It's comm(unity), beloved

Part II of Planning our Way (Strategically!) Toward Nonviolent Social Change

Dear Soulful Revolutionary,

Over the last week, I have watched in awe as ordinary people across Los Angeles have collectively responded with profound compassion to those most severely impacted by the catastrophic wildfires. My tears of grief for those who are suffering have co-mingled with tears of immense gratitude, as communities I know and love have come together to care for the city’s immense practical and spiritual needs.

The church that raised me up for ordained ministry, All Saints Church Pasadena, has been on the leading edge of this massive movement of mutual aid. In the midst of their own incalculable loss and grief — at least 60 families who are members of the church have lost their homes — the good folks of All Saints have thrown themselves into serving the wider community. The church was an evacuation center the first two nights of the fire, and then became a distribution center for food, water and other essential resources, with clergy available to provide spiritual care to those seeking support. All Saints has been a place for many people to catch their breath, take care of basic needs, and figure out their next step in this climate emergency.

The All Saints youth group hard at work helping distribute resources to the community. Photo credit: The Rev. Canon Susan Russell

All Saints is one of scores of faith communities, non-profits, and small businesses that have stepped up to meet the immediate needs of people who have lost everything. Many of these groups are listed on this — dare I say, stunning — spreadsheet of resources from Mutual Aid LA Network (side note: you simply must read this phenomenal celebration of the spreadsheet and the extensive, unsexy organizing work it represents). Perusing the spreadsheet, you’ll find places to pick up underwear, N95 masks, baby formula, even makeup. There’s veterinary care, wifi hot spots, thriftstore gift cards and mental health support.

I’d call it a Herculean effort, but that would imply that the spreadsheet or any of its featured resources was the work of one person, and of course that’s not true.

This is community at its finest.

The work of MALAN predates the fires, which is what allowed the network to jump into action so quickly providing this resource to Angelenos. MALAN has long been a “connector and information hub for mutual aid efforts, people and resources across Los Angeles” rooted in a shared vision of “building toward abolition and… an abundant world that can be freed of oppression through community solidarity.”

There are many examples of such pre-crisis community-building. For example, the Black community of Altadena is tight-knit, having built belonging over generations on the other side of Pasadena’s redline, as Frederick Joseph describes in this poignant piece. And Altadena is, of course, a microcosm of the robust solidarity Black people everywhere have fought for and forged in the face of white supremacy’s death-dealing systems.

With many of the 20,000 Black residents of Pasadena and Altadena displaced, Black leaders have come together to organize fundraisers, including these four young women who have been giving away masks, hygiene kits and water from the front lawn of one of the few standing homes on their street. Interviewed by independent media about their experience, the young women describe the trusting relationships characterizing their neighborhood as what saved them and likely prevented many casualties.

Screenshot from YES Media interview.

Comm(unity) is the strategy

When asked by activists for advice on why their movements are struggling to gain ground, my friend Srdja¹ often quips,

It’s unity, stupid.

By this, the dry-witted Serb means that unity is an essential element of any successful movement (nonviolent discipline and planning being the other vital ingredients). If you’re wondering why you’re not seeing the results you hoped for, pay attention to unity (or the lack thereof) within your movement. The importance of unity is often seriously underestimated, even as petty differences amongst organizers can lead to infighting and division that destabilize entire movements. Significant social change is achieved through coalition-building, negotiation and compromise on the lowest common denominator of shared interest. (I’ve written more about this here).

Disasters uniquely force a critical, existential point where the lowest common denominator of shared interest — survival — must be prioritized. We have seen this time and again in Los Angeles, in Appalachia, in Gaza. At least for a time, we see folks setting aside differences that might otherwise divide them in order to save lives.

When circumstances are at their absolute worst, people choose to care for one another. Not everyone, obviously (particularly the ultra-rich and super powerful) but many, many ordinary people choose to show up and help one another out. Especially when there are pre-existing bonds of community.

So my version of advice to would-be world changers is a bit more nurturing than Srdja’s (which is totally in keeping with our personalities!), but I offer it no less emphatically:

It’s comm(unity), beloved.

Witnessing countless examples of exquisite collective care in the aftermath of acute disasters has led me to wonder:

If we recognized ourselves as living in a state of emergency — a polycrisis — right now, would we show up for our respective communities as Angelenos have been doing this past week? As Appalachians have been doing over the last few months? As Palestinians have been doing over the last 15 months (and 76 years)? Can the quality of communal response we have seen in these places be broadly replicated, contextualized, and sustained to meet the needs of people bearing the brunt of a world on fire?

I want to believe that community can be our response to crisis. That it must be. Because the reality is that we are, all of us, living in a state of emergency. Sure, some folks are burying their heads in the sand, choosing willful ignorance in the face of rising fascism, fearsome weather, and escalating violence. Still, many people hear the alarm sounding, yet feel helpless because they feel alone. And loneliness is a fast pass to despair.

Community is where we cultivate love to counteract our loneliness, while building hope together by practicing for the world that could be.

It’s impossible to deny that fostering community is really hard right now. But I want to offer a few possible, even hopeful, ways I have found to build robust communities that can organize for change together.

Friends, I’ve created this survey to better know how to serve my readers and listeners. Would you take a moment to share your feedback on your experience of A Soulful Revolution? Thank you!

1. Get to know your neighbors. (Like, the actual people living next door).

A few years ago, my husband and I moved into our home in a new suburban development. 10 days later, our twins were born. During my maternity leave, I was lonely. We had moved to Colorado just a few months before the pandemic, so we hadn’t been able to make many friends during our first couple years here.

