Global Dialogues

On May 30th, 2020, my sister and I marched in the first of many Black Lives Matter marches in St. Louis during the COVID-19 era. This crowd, with neither its front nor back visible to us, was so sizable and diverse that it left me mesmerized in its polyphony, as hundreds had come out to speak their minds and were yet united by this cause of fighting racial inequality. The BLM movement spread around the globe and certainly had local successes in police reform, but the pandemic-era movement also fractured into camps who seemed eager to fight each other before any larger systems of inequality. From both my studies on social movements and my lived experience with them, I’ve learned that, if there is one glue that can hold together an international and intergenerational movement for change, it is the glue of friendship.

As any movement expands, various actors will converse and they’ll need to learn how to work with each other. The zealous 19-year-old will encounter the established speakers and organizers of their cause. Yet our young changemaker also encounters the young changemakers from Guatemala to Gaza and will find resonance in their struggles. They’ll remember that our struggles are combatted through community, which will compel them to bear the cross of solidarity alongside her fellows. They’ll bring it to the older organizer, who will see not a cross to bear but a chain to wear, slowing down the movement. Both parties call on their supporters to either bear or, at least, illuminate this cross or to unshackle themselves from this chain, promising to free those ensnared when the time is right. They’ll use their well-honed skills of criticism against each other, constructing a dialectic between righteous radical and reasonable realist. Our once mesmerizing polyphony now becomes a paralyzing cacophony, where once fruitful ideas are recited until they rot unless the speaker has their sincerity questioned.

While the above paragraph is a hypothetical, I’m sure that those readers with experience in movements will relate. Yet let’s return to reality: despite having been long interested in combatting racism, I finally went to that protest because my older sister invited me. It is in those spaces of trust and friendship where aspiring movements become lasting communities. Her call to action proved far more effective than that of any demagogue, as our dialogue addressed the concerns and cautions I held. We’ve certainly had our disagreements but our friendship provided a dialogic space to work through contentions and stand together. I’ve repeated this process with my friends, as she has with hers and you likely have with yours. And while the disagreements will become stronger as our differences become greater, the glue of friendship is needed even more so to overcome these divergences, as the breadth of viewpoints will mold a community much more able to confront real-world issues. So if any community wants not to become an ouroboros, then its actors best learn to converse, then act, with empathy, respect, and curiosity.

Benjamin Walsh (G'27) is in the first year of the Master of Arts in Eurasian, Russian, and Eastern European Studies program in the Walsh School of Foreign Service.