Author: Elizabeth Jordie Davies
Key Question: What organizational structures and practices are needed to create solidaristic space in multi-racial coalitions?
Research Products:
- Report: Building and Brokering: Solidarity Processes in Multi-Racial Coalitions
- Academic paper: Foundations of Solidarity: A Theory of Race Based Caucus Organizing (In Progress)
Description:
Every day, differences like race, immigration history, class, gender, and sexuality are used as wedges to generate mistrust and maintain existing power structures. These wedges often silo marginalized communities, limiting their ability to achieve transformative change and build power across lines of difference. Given this political and cultural landscape, what does it take for people to build solidarity and organize for power together? This report details learning on the work of multi-racial solidarity building within coalitions and across organizations.
After a year of research, writing, and coalition building, the P3 Lab and Houston in Action (HiA) Team have found key learnings for organizers committed to the hard but essential processes of working together across difference. The data for this report was gathered through a process of observation, interviewing, participation, and relationship building between Elizabeth Jordie Davies, the Houston in Action Team, and the Black Core Group—a cohort of Black organizers under the HiA coalitional umbrella. Through an ongoing dialogue between HiA, Davies, and the P3 Lab, we aim to open the “black box” of political solidarity building and offer tangible approaches and reflections for coalition builders, conveners, and community organizers. We name three essential areas of focus for building cross-racial solidarity in organizing and advocacy focused on building a future where all communities can thrive. Our findings are grounded in a lens of race-based caucus organizing in multi-racial coalitions, or the establishment of single-identity spaces. While we focus on the steps conveners and organizations can take to create enduring, solidaristic partnerships, we believe these findings are also useful to individual organizations that are interested in establishing internal race-based-caucuses.