What if the most caring members of your community all knew each other?
What if the most caring members of your community all knew each other?
The only questions I'm asking right now
Here’s a hypothetical for you. Let’s say that you live in a smaller U.S. city. We’re talking less than 100,000 people— a Lynchburg, Virginia, perhaps, or a Great Falls, Montana. You have left-of-center politics, and there have been a number of discrete moments in the past few years where you have been more involved politically (you showed up for Blacks Lives Matter Marches in 2020, for example, or door-knocked this past election cycle), but you definitely wouldn’t consider yourself a plugged-in mover and shaker— either with political radicals or mainstream Democrats. But regardless, one day, a donor whose intentions and background you trust makes you the following proposition:
For the next year, you will be provided a full salary and benefits commensurate with your cost of living, as well as extra support with your primary caregiving responsibilities.
In exchange for that financial support, you are expected to accomplish only three things:
Build relationships with as many people as possible who are already trusted providers of care, support and neighborliness in your community.
While you’re a it, build relationships with as many people as possible who are working to build a more universally loving political reality, both locally and nationally.
Facilitate a series of gatherings for all of those people so that they can both deepen their ties to one another and start imagining a future in your community where nobody is left behind.
If this were your only charge, where would you start? Where would you look to find these people? What questions would you ask that would help you expand your network of neighbors larger and deeper?
I’ve been thinking about this particular hypothetical pretty much nonstop since Tuesday’s election. It would be nice, I suppose, if I were doing so because I’m secretly a well-intentioned, politically radical, insanely rich person with a passion for catalyzing movements in places like Racine, Wisconsin and Greenville, Mississippi, but that’s decidedly not the case (well, the latter part is, but not the crucial “secretly wealthy” part).
What I have been busy doing, however, is offering a series of classes about “what’s next” in this political moment. At the risk of undermining my own content (they’ve truly been wonderful spaces and I hope you join one), the basic message of these courses is pretty simple. Throughout history, the most successful liberatory social movements have been built from the foundation of local groups (unions, schools, co-ops, community organizations, faith communities, etc.) that provide immediate care and a sense of belonging for their participants, while also offering political education (essentially, helping people identify the larger rigged systems that contribute to their daily frustrations). Since that’s the case, it would behoove those of us who want to “resist Trump” in the short term to not just organize protests, rallies or even more radical forms of disobedience, but to fortify, strengthen and grow those kind of spaces in every corner of the country.
The’ve been wonderful classes, all of them. High energy, optimistic, connective. But here’s what happens after I log off. I imagine the dozens to hundreds of people who just gathered together now re-scattered across the country— hearts swelling, fears visceral, intentions pure. I love all of those people, but my heart breaks at how we are disconnected, both from each other and the other vulnerable dreamers who live next door to us. And while that presents an immediate logistical challenge/opportunity for people like me (facilitators of virtual spaces), there’s a lesson there that goes far beyond the question of how I need to better support people who’ve attended my trainings.
I leave every gathering with the same spark, tenuous for sure, but far from imaginary.
We are so close to putting the pieces together. We— the dreamers of more loving dreams, the ragers against the world as it is, the exhausted but imaginative— could build something, if only we found one another and stuck together.
That’s why I can’t stop thinking about that hypothetical. What if somebody were actually doing that work?
Obviously, not all the participants in my courses live in small-to-mid-sized cities. That’s merely the sort of conceptual limit that’s helped me make sense of the task at hand. It’s easier for my brain to imagine the size of a room that the most caring people in Lewiston, Maine might fit into than in dramatically larger or tinier communities. The only thing that truly changes if the hypothetical is transmuted to a smaller town is that it’ll take less time to find and gather all the people. As for larger cities, I imagine the same basic idea, but with many neighborhood-level efforts building off of one another. There are many more concentric circles of care to be woven in Los Angeles than Idaho Falls, but the work isn’t dramatically different.
