Friends and comrades,
The past decade building power with you has been the privilege of a lifetime. I remember the subversive conversations we had as university students, long before systematic political change even felt possible. With the years to follow — in the forests of Amuru, the mountains of Benet, the hills of Tooro, the cacophony of Kampala — I was blessed to bask in the inspiration and wisdom of so many of your struggles and triumphs. Now, I am attempting to harness that power you gave me, and share it with those movements, unions, and allies near and far who are doing their own work to defeat injustice and attain their liberation. I hope I will be but one of your many vessels.
For the past two to three years, I have mentored a team of five tenacious women and youth organizers who, in addition to their own pursuits, will do what I have been doing. They’ll achieve even greater things than those who have gone before them, and they will build up more and more power with those of you taking action throughout Uganda.
This will free me up to lend more adequate support to the powerful forces around the world who strive like us for a utopian future, and to learn more intimately from them. My commitment to my values is firstly a calling to be in solidarity, and I promise to do my best to live with humility, in a way congruent with that calling.
It’s not without a heavy heart that I step aside from the leadership I’ve offered to the Solidarity Uganda family. In addition to the tremendous power we have built, and the astounding victories our comrades have won in Uganda, our work has reached over 70 countries, including countless struggles across this continent. We have been able to share lessons in resistance and strategic organizing with a Pan-African spirit, and as someone not born on the soil of humanity’s Motherland, it’s with great humility that I thank the Creator for this privilege to more deeply understand and participate in so many worthy thrusts for change.
As a co-founder of Solidarity Uganda, I pledge to remain supportive to the network and its chapters across the country. I will become increasingly supportive to those organizers and progressive forces beyond these borders, while also pledging myself to the strategic risks and direct actions we must undertake to win Uganda’s freedom from military dictatorship and the neoliberal economy.
If I am entitled to a personal dream for this phenomenal institution called Solidarity Uganda that continues to support the oppressed in their quest for liberation, it is that its people — the staff, members of chapters, and all who choose to affiliate with it — discover a richness of purpose and wellbeing within themselves, and when they lose sight of it, they find themselves able to lean upon the rock of a community we have built together. Even in the face of brutal gerontocracy, vicious corporatocracy, and unrelenting authoritarianism, I have seen so many grow in their own power, their self-actualization. I have seen people once used against each other (due to the propaganda of the powerful) unite and wage resistance together. I have touched the shadows of so many grandmothers whose power transcends what I’ve thought fathomable. I am certain we have the tools we need to weather the storms and cultivate a new Uganda together. We only need to use them.
Onward,
Phil Wilmot
Outgoing Director