Labor activists often recite an old dictum, “solidarity is a verb.” It’s meant to emphasize that solidarity is not just about supporting one’s fellow human being with thoughts and words — it requires action. That action often entails sacrifice. If solidarity didn’t have costs, we wouldn’t need to exhort others about it so often.

The current strikes in the United States have offered inspiring examples of solidarity. Many Teamsters and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) members have honored the picket lines of striking writers and actors, often at great personal cost. These workers need the income from these jobs, and the union’s pension fund is taking a hit, but they know that it is the right thing to do. Of course, a win for the writers and actors will also help the entertainment industry’s other workers, whose contracts expire next year. But when these individuals are faced with a choice in the here and now — cross a picket line or don’t, lose a day’s income or don’t — they are deciding to do the right thing.

So, too, in the other major strike in Southern California: that of fifteen thousand hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 11, who have been engaged in rolling strikes since early July. I recently wrote about a stand taken by Thomas Bradley, who had signed up for a shift at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Orange County using Instawork, an app-based staffing company. But when he arrived at the hotel, he realized that the workers were on strike, which made him a strikebreaker.