On Freedom

Snyder defines solidarity as the fifth form of freedom and presents it as the practical recognition that individuals cannot become or remain free on their own. He links sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, and factuality to social structures that others build and maintain. Care for the young, support for mobility into adulthood, and the institutions that make knowledge and truthful speech possible all depend on collective effort. Solidarity, he says, is the mark of a just person and the guiding light of a country that wants to be “a land of the free” (212).

He argues that freedom of speech requires both individual declarations and social accommodations. Witnesses who testify to atrocity rely on networks that preserve, verify, and disseminate their accounts. Snyder cites Holocaust and contemporary Ukrainian initiatives to show how institutional support turns isolated testimony into public truth. He maintains that people are not free if their truths remain unheard, and he connects this to civic failures such as the slow recognition of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, from 2014 to 2019.

Snyder frames voting as applied solidarity rather than a strictly individual act.