The Do’s and Don’ts of How to be an Effective Ally in a Political Movement

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The following is a transcript originally published by Making Contact, an award-winning, 29-minute weekly magazine/documentary-style public affairs program.

Andrew Stelzer: This week on Making Contact

What does it mean to be an ally in a political movement? From white Americans in the civil rights era, to Israelis in Palestine, to Latino-Americans working with the undocumented…how does one work to support another’s struggle?  On this edition, from Mississippi to Zimbabwe, a roundtable discussion on the do’s and don’ts of how to be an effective ally. I am Andrew Stelzer, and this is Making Contact a program connecting people, vital ideas and important information

AS: You’re listening to making contact. I’m Andrew Stelzer, today we’re going to talk about what it means to be an ally in the struggle for justice. It’s something that’s kind of hard to define, but some classical examples might be a white American in the US civil rights struggle, or a white South African working to end apartheid. In general, we’re talking about the people who wouldn’t gain directly from the struggle they are getting involved in. Joining me to talk about this are four people who all work in partnership with allies and a number of different movements for social justice. So, let’s start out by meeting everyone. Please introduce yourself, tell us where you’re from, what kind of issues you work on as an organizer, and who your allies are, or maybe you’re an ally yourself. Start over here.

LR: My name is Leehee Rothschild, and I live in Tell Aviv and Israel as a white Israeli considered Jewish by the state. I am an ally to Palestinians that I’m working with as well as refugees and work migrants and at the same time, as a woman and as a bisexual woman I have allies that are both men and heterosexuals.

IC: My name is Ingrid Cruz, I live in the state of Mississippi in the United States and I mostly work on immigration issues, and in that issue I consider myself to be an ally to undocumented immigrants, but as a whole, working on racial justice issues, I am kind of the one that is the person of color and I might have allies.

DH: My name is DJ Hudson, I hail from Nashville Tennessee, where the majority of the organizing and the activist work that I do is around racial and economic justice. Most of the people who I end up working with as allies are white southerners or white Americans. However, as also a member of the LGBT community I often work with straight allies as well as allies from religious communities.

RD: Hello! My name is Rumbidzai Dube I am a human rights lawyer from Zimbabwe. I work on a lot of human rights issues. One of the main ones I work on is ending organized violence and torture with a specific focus on women victims of violence in Zimbabwe. And for this we have a number of allies from many different countries including South Africa, the US, Canada, who have grown an interest in the issue of sexual violence against women, the use of rape against women, human rights defenders and women activists in general.

AS: Okay, I’m going to bring someone else into this conversation via a pre-recorded interview. Mary King was heavily involved in SNCC, which is the Student Nonviolent Coordinating committee back in the 1960′s. That was a group that organized many successful actions in the American south around freedom and equality for black Americans. She’s also a professor of the University of Peace and has studied nonviolence struggles around the world. Here’s what Mary King had to say when I asked her about her experience and the concept of working as an ally in the struggle for social justice.