Solidarity, Not Charity
The Difference
Charity treats poverty as a tragedy. Solidarity treats it as an injustice.
Charity asks who deserves help. Solidarity asks why anyone needs it in the first place.
The Normalisation of Charity
In the UK, poverty and charitable provision have become normalised responses to poverty. This normalisation hides the political choices that made them necessary. Emergency support becomes permanent infrastructure, and crisis becomes routine.
Charity is often framed as kindness. But kindness does not challenge power.
What Solidarity Means
Solidarity starts from a different place. It recognises that poverty is produced by systems — housing markets, labour markets, welfare policy — and that surviving those systems requires collective support and collective action.
Solidarity does not mean everyone is the same. It means people commit to supporting each other because their struggles are connected.
On the Black Panthers
This distinction is not new. In the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party ran a Free Breakfast for Children programme that fed thousands of children across America.
They called it a "survival program pending revolution." They were not trying to make poverty more bearable. They were meeting immediate need while building the political consciousness and collective power to eliminate the conditions that made hunger possible.
That is the tradition Food & Solidarity works in. Not the charity model. Not better-managed poverty. The abolition of it.
Charity vs. Solidarity
Charity
Treats poverty as tragedy
Asks who deserves help
Creates dependency
Manages poverty
Does not challenge power
Solidarity
Treats poverty as injustice
Asks why help is needed
Builds collective power
Fights to end poverty
Takes fight to the powerful
On Charity as Performance
In September 2024, the North East's Mayor ran the Great North Run, sponsored to raise money for food parcels for families in food poverty. The gesture looked like solidarity. It was not. It was a decision-maker performing concern while the systems that create hunger remained undisturbed. A politician raising money to feed people is not challenging power — it is maintaining a status quo where families depend on the charitable impulses of elected officials rather than on economic rights and social infrastructure that make hunger impossible. This is the charity model in action: visible compassion that substitutes for structural change.
At Food & Solidarity, Solidarity Means:
- People organising together around shared conditions
- Refusing narratives that blame individuals for systemic harm
- Building power, not dependency
- Taking the fight to the powerful
Food on its own does not end hunger. Charity on its own does not end poverty — it's not designed to. Only organised, collective power can do that.
Solidarity is not about being generous. It is about being committed.
Join the Movement
Become part of an organisation that believes in solidarity, not charity. Where members build collective power to challenge the systems causing poverty and insecurity.
Become a MemberFrequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between charity and solidarity?
Charity treats poverty as a tragedy and asks who deserves help. Solidarity treats poverty as an injustice and asks why anyone needs help in the first place. Charity can create dependency, while solidarity builds collective power to challenge the systems causing poverty.
Why doesn't Food & Solidarity operate as a charity?
Charity alone does not end poverty — it's not designed to. Food & Solidarity believes only organised, collective power can address the root causes of poverty. Members organise together around shared conditions, refuse narratives that blame individuals for systemic harm, and build power rather than dependency.
What does solidarity mean at Food & Solidarity?
Solidarity means people organising together around shared conditions, refusing narratives that blame individuals for systemic harm, building power not dependency, and taking the fight to the powerful. It recognises that poverty is produced by systems and that surviving those systems requires collective support and action.
Does Food & Solidarity provide food parcels?
Yes, but food on its own does not end hunger. Food parcels help people survive while organising and fighting together for systemic change. They are a starting point for collective action, not an endpoint.
Food & Solidarity is a member-led organisation in Newcastle upon Tyne. Members help members with food and housing security by working together to hand out food parcels, fight companies and stop evictions. This week, we thought about how organisations like ours come together over a common cause to do great work to create positive change or block negative change.
They do this by; listening to its members and adapting their approach based on what people said they needed, for example the national “Don’t Pay Campaign” in 2022 October price cap: what is the Don't Pay UK movement and your rights | Cambridgeshire Live and the more local activity to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Here, North East residents took action to Kim McGuinness, the North East Mayor, to demand the scrap. Both movements won what they were fighting for.
They were successful through coming together on a goal that everyone agreed to and taking action in a way that everyone agreed to. They changed things when members spoke out about it, and each person did what they said they were going to do. However, another thing these movements have in common was that after the goal was reached, the organisation came to an end, or didn’t go on to have any more great successes.
We think this is because of two reasons: people stop showing up, burnt out. Then, because people stop showing up, the organisation doesn’t achieve its goals, so those who stayed feel burnt out fighting for a change that doesn’t come.
So how do we make Food and Solidarity different so that we can keep fighting for our members and our communities?
Keep food at our heart. Every week, even if nothing changes, all our members are able to say that they contributed to someone getting food: themselves, others, or both. There is consistent good produced.
We show up when we say we will, and we do what we say we will do, for ourselves and each other.
We are flexible, members can contribute different things at different times depending on what works for them.
We lift each other up, with kindness, empathy, and curiosity for different world experiences.
We follow the people, standing with them on not just one issue, but any issue right-here-right-now. By doing this, we remain current and ready to take action as it comes.
The Housing Crisis Is Destroying Our Communities
When rents rise, whole neighbourhoods change. The people who built communities, who know their neighbours, who use the local school, the local shop, the food bank get pushed out. The housing crisis doesn't just affect renters. It hollows out the places we all live in.
Sky-high rents are forcing people to cut back on essentials like food and heating. Families are being pushed out of their homes altogether, cut off from family, friends, and community. Homelessness has reached record levels. There are an ever-increasing number of homeless deaths. Disabled renters face discrimination and cannot secure accessible homes. Institutionally racist housing associations and council landlords neglect and mismanage estates damaging our health and letting children like Awaab Ishak die.
This is not bad luck or mismanagement. It is the result of decades of political choices. For too long, successive governments have prioritised the desire of private developers and corporate landlords to make a profit over our need for affordable, secure, accessible homes. This can't go on. It's time to fight back.
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