Solidarity as Strategy: Building Power Across Movements
In this episode, co-host Adaku Utah speaks with Nikko Viquiera of Race Forward about the role of solidarity in dismantling structural oppression and building thriving, just communities. Nikko shares insights on weaving cross-issue strategies, deepening relationships, and sustaining a racial justice ecosystem rooted in love, equity, and collective action.
ABOUT THE EPISODE GUEST
Nikko is Race Forward’s Deputy Senior Vice President of Programs. In this role, they provide strategic and thought partnership to Program Leads working at the intersection of race and gender, governance, housing, mass criminalization, climate justice, health. As a member of Race Forward’s leadership team, Nikko plays a key role in ensuring the organization’s efficacy, sustainability, and relevance to communities most impacted by structural racism.
They facilitate conversations and training about race, weave ideas and solutions to build innovative strategies, and connect leaders and organizations to help grow and strengthen the racial justice ecosystem.
Currently, Nikko is working with organizations and communities on building solidarity narratives to drive racial justice. He believes solidarity as a value, mindset, and practice is necessary in building collective action to dismantle harmful systems, and build a world where people of color thrive with purpose, power, and justice.
They believe that racism and anti-Blackness are represented and undergirded by a network of interconnected systems, institutions, and ideologies that shape our culture and society. We must all work together not just to dismantle this network of systemic oppression, but also to build new systems and structures that default to equity, justice, and love instead. They believe solidarity is key to our collective liberation. Because all systems of oppressions are connected with each other, so must our strategies towards freedom be rooted in solidarity and genuine relationships. In the end, our fates are all intertwined.
EPISODE NOTES
Episode transcript
Learn more about Race Forward and Butterfly Lab
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Robert N. Bellah
Filling in the Blanks: Contesting What “the System is Rigged” Means (FrameWorks Institute)