About

“The word ‘solidarity’ is a little worn and at times poorly understood, but it refers to something more than a few sporadic acts of generosity. It presumes the creating of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few.” -Evangelii Gaudium

Launched in 2013, Solidarity Hall began as a group blog created by a circle of friends based in Chicago, New York, Washington DC and abroad. We share a communitarian vision that includes themes of localism and an interest in new economic models while also grounded in traditional wisdom of the kind found in social theorists such as G.K. Chesterton, E.F. Schumacher, Jane Jacobs, Wendell Berry, and Dorothy Day. (Thus we are neither “left” nor “right,” but both “old” and “new.”)

The founding contributors to The Dorothy Option, also members of Solidarity Hall, are Elias Crim and Mark Gordon. Elias and co-host Pete Davis now produce the Dorothy’s Place podcast.

Elias Crim is Publisher and Editor at Solidarity Hall. A native Texan, Elias studied classics and medieval Italian at UC Berkeley before spending several years in financial journalism around Chicago. He has written for the American Scholar, the New Urbs blog (American Conservative), and the Chicago Observer and is the co-author of a textbook on character education. He briefly published something called The Armchair Historian. He writes from Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is active in community development through a Solidarity Hall initiative called C-Lab.

Mark Gordon is a member of the Solidarity Hall board of directors. He is a business owner, writer, and president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for the Diocese of Providence. Mark formerly blogged at Vox Nova and has written for Aleteia, National Catholic Register, Mars Hill Journal, and other publications, and is the author of Forty Days, Forty Graces: Essays by a Grateful Pilgrim.