Global solidarity is the practice of linking our struggles across borders. It means recognizing that oppression and liberation are interconnected, and that true peace requires standing with communities worldwide who resist injustice.
Uplifting Global Struggles means centering the voices of people directly impacted by violence, exploitation, or repression. Instead of speaking for others, we amplify their leadership, share their stories, and connect their struggles to our own movements for justice.
Shared Resistance Strategies are the lessons movements teach each other across time and geography: how to organize, how to protect communities, how to sustain hope in the face of repression. No struggle is isolated.
🇨🇺 Cuba
Background
Cuba's current crisis did not begin in a single moment. It has been building through years of economic deterioration, infrastructure decay, shortages of food and medicine, mass migration, and state repression. The long-standing U.S. embargo remains a major factor, and recent U.S. policy shifts have added new pressure, especially around oil and financial isolation. At the same time, Cuban authorities continue to suppress dissent. Human Rights Watch reports Cuba has lost around 10 percent of its population in recent years.
Current Situation
Cuba is under severe strain from recurring blackouts, fuel shortages, rising prices, and weakened access to essentials. The UN warned in February 2026 of possible humanitarian "collapse." Reuters reported in March 2026 that more than 96,000 patients were waiting for surgery, including 11,000 children. Amnesty International reported intensified harassment of prisoners of conscience and their families.
Why It Matters
Education does not exist outside conditions of survival. Cuba asks us to reject lazy narratives — the U.S. embargo has clear humanitarian consequences, and Cuban state repression is also real. Both truths matter. Solidarity is not charity cosplay. It means paying attention to how sanctions, state power, infrastructure collapse, migration, and repression interact — then choosing informed action over shallow commentary.
Resources
Human Rights Watch World Report 2026: Cuba · Amnesty International · United Nations · Reuters · UNICEF Cuba.
🌍 Democratic Republic of Congo
Background
The DRC holds immense natural wealth (cobalt, coltan, diamonds), much of it central to global supply chains. For decades, the east of the country has been torn by conflict involving government forces, armed groups, and cross-border tensions with Rwanda. Civilians, especially women and children, have borne the brunt through displacement, massacres, and sexual violence.
Current Situation
In 2025, fighting between DRC forces and Rwanda-backed rebels has escalated. Mass displacements have left millions without shelter, and humanitarian groups warn of famine conditions in some areas. International organizations point to resource exploitation as fueling the conflict.
Why It Matters
The phones in our pockets and the cars on our streets are tied to this crisis. Extractive economies, driven by global demand, create environments where local communities are crushed. Solidarity means seeing the links between consumer choices, corporate accountability, and the dignity of Congolese lives.
Resources
Human Rights Watch – DRC · Congo Research Group · UNHCR – Eastern DRC displacement updates.
🇮🇷 Iran
Background
Iran has a long history of popular uprisings around democracy, women's rights, labor conditions, and economic justice — from the 2009 Green Movement to the 2019 fuel protests to the 2022–23 "Women, Life, Freedom" movement. Despite severe repression, Iranian civil society continues to organize through student networks, labor movements, women's groups, and underground media.
Current Situation
Iran is navigating two overlapping crises: internal economic unrest and escalating regional war. Inflation, unemployment, and rising fuel prices have fueled labor strikes across more than 150 cities. Direct military confrontation involving Iran and Israel has raised fears of wider escalation. Civilian populations bear the consequences: destruction of infrastructure, displacement, increased state repression, and internet shutdowns.
Why It Matters
Iran illustrates a difficult truth: authoritarianism, war, and grassroots resistance can exist simultaneously. Even under intense repression, ordinary people continue organizing for bodily autonomy, democratic participation, economic dignity, and freedom of expression. Their courage reminds us that the struggle for justice does not disappear during crisis — it adapts.
Resources
Center for Human Rights in Iran · Amnesty International – Iran · Global Voices · IranWire.
🇵🇸 Palestine / Gaza
Background
For decades, Palestinians have lived under occupation and blockade, with systemic restrictions on movement, access to resources, and basic human rights. International law recognizes the right of Palestinians to self-determination, but cycles of violence and displacement have deepened over generations.
Current Situation
As of late 2025, Gaza faces catastrophic humanitarian collapse. International observers, including UN experts, describe Israel's campaign as genocidal, with mass civilian deaths and starvation used as a weapon of war. Blockades prevent food, medicine, and supplies from reaching families, while international calls for a ceasefire remain stalled.
