The feminist solidarity of the Center for Civil Courage is loud and unwavering because feminist solidarity is not a shyly muttered word of support, whose sole purpose is to calm one’s own civil conscience.
Our feminist solidarity begins with the decision to listen to the other person’s testimony, to hear her experience, her values, attitudes, and decisions. To give space and time in words to be uttered by her voice… to be in solidarity means to understand the story of the Other…
Solidarity means not to stop at understanding and compassion, but to actively and visibly show our own being in solidarity with the person we are with. Solidarity means consciously accepting the world of power we live in and acknowledging to ourselves that genuine and selfless solidarity with others and the difference is not possible if there is no willingness to deconstruct the discriminatory system – the system that led to the need for solidarity – from the root, even at a cost. deconstruction of one’s own identity and privileges, built on its foundations. In feminist solidarity, it is not we and “ours” that matter – but the Other, her rights, her identity, and integrity.
Feminist solidarity for us means being part of the protest, knowing that our visibility, our bodies – with the danger of violent attacks – means stronger support for the disenfranchised than a hundred statements of support. Solidarity means – on behalf of those who do not (yet) have that power – to be active, loud, humble, disobedient, disloyal, defiant, and destructive towards all forms of discrimination!
The feminist solidarity of the activists of the Center for Civil Courage is inspired by the politics of female solidarity of the activist Lepa Mlađenović.