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Acting in solidarity means supporting people in their struggle: being there for them. Sometimes, though, it feels like we're not really present when we're being there: we could have been there, or we could as easily have been somewhere else. Or, we think we're present, but others perceive us, actually, as being quite distant. There's a cookie-cutter quality to a lot of solidarity - today it's Palestine, tomorrow it's Six Nations - that often bothers me. Can you begin to build a full and equal relationship without learning what makes each of us, as individuals or collectives, what we are? Given all the injustice in the world, and the need for support, it seems impossible to expect that solidarity relationships will go beyond political generalities most of the time. Is this a problem?

I remember during one of the rallies against the Iraq war in the winter of 2003 listening to a non-Muslim labour leader talking about "our Muslim brothers and sisters" and I thought, what does that mean? It sounds like an empty formula. I've lived and worked in an Islamic cultural milieu speaking the local language, and at different times I've been intensely interested in Islamic culture and history. I feel like at different points, I've had a somewhat developed and educated relationship to Islam, as well as to individual Muslims in my social circle. But I would not stand up and utter a phrase like "our Muslim brothers and sisters". It feels fake - how much interest and respect is behind that? How much knowledge and effort to understand really informs it?

On another occasion, I was talking to activists working in solidarity with a First Nation where Ojibway (Anishinaabemowin) was the mother tongue of most people. I asked some of them if they had made any effort to learn the language. They said no, and that it was too much to expect solidarity activists to do that. What struck me was the lack of consciousness around that. I asked if people would be equally blithe about addressing a group of Quebecois activists in English, and expecting the working language to be in English, or if, at the very least, they would be apologetic. "I hadn't thought of it that way" was the response. That's colonialism. It's natural to expect that we can use the colonial language, because everyone knows it. So, even in our solidarity work we perpetuate colonialism.

Of course, deeper engagement means more time and work and we all have our personal aptitudes as well as time and capacity constraints. But the intentionality and consciousness are the starting points and will shape how we behave, how we listen and learn, and what work we prioritize. Too often on the left, our solidarity is based on a single point of contact: a relationship between people and a state they are resisting. Does the limitation suggested by this relationship also limit our ability to fight for justice and equality? I think a deeper notion of solidarity needs to look at that.