Why It Matters
Maria Montessori called peace the "practical path" — but peace without justice is fragile. The scale of violence against Palestinian people is not a distant issue: it is tied to U.S. policy, global funding streams, and narratives about whose lives are valued. Educators and justice-seekers must amplify Palestinian voices and resist normalization of mass suffering.
Resources
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – Gaza updates · Al-Haq · B'Tselem.
🇸🇩 Sudan
Background
Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Both groups grew from earlier eras of authoritarianism and the Darfur genocide. Civilians, especially in Darfur and Khartoum, have endured ethnic massacres, sexual violence, and forced displacement at a scale UN officials have called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Current Situation
By 2026, more than 12 million people have been displaced and famine has been declared in multiple regions. International aid access remains heavily restricted, and reports of ethnic cleansing in El Fasher and surrounding Darfur towns have intensified. The conflict has drawn in regional powers, including the UAE and Egypt, with weapons flowing from outside the country.
Why It Matters
Sudan is one of the largest humanitarian catastrophes of our time and one of the least covered in U.S. media. Its erasure from public attention is itself a form of harm. Solidarity means refusing the silence — naming what is happening, supporting Sudanese-led mutual aid networks, and demanding sustained humanitarian access.
Resources
Sudan Doctors Network · Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA) · Human Rights Watch – Sudan · UN OCHA – Sudan.
🇭🇹 Haiti
Background
Haiti has been navigating overlapping crises rooted in centuries of imperial extraction, including the indemnity France imposed after Haitian independence, repeated U.S. military interventions, and the destabilizing effects of foreign aid regimes. The 2010 earthquake, the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and the collapse of state institutions have left a vacuum that armed groups have filled.
Current Situation
By 2026, gangs control most of Port-au-Prince, displacing more than a million Haitians internally and pushing many to flee. A Kenyan-led multinational security mission, authorized by the UN, has had limited success. Cholera, hunger, and reproductive healthcare gaps are widespread. The U.S. continues to deport Haitians while denying many the same protections offered to other nationalities.
Why It Matters
Haiti is a test of whether the international community can act in solidarity without repeating the patterns of occupation that created the crisis. For educators and organizers in the U.S., it is also a domestic story: Haitian communities in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts are absorbing the costs of these policies while being scapegoated in U.S. political rhetoric.
Resources
Haitian Bridge Alliance · Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) · UN OCHA – Haiti · Ayibopost.
🇲🇲 Myanmar
Background
Myanmar's military (Tatmadaw) seized power in a February 2021 coup, ending a decade of fragile democratic transition. The coup followed years of military-led violence against the Rohingya, which UN investigators have called genocide. Resistance to the coup has come from a broad civil disobedience movement, ethnic resistance organizations, and the National Unity Government in exile.
Current Situation
Five years in, the junta controls less than half the country. Resistance forces have made significant territorial gains in 2024–2025. The military has responded with airstrikes on villages, schools, and hospitals, and has reinstated mandatory conscription. Refugee flows into Thailand, India, and Bangladesh continue. The Rohingya, now mostly displaced to camps in Bangladesh, remain stateless.
Why It Matters
Myanmar shows what sustained, multi-ethnic, leaderful resistance to military rule looks like — and what it costs. Solidarity means resisting the framing of Myanmar as a "forgotten" or "complicated" conflict and supporting the diaspora networks and humanitarian organizations doing the work the international system has abandoned.
Resources
Burma Campaign UK · Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) · Karen Human Rights Group · UN Human Rights Office – Myanmar.
Shared Resistance Strategies
Together, these examples show not just what the strategies are but how they've worked in practice.
- Community Mutual Aid — During Hurricane Katrina (2005), grassroots groups like the Common Ground Collective formed in New Orleans to provide food, medical care, and housing repair, showing communities can build safety nets faster and more humanely than institutions.
- Labor Strikes — In 2018, U.S. teachers in West Virginia launched a statewide strike, sparking a "Red for Ed" wave across the country and showing how collective labor power can shift education policy.
- Creative Protest & Art — During the Chilean uprising (2019), the feminist performance "Un violador en tu camino" spread from Santiago to dozens of countries, becoming a viral act of global solidarity.
- Digital Security & Anonymous Organizing — In Nepal's 2006 People's Movement, activists used encrypted messaging and early mobile networks to coordinate massive protests against the monarchy until democracy was restored.
- Storytelling as Witness — In Nigeria, the 2020 #EndSARS protests gained global attention as young Nigerians shared live videos and testimonies, shifting the narrative internationally.
- Building Global Coalitions — In the 1950s–60s, U.S. Civil Rights leaders studied Gandhian nonviolent resistance from Indian independence activists, shaping the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington — proof that liberation tactics travel.