No one is coming, it's up to us
Communities to some extent exist to serve the common needs of their members. It's not your friend group. Many communities (and mutual aid groups) exist to meet the needs of members that society at large is unable or unwilling to address. Disability communities are a good example; Leah tells a great story in this Live Like the World is Dying episode about how the power company was just going to turn off electricity to a large section of northern California, how a vent-dependent person was going to die without power to run the vent, and how the disabled community got together to haul recharged batteries from the local fire station up the stairs to their apartment to swap them out. The power grid wasn't going to address that need, the healthcare system wasn't going to address that need, there wasn't a society-provided solution to that problem. They left the person to die.
Communities have the opportunity to generate solutions internally for problems their members face. Trans folks getting surgery could have members of their community sign up to take live-in shifts during recovery, meal trains, etc. Autistic people could share information about getting accommodations in their workplaces. Unions of course are a great example of a community of workers coming together to use collective power to advocate for their needs.
We don't have to just lie down and die. Building communities is the best form of Preparedness.
Make the definition of community as broad as reasonably possible
Many people say they don't have friends, don't know their neighbors, don't have community. They look at the strong fabrics of communities held up around them as examples (like the disability group mentioned above) and don't know how to get there from their start point. As with most things, the answer seems to be to take small steps over a long period of time, and part of that is by making it easier to create community connections.
Have a weird cousin that knows HVAC and you talk to them once a year? Reach out every 6 months instead. That's part of your community. Have a crisis hotline for trans people? That can be part of your trans community. The one visibly-queer person that works at the grocery store on the corner? Community, just by being visible in that space.
Build the social connections. It's a lot easier to address community needs when the social connections are in place and strong. All it takes is saying hi, and go from there.
Communities have to be accessible
It's not the revolution if disabled folks can't participate. If you have people who roll instead of walk, you gotta have ramps. You don't have anyone who rolls in your group? That means you're excluding people who ought to be there. People with scent sensitivities, light sensitivities, sensory sensitivities. People with mobility challenges. People with financial limitations. Immunocompromised people. People without cars.
Accessibility is not a destination, it's a goal that must constantly be worked towards. And there will be times when groups have Conflicting Access Needs. In some cases, no perfect accessibility solution is possible, but we can work on Harm Reduction toward that goal. A partial solution is better than no solution. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- Clean Air Club example of harm reduction re covid, lends air purifiers to indoor events in the Chicago area along with expertise about how to integrate them with venues, how many and what kind to use, etc.
- The Long Winter covid survival guide 2.0 "compiles tips and hacks we created to hang out outside safely when it’s freezing af outside and be at less risk for covid. now updated as of nov 2023 with suggestions people who read it sent in."
Communities have resources, and communities have needs
Make a List of Resources. Make a List of Needs. Find collaborative ways to bridge these gaps. Needs can't be met if no one knows about them, and people won't know to ask if they don't know resources are available.
You can also identify resources useful to your community but not specifically for your community. For example, a trans community might have information about needle exchanges and free narcan even though they're not a drug use community.
Making these lists requires people to be vulnerable, something that is often hard for marginalized communities. TODO: how can we make it easier?
Communities are partially defined by the rituals they perform
Communities are in some ways defined by the rituals they undertake for life events. For example, death rites can vary considerably by religious community. The change of seasons is observed differently in different cultures. Bar mitzvah is a celebration of a boy becoming a man, starting a new chapter in his life with new social context and responsibilities. Some companies have onboarding rituals for new employees and exit interviews for those departing.
One of my friends in the T-Fem Chicago group is coming up on a gender-affirming surgery, and I was surprised that that group doesn't have a ritual for how they support surgery patients through that process. There's discussions around surgeons and techniques and scheduling etc, but there doesn't seem to be a "I'll volunteer to help you get to your follow-ups" or "let's get on a schedule for delivering meals" or "I can come over to do laundry once a week." Moving beyond the list of needs and list of resources, for situations where people regularly experience that kind of situation, communities can define rituals to codify the way those needs are addressed, and can prioritize the resources needed to meet those needs as part of their culture.
Rituals can also be about community values. A Solarpunk community interested in imagining futures better than our current one might find most of their content imagines life in a temperate summer environment, but could institute a ritual of imagination four times a year that celebrates diverse biome representation to help round out the futures they imagine together.
Art of the long goodbye talks about dealing with transitions via community rituals.
Community cultivation
The FutureLab Wiki has some resources for this. TODO put my own thoughts down here.
Other random thoughts to categorize later TODO
Safe space/brave space as an axis within a community. Foundation of extending grace, being gentle with