Walking my daughters around the block in their stroller, I decided to take a leap of faith and get to know our neighbors. I figured we were all new to the neighborhood, and that maybe a couple folks would be interested in making friends. I set up a Google form and started knocking on doors to invite folks to a block party. I asked for a cell phone number and texted them the form for them to fill out what they could bring, as well as some get-to-know-you questions.

There were a couple of households that never answered the door, but most folks were willing to share their names and numbers. On the day of the party, I was absolutely gobsmacked when 16 of the 18 households on our block showed up. And they stayed for four hours. Kids ran up and down our shared alley as adults sipped beverages while swapping moving stories and trading jabs about the best BBQ (it was the brisket, for the record).

That first gathering catalyzed an incredible variety of connections. Just today someone texted our group chst to see if someone had a wheelbarrow (someone did). There’s a group of dads who regularly get together to hang out (they went to a hockey game last night). The oldest couple on the block have become surrogate grandparents to many families whose elders live far away. A couple of my neighbors are on the leadership of Holy Companion, the church I planted a year and a half after the first block party (which is now an annual occasion).

And some of us have come together to advocate:

• For public safety after a couple of kids were hit by a car;

• In support of a family suing the school district over their child’s experiences of racial harassment;

• And to push back against the developer’s plans to build luxury apartments instead of affordable housing and space for local businesses.

And all of this from knocking on a few doors to say “hello.”

2. Build alternative online communities.

With the Supreme Court unanimously upholding the TikTok ban (slated for Sunday) this morning, Meta terminating third-party fact-checking, and folks exiting Twitter en masse in response to Elon Musk setting up his fiefdom there, online community is poised to become even more fractured, siloed and difficult to access. It’s also going to become increasingly difficult to discern who a real person is online.

Meta shut down its AI character bots shortly after their debut last fall given the backlash they experienced. The company got an earful from Karen Attiah: the Washington Post columnist wrote about her experience dialoguing with a bot called “Liv,” described in “her” bio as a “Proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller” and “Your realest source for life’s ups & downs.” Attiah called the interaction “digital blackface” and “a chameleon-like minstrelsy.” (You can click on the below image to read the whole unsettling dialogue on BlueSky).

Billionaires are using “social” media to create and exploit collective consumption patterns, and authoritarians are empowering nefarious actors creating cycles of mis- and disinformation.

Danté Stewart recently wrote about these “terrible white men”:

It’s up to us to create community online.

One vital way we can counteract the bots, silos and censorship is by constructing online communities with people who have shared interests, rather than relying on algorithms to do the work for us.

Bruce Reyes-Chow

, always on the leading edge of tech and community, has been teaching fellow Presbyterians how to use BlueSky. This platform “enables users to determine what they see,” making for a more curated feed. I haven’t made the leap yet, but am seriously considering it.

My own community of Holy Companion uses Discord for everything from event announcements to prayer requests to personal reflections and silly photos of our kids. I have found it to be a great way to deepen connections with an existing community. It can be as private and insular as you want it to be, there’s no ads, and I actually find it fun to use.

And of course, for all disruptive organizing, we need to be more security-aware than ever. I have been pleading with groups I am part of (some of which have listened) to move our planning from text and email threads to Signal. My geek friends swear that for end-to-end encryption and a space free from the threat of subpoena, there’s no substitute.

As Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk writes,

“The future belongs not to their sophisticated networks of surveillance and control but to our networks of sacred becoming.”

Community, not cult

Communities are formed through care, not coercion. They teach discernment of the true self instead of conformity. A community encourages questioning, not compliance; creativity, not assimilation.

Communities can resist the rising cult mentality with its automatic deference to authoritarians by empowering community members to cooperate in courageous disobedience of unjust laws and oppressive rulers.

Families can be vital components of such a community of practice. DL Mayfield has written extensively about the need to raise strong-willed kids, including in this recent essay on surviving Christofascism:

“Kids are wondering if it is safe to be them in the world and if the adults around them care at all about the survival of the planet and the answer that Christian fascists have literally beat into them is a resounding NO. If you are a parent, the most important work you can do right now is to raise kids who get to be themselves in the safety of your own home. Who learn how to feel their feelings and process their emotions and connect to their true selves. This is one of the best ways to resist fascism, by NOT beating your kids into submission or scaring them into forced obedience to authority and capitalism.”

This is absolutely the kind of energy I seek to bring to parenting my (VERY strong-willed!) toddlers. I want my kids to know their bodies, to trust their intuitions and to let Love lead them in all they do.

This is also the spirit with which I am stepping into a coaching practice this year. My focus is on nurturing faithful dissidents — folks who want to bring their values and practices into alignment for the sake of justice. I’m looking forward to accompanying clients in exploring the spiritual practices and practical strategies that will support them in authentically, courageously and sustainably bringing their whole self to the Divinely inspired, collective project of liberation.

(If this is something you want to explore, learn more on my website and drop me a line).

“We are each other’s destiny”

For all of my reflecting on what community means for humans, I can’t conclude an essay without acknowledging that we are part of a cosmic community. All of life is bound together. Everything we do for our fellow human beings impacts non-human life and the earth too. We belong to this earth community and we each have a sacred responsibility to our common life.

As Mary Oliver puts it,²

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.”

It’s comm(unity), beloved. May you know that you belong.

1. Srdja Popovic, Otpor alum and mentor to nonviolent revolutionaries the world over.

2. “Winter Hours,” Upstream, Penguin Press 2016.