AND YOU COMPARE THIS TO THE UNITED STATES
NOW, AFTER THE REPEAL OF _ROE V. WADE_. WHEN YOU SAY THAT “ABORTION
IS A COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE,” I THINK OF THIS ACTIVISM AS WELL AS
YOUR SOCIETAL MESSAGE, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT?

Well, I have come to understand how women were hung out to dry by the
rhetoric of the confessional activist trope around abortion,
established in France by Simone de Beauvoir and others. In that era it
was shocking and brave for women to acknowledge that they had had an
illegal abortion — it showed what a hidden part of women’s lives
this was. However, there is a wide range of people whose lives are
improved by every abortion — not just the woman — there is the
man, her parents, her co-workers and community, and most importantly
her other children. This shows us that abortion is actually a
collective experience that benefits across the society.

WHEN YOU GOT BACK FROM FRANCE, YOU MET AN ACTIVIST NAMED WILMETTE
BROWN, A BLACK LESBIAN FROM NEW JERSEY WHO WORKED WITH THE ENGLISH
COLLECTIVE OF PROSTITUTES. YOU WRITE THAT HER ORGANIZING WAS LIKE A
STRATEGIC FORM OF PERFORMANCE ART, WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THIS?

Wilmette, a former Black Panther and out lesbian, was part of a
movement that emerged in the U.S. in the early 1980s, Wages for
Housework. Her goal was to get money for women. And in this chapter I
share her ingenious method for helping sex workers — at that time
called “prostitutes” — to raise their prices [by saying on TV
that “prostitutes would be raising their prices for the Democratic
Convention”]. It was a brilliant low-effort move and one I found
very inspiring.

THE SECTION OF THE BOOK ON JEAN GENET IN PALESTINE IS FASCINATING —
GENET IS WELL KNOWN AS AN AUTHOR, AND AN AVOWED HOMOSEXUAL, THIEF AND
CONVICT, BUT NOT AS WELL-KNOWN AS A NAZI FETISHIST, FRENCH COLONIAL
SOLDIER, ANTISEMITE AND ADVOCATE FOR THE BLACK PANTHERS AND
PALESTINIAN LIBERATION. YOUR POINT HERE IS NOT TO CONDEMN HIS
CONTRADICTIONS, BUT TO SAY THAT SOLIDARITY IS STILL IMPORTANT EVEN IF
CONFLICTED, HYPOCRITICAL, OR DEPENDENT ON SUPREMACY. WHAT ARE THE
LIMITATIONS OF THIS KIND OF SOLIDARITY, AND WHAT ARE THE
POSSIBILITIES?

What I learned from working on that piece is that the demand for a
pure, clean motive is counterproductive. We are all led to solidarity
by a complicated array of emotional, political, material and
coincidental experiences. What really matters in the end is what we
conclude from all these influences and that we act and that our
actions are — to some degree — effective, without having to be
perfect.

WOVEN THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK IS A CRITIQUE OF THE CULTURE INDUSTRY. YOU
WRITE THAT THE “US ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IS ONE OF THE LAST PLACES
A PERSON CAN FIND SOLIDARITY.” WHAT WOULD SOLIDARITY LOOK LIKE IN
THIS INDUSTRY, AND WHAT WOULD THIS CHANGE?

Good question. From my own experiences with commercial theater,
publishing, film, television — the culture of money is quickly
corrupting, even on tiny theatrical budgets or ridiculously large TV
budgets. People in the industries are constantly working on projects
that are stupid, repetitive, destructive and boring — despite the
potential of the art forms themselves. And they get used to it. So,
because in that world familiarity equals quality, most of them get
distorted values from constant exposure to worthless projects,
especially successful ones.

In not-for-profit publishing I do see a lot more solidarity than in,
let’s say television, where actually being a visionary writer —
“good means makes money,” one person explained to me — usually
means you are doomed.

I know that I have, for decades, line-edited other people’s novels
and nonfiction books — and sent them to the people and places that
can help them advance to the best of my ability. It was very shocking
to experience that when you send scripts to “friends” you have to
follow up five times to hear back from them and then there is no
specificity and no real concrete help. When nothing is at stake except
a career, people are just more shallow, narcissistic and territorial.

TOWARD THE END OF THE BOOK, YOU INCLUDE A CONVERSATION BETWEEN YOU AND
TRANS AUTHOR, HISTORIAN AND ARTIST MORGAN PAGE ABOUT RESPONSES TO YOUR
EULOGY FOR TRANS BLOGGER BRYN KELLY, A CLOSE FRIEND OF BOTH OF YOU WHO
KILLED HERSELF IN 2016. THIS CONVERSATION, WHICH INCLUDES QUESTIONS
FROM THE AUDIENCE, CHANGES THE BOOK BECAUSE A DIFFERENT KIND OF
EMOTION COMES THROUGH. IT FEELS LIKE IN SOME WAYS THIS ACTUALIZES THE
TYPE OF SOLIDARITY YOU INVOKE IN THE BOOK — WAS THIS YOUR INTENT?

I hope so.

YOU WRITE THAT KELLY’S DEATH WAS NOT A FAILURE OF COMMUNITY, SINCE
SHE HAD SO MUCH SUPPORT, AND YET THIS DID NOT SAVE HER. WHAT DOES THIS
SAY ABOUT SOLIDARITY?

Kelly’s problems were structural — she suffered from poverty,
addiction and the stigma of being HIV+, even though she was brilliant
— and also a wonderful though multifaceted person. She just missed
the trans revolution and commodification, and, had she lived, she
would have accessed it, I am sure. Solidarity can’t fix social
context, although it can mediate it, and it can transform it in the
long term. I think that alcohol played a role in her death as well,
and that is something that solidarity can be defeated by.

WHEN, IN THE AUDIENCE, SOMEONE ASKS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
SELF-CARE AND COLLECTIVE CARE, YOU SAY THAT YOU HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO
THE SELF-CARE PART YET. IS THIS A STANCE OF RESISTANCE, OR A STATEMENT
ABOUT LIVING THROUGH CRISIS?

I am old-school and some buzz words never worked for me.

_Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
[[link removed]] is the author, most recently,
of Touching the Art, a finalist for a Pacific Northwest Book Award
and a Washington State Book Award. Her new novel, Terry Dactyl, will
be out from Coffee House in November 2025._

_Truthout is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing
independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social
justice issues. Since our founding in 2001, we have anchored our work
in principles of accuracy, transparency, and independence from the
influence of corporate and political forces._

* Solidarity
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* Palestinian rights
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* abortion rights
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* trans rights
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* culture industry
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