A little tour of our new Substack home
And a bit about what's coming for Solidarity Hall
If you’re new to Solidarity Hall, this page will give you a sense for what we’re about, and this post (from 2020) describes what we’re NOT about.
We were a little group of bookish friends who decided to call ourselves Solidarity Hall back in 2012. With the name, we were thinking of the Polish Solidarity movement and the idea of a comfortable old country house where we could hang out, talk about how societies change, and just be convivial.
For a few years, we wrote and blogged about topics like distributism, localism, agrarianism and urbanism, especially as espoused by our “presiding spirits” such as G. K. Chesterton, Wendell Berry, E.F. Schumacher, and Jane Jacobs, among others. We published a collection of essays in 2015, Radically Catholic in the Age of Francis, aimed at helping American readers figure out what Pope Francis was talking about. (Pretty sure they have not.)
Our Solidarity Hall website operated for several years as a group blog but is now used mainly for our book publishing. We had been posting on our Medium publication but we’ve now moved that content over to this Substack.
We’ve created this Substack as a convenient place to find:
earlier posts moved over from our now-dormant Medium publication,
links to our Dorothy’s Place podcast (co-hosted with the inimitable Pete Davis), along with
new outbursts and musings from me and a few guest contributors.
The ancient Greek poet Homer described his hero Odysseus as polymetis—”many-minded”. That fits us as well.
We want to talk about lots of things, including:
The solidarity economy, as witnessed in the growth of community wealth building initiatives, sometimes within City Halls, across the country. Chicago, after years of patient movement-building, may be leading the way!
Interviews (from our sister publication, Ownership Matters) with leaders in the work of community regeneration. Here’s one with the amazing Mike Strode of Chicago’s Kola Nut Collaborative.
Urbanist organizations like Strong Towns (We’re members!) and the fascinating critique it recently received in Current Affairs. The article inspired us to want to create a public conversation about what actually makes our towns stronger. Watch for an event announcement soon!
My rather belated discovery that I have become a “Street Catholic” and just what on earth I mean by that.
I plan to publish at least weekly and am looking forward to hearing from lots of old and new friends of Solidarity Hall here through the comments.
If you are so moved as to prefer supporting us via a donation rather than a paid subscription, our Paypal donation link (we’re a tax-exempt 501c3 organization) is here.
Until next time, peace—
Elias Crim
Proprietor
Subscribed