I remember the moment that I looked up the word “solidarity” in the dictionary.

May 3

It was 2003, I was trying to connect to my father’s roots by taking an Arabic language 101 class by a Jordanian man named Karim. After class one evening, I stayed behind to talk with some of the other students. While having a casual conversation, I learned about an American girl, that was around my age, that had just been murdered in an unfathomable way. She was courageously standing in front of a Caterpillar bulldozer, doing all that she could to stop the demolition of a family’s home. As I listened in horror, my classmate told me that it was a soldier driving the bulldozer and they just ran her over as if she had just been a tree standing in their way. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. First off, why was a soldier driving a bulldozer and wanting to demolish a family’s home? Where was this? And surely the soldier was arrested?!

To my dismay, I was told the soldier was just doing its job. His job was to demolish houses to make room for people like his own family to move in. The soldier wasn’t even reprimanded, much less arrested. I then heard about a group that the girl was involved in, a group that she had flown half way around the world to show support with, to show solidarity with these families that were being oppressed. The group was called ISM (International Solidarity Movement). I was told there was a meeting the coming week and asked if I wanted the details. I said “yes please!”

That night, I went home and looked up what the word solidarity meant. I wanted to make sure that I understood as much as I could before just joining such a group, or even just attending a meeting. After reading the definition and using the word in several sentences, I found that it was a great word and why haven’t I heard it or realized it before?!

I attended the meeting that next week. learned about so many things that just sounded unbelievable as they were horrible and sad and unjust, but somehow felt the truth was being woken inside me. I attended more meetings, then started reading their newsletters, attended a play, watched short docs and movies about the situation. It was all so much and confusing because I couldn’t wrap my head around how someone could just come into someone’s home and then declare it was theirs and tell the homeowners to leave. And there was no police to say otherwise. I didn’t understand how even the water and food decided upon them, for if they could have it or not. How little kids were often beaten up, kidnapped by the soldiers or worse just for throwing rocks as every single kid does. I also didn’t understand how the people didn’t have citizenship or a passport. How they couldn’t just leave or go visit a place mere feet away.

Since I couldn’t really put it all together, it was hard to know how to talk about it to others. I tried, I shared the stories I had read about or seen in the docs, but it didn’t fully grab me (until later.)

It did however never allow that part of me to go back to sleep. In fact it not only stayed awake, but kept growing and my love for justice and peace and for collective liberty grew with it. As long as I am able to speak and breathe, I’ll never stop being in solidarity with BIPOC.