In every possible place that I’ve imagined this scenario— my own home, the communities that raised me, places that feel extremely distant from my own—, the whole “you have one year” construction has been revealing for where it does and doesn’t direct my attention.
The more I think about it, if I had a year to fill a gym with community changers, I wouldn’t begin with the usual suspects. I wouldn’t determine that mine was a “liberal” project and reach out to the local Democratic Party, nor would I call it “leftist” and dial up all the DSA-ers or the anarchists. That’s not because I don’t want many, if not all, of those usual suspects in the gym with us, but because I worry about who I’d miss if that’s where I focused my gaze. It’s the same principle as the legendary union organizerJane McAlavey used to preach— you don’t direct your energy in a new workplace on the people who are already gung ho about joining a union; first you find the workers who are most trusted and valued by their colleagues, regardless of their stances on organized labor. Build with the builders, not just the true believers.
When I imagine the networks we have to build in every single American community at this moment in time, I don’t just want to re-create the same activist clubhouses over and over again. I do, in fact, want to look for the helpers, because that advice isn’t just a Mister Rogers cliche. “The helpers” don’t exist merely as abstract reminders of human kindness; they’re the actual people who we need to connect together if we have any hope of digging out of this cursed political moment.
I don’t currently have a year of uninterrupted time and an expansive budget. But I do have the ability to focus my attention in ways that I haven’t in the past. As such, here are the questions I’m starting to both ask myself and help others ask about all of our homes.
In the place where you live, who is…
…the high school teacher whom all the queer and trans kids come out to/the Grandma who keeps an eye on the street that outsiders decry as too dangerous, too hood, too far gone/the domestic violence center’s most committed volunteer/the mom or dad from your nearest elementary school that the other parents text on their lowest days/the music-obsessed kid putting on the basement punk shows/everybody’s favorite colleague at the local factory, nursing home, Taco Bell and call center/the elders who show up every week at the soup kitchen/the watchdogs who attend all of the boring, non-incendiary city council and school board meetings/the person in your nearest faith community that the imam, rabbi, minister or priest identifies as the “true soul” of their congregation/the clinic escort who shows up on the rainiest days/the owner of the small business that everybody in town would be most heartbroken to lose/the person that new immigrants turn to when they first arrive/the neighbors who organize the beloved annual block parties/the gardener who tends to an otherwise vacant lot/the elected official who actually follows up with attendees at public meeting/the person you first texted when the results were final…
I could go on. Easily, actually. And I bet you could as well. It’s the kind of list that, once you start making it, you realize the abundance that already surrounds us.
That’s not to say that merely finding all these people will solve all of our problems. These people exist in every community in the country, but they are, for better or worse, people. No doubt, if they were to all gather and start working together, innumerable barriers would present themselves: Power dynamics, across lines of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability. Ideological differences. Grievances, both petty and profound.
I don’t believe it would be a catastrophe, though. If the task at hand wasn’t “how do we elect Democrats” nor “how do we get everybody in town to show up for a socialist meeting” but instead “how do we make this community as caring as possible— where do we need to build, where do we need to agitate, what do we need to imagine?” I can’t help but trust in the creative potential of our most loving neighbors. We may be frequently awful to each other, us humans, but never solely.
Back to this specific moment, I have spent the last week studiously avoiding election post-mortems. I’m sure that I agree with many of them, and disagree with many others. I’m just not sure that there’s much mystery as to the place where we find ourselves. Here in the U.S., we live in a country where all of our institutions and relationships are shaped by hierarchies of domination, and also where millions of us are dissatisfied with the current state of our lives. That’s a classic recipe for authoritarianism, of course, but it’s also a plaintive cry for institutions in every single one of our communities that bind us closer together, that challenge us to not turn on one another, that make us feel less alone.
Last week, the task at hand was to avoid being distracted by finger pointing. This week, it’s making sure that the visceral emotions of last week don’t dissipate in an ether of enforced normalcy. I worry that after an initial shock, we will retreat back into daily routines. We will waste a moment, not for action, but for noticing. Like many of us, I have felt and continue to feel a wide range of emotions. There have been waves of fear, despair, rage and befuddlement. But I’m also overwhelmed in one of the best ways possible. I’m overwhelmed because of all the people building blessed communities in various corners of this country whom I have never met.
What an opportunity. Most of us don’t know the committed mutual aid organizers in Brooklyn or Hialeah or Terre Haute. We don’t know everybody’s most beloved neighbor in Bismarck or Bakersfield. We don’t know the community activist whom the city council members roll their eyes at in Pueblo. We don’t know the fire department volunteer on Bainbridge Island who sighed the deepest sigh on Tuesday night, nor the tribal elders holding their community’s strings together in Tuba City. What’s even more hope-giving, though, is that while I guarantee that while all of these people exist, I know just as deeply that they don’t all know each other. Think about that. The webs we need to weave haven’t even been started yet.
We have everybody that we need already. We just need to find each other.
End notes:
Speaking of those “what’s next” classes I’ve been offering, there are two more of them (they’re standalone, so you only need to attend one; they’re also free and don’t require any prior organizing experience). The first is this afternoon (Tuesday the 12th) at 4:00 PM CT and the second is tomorrow (Wednesday, the 13th) at 9:30 AM CT. The link to register is here; it would be great to see you!
I can offer classes like this (as well as coaching for organizers across the country) for free thanks to paid subscribers to this newsletter. If you’re up for it, upgrading makes a huge difference (and our subscribers’ community is legitimately the best— last Friday’s discussion was an absolute highlight during a rough, busy week). If you don’t have the means to become a paid subscriber, you can also help out by sharing, liking and doing all those other things that help spread the word. I appreciate you all.
Speaking of having money to support things, if you are literally George Soros and you’re wondering where to put your cash right now, personally I think investing in the kind of connection-builders I describe in the hypothetical above in communities across the country could go a long way, but that’s just me.
This article, from Waging Nonviolence, is being passed around quite a bit, with good reason. I’ve known the organizer who put it together (Daniel Hunter) since college and he is absolutely the real deal. A lot of people talk a big game about standing up to authoritarianism, but across the world there are people in our midst who have actually done so, and Daniel has trained many of them.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve offered a song of the week, but let’s listen to “All American Made” by
,shall we? Seems fitting, as does this poem she shared the other day (that’s an Instagram link, in case you’re trying to avoid social media).
The full Song of the Week playlist is available on both Apple Music andSpotify.
Love this, Garrett. It's so well and lovingly explicated. And I'm also aware, at least in myself, that there's work to do around strengthening our own circles of care now as well. In my case, first, in order to fuel my work in community. But not everyone is wired like me, so I'll just suggest *also*.
The following is something I spontaneously wrote in Notes about it this morning, but I'm rarely on Notes so no one much will see it. But because of the nature of this community, I'll share it here. Sorry that it's long:
"When I was a little girl and got sent to my Grandma Mary’s house in Memphis in the summer I loved it. Except for the part where she talked to everybody, and I mean, everybody— the bus driver, the trash collector, the check-out lady at the grocery store— everywhere we went. She’d say hello and chat a bit about whatever while I hung behind her with anticipatory mortification for when she would inevitably pull me forward and introduce me (to these people she didn’t even know!) as her granddaughter.
If she had long enough, say, in the grocery line, she’d pull a little notebook out of her purse. She’d already managed to file away in her brain whatever little things they would mention about themselves (that their kid was sick or they were behind on rent or whatever poured out of them in the face of her endless empathy). Then she’d write their name and their birthday carefully in her little book and she’d promise to remember.
They never seemed to believe her, but they didn’t know my grandma.
See, my grandma had a daily prayer practice. Every morning she would get up, first thing, and she would settle in and talk to God. Just like she talked to the lady at the grocery store. Out loud, I mean. She’d recite some prayers and then she’d start her list. First, her family (which was not small) and then her friends, and then all the random people she had written in her book. She’d explain to God what was going on with each of them, what they needed, and then she would ask Him, sincerely, to hold them lovingly and tenderly in His hand.
Then, on their birthday, she would send them a birthday card. In the mail! People she barely knew. Because she believed everyone deserves to know, at the very least on their birthday, that someone is thinking of them.
I started pondering Grandma after the election. About the way she instinctually understood what it was to create a community of care. I thought about how I could follow in her footsteps, being the introverted one I am, who also tends towards self-isolation beyond, even, the normal boundaries of introversion, and who has learned over a lifetime to freeze up in the face of any experience that vibrates in my body like trauma.
I also don’t have a conversational relationship with God. I am not going to sit in my special chair in my den, or on my front porch when the weather allows, to talk, out loud, to God every morning. Maybe I should. It would probably be good for me. But that’s not the one I am.
I am, however, a woman who is blessed to love and be loved by a host of people near and far, so I am leaning into that. It’s not a daily prayer practice, as much as a daily love practice. But then, so was Grandma’s, you know?
Every morning now and since the election I send 13 little love notes via text or FB Messenger out to my mom, my brother, my bio and bonus kids, and my dearest friends both near and far. Nothing fancy, just some version of “Good morning. I love you.” I warned them the first time that I was going to start doing this and that response was never required. This was my practice, not theirs’. But, damn, if my brother, who otherwise tends towards sending me inexplicable memes and political clips from YouTube, didn’t beat me to the punch on Sunday. Sent me an “I love you” before I’d even made my coffee. I don’t expect he’ll do that most days and that’s fine. That was never the point.
I am the point, my heart and my sense of isolation from other people. My tendency to freeze in the face of trauma and let despair creep in.
They want my despair and goddamn if I’m going to give them that.
There are other things that will need to be done. Out in the wider world and out in the streets kinds of things. But this thing, this small, daily thing that reminds me of the love in my life, that allows me, like my grandma before me, to let the people I love know I am thinking of them, this thing that resists despair, is the foundation and fuel for all of that.
In the midst of my divorce a dozen years ago I thought repeatedly when my ex would be vengeful and hateful, as if he thought he could break me, “Honey, I have survived much more evil and sadistic men than you. You clearly don’t understand which one I am.”
I *have* survived horrible, horrible things with a heart so full of love and a whole web of people to share it with and none of these petty, vengeful motherfuckers can take that from me. Or from you.
Love your people, friends, every day, in whatever way you can. It is the foundation and fuel for everything else that we’re going to have to do. Grandma Mary taught us that, and she was the smartest."
Garrett whew this really hit close to home as someone actively landing on "we take care of us" as my politic. I've done a lot of building of community over the years, and also a lot of voter turn out stuff, but actually those things are converging into this work of "building robust interdependent community that also happens to be politicized."
If I were tasked with a year to do what you're naming, how many of us would be able to better do so much of what we're attempting to do now in terms of weaving community, but with so much of a weight lifted to "find another vocation" because the vocation and the values alignment would just click together with the 100k of financial safety to make the community weaving our vocation. We'd keep working to weave folks together in art making and parenting and mutual care, with very deliberate permission giving to do just that. We'd keep doing the work of finding each other, but more robustly weaving our connections together.
My artist friend Lesley Numbers (Madison!) and I have been working on this Winter Solstice Zine collaboration called Germinating Dreams of Community, and it just feels so prescient given the time we're in. We're just starting to share out about this 1st of 4 seasonal zines we designed prompt us to weave folks together in radical care, with prompts to feed our community building praxis each day, with the question of: what happens when we do this intentional work together in community after a full circle around the sun, aka a full year? Which is so similar to what you name here right--what happens when you set a year limit on these things?
I think it says something really beautiful that the idea of "how do you actually weave communities of radical care" is a question so many of us are taking on right now. Makes me find it easier to practice the discipline of hope for sure.