Strength & Solidarity

The past decade has seen some spectacular social movements emerge, mobilising hundreds of thousands of people in defence of rights and sending powerful images of protest around the world. This revitalized activism is gaining energy despite rising authoritarianism. To hold the ground they gain, though, activists need to sustain their movements in between battles and turning a loose, ad hoc network...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 12. Inspired by the late US Congressman John Lewis, activist Namatai Kwekweza reflects on the difference between bad trouble and good trouble and explains why she’s determined to keep making a noise about injustice: “I personally believe that if the noise didn't really achieve anything, then they wouldn't be telling us to keep quiet.”

Many mission-driven organisations are grappling with the challenge of unhappy workplaces. And whether the cause is bullying or harassment, over-work, or demands for a share in decision-making, management is usually in the crosshairs. For some, conventional models of hierarchical bureaucracy are bound to be inappropriate for driving social change. But what’s the alternative? South African feminist...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 11. Yemi Adamolekun is inspired by the gospel of Matthew which calls on Christians to project their values and shine so that all can see their faith in action. But on the reluctance of Nigerian churches to take a stand on issues like corruption, she comments: “I've come to realize that being light and being salt will make you unpopular. It's much safe...

This episode of the podcast steps onto tricky terrain with a conversation about identity, power and privilege. Mexican human rights lawyer Alejandra Ancheita tells host Akwe Amosu about building relationships of mutual respect with her clients - indigenous communities fighting against corporate encroachment on their land and livelihoods. And in the Coda, how the courage of Salvadoran Archbishop Os...

Excerpted from Strength & Solidarity Episode 10. As a young US lawyer, Jim Goldston went to El Salvador in 1987 and documented atrocities by state-instigated death squads. The courage of Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated seven years earlier, and of ordinary civilians determined to resist the terror was an inspiration.

In this first episode of Season two, host Akwe Amosu looks back to late 2020 and Nigeria’s massive #EndSARS protests against police brutality and impunity and asks youth organizer Samson Itodo to assess their impact. What is the role of leadership and organizing in a spontaneous upswell of citizen rage and who has to deliver it? And in the Coda, veteran human rights defender Suliman Baldo recalls...

Excerpted from Strength & Solidarity Episode 9. Human rights organiser Suliman Baldo on poems as the secret weapon that helped topple a regime.

Our second season of Strength & Solidarity continues to explore the world of rights, equality and justice activism. Every two weeks, we invite people working in these fields to tell us about the dilemmas they face, and the tactics they use to achieve their goals. By speaking with actors at the heart of critical struggles we hope to get an up-close view on the current and future course of human...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 8. A 20th-century revolutionary offers solace and strength to a contemporary human rights activist Adilur Rahman Kahn.

For people who have made defending rights their life’s work, the language of rights comes as second nature. But what about those facing repression, exclusion or loss of their land and livelihood – how do they describe what is happening to them? When politicians instrumentalize human rights language to justify their interests, does the idea of rights become fatally degraded? In this episode we...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 7. Human rights leader Jessica Montell’s journey to insight and appreciation of Marge Piercy’s poem, To be of Use.

An old proverb says that a trouble shared is a trouble halved. That idea underlies a project to support leaders in human rights movements and organizations - the Symposium on Strength and Solidarity for Human Rights. This project creates space for reflection twice a year, using case histories and readings from past struggles as provocation and invites those taking part to compare experie...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 6. Brazilian activist Alessandra Orofino is enjoys the sly double-entendre of singer-songwriter Chico Buarque in his hit song against military rule.

In 2005, a small group of women began a campaign to make abortion legal in Argentina. While rich women might be able to find safe means to terminate their pregnancies, the poor were forced to seek backstreet abortions at grave risk of imprisonment, injury and death. As much as those building the movement believed in their cause, even they were stunned, a mere 13 years later, to see a million peopl...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 5. A seventeenth century nun, philosopher, composer and poet Juana Inés de la Cruz wins the admiration of South African human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed.

2020 saw street protest erupt in multiple countries around the globe, sometimes responding to local oppression, sometimes provoked by experience protesters had in common, such as racial injustice or police impunity. Many of these movements mobilized without a centralized leadership or hierarchy, causing some to dub them ‘leaderless’ even though they were able to pack a powerful punch on the &...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 4. Afghan champion of human rights Shaharzad Akbar shares a poem by American 19th century poet Emily Dickinson

When authoritarian governments want to hobble civil society and human rights activists, a favored strategy is to choke off their funding. Since money often comes from foreign donors, a law to limit access to support from abroad can hit activists hard. In China, where conditions were already very tough for rights defenders,  two such laws passed in 2016. Shawn Shih-hung Shieh, director of Soci...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 3. US civil rights activist Charles Cobb Jr shares a song commemorating the day that US civil rights activists met an African anti-colonial fighter in 1963.

South African human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed’s entire career has been spent defending and extending the rights of excluded and oppressed people, at home and abroad.  But this former CEO of the South African Human Rights Commission harbors considerable doubt about whether the human rights framework rooted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights can meet the demands of radical black...

Excerpted from Strength and Solidarity Episode 2. Turkish human rights leader Murat Celikkan shares an Ariel Dorfman poem evoking the determination of the “disappeared” and their loved ones.

In 2017-18, South African social justice movement, Equal Education, went through a major –and very public -upheaval after allegations emerged of sexual harassment by members of the movement’s leadership.  General Secretary Noncedo Madubedube describes her root and branch effort to rebuild Equal Education’s culture and restore confidence in the organization. In this episode: Akwe Amosu and her...

Excerpted from Strength & Solidarity Episode 1. A reading of the Persian poet Hafez’s ‘10,000 Idiots’ by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission chair Shaharzad Akbar talks about the challenge of entrenching and enforcing rights amid continuing conflict and violence against civilians. With a state that struggles to deliver public services and great uncertainty about the future of President Ashraf Ghani’s negotiations with the Taliban, how can Afghan citizens have confidence that the human rights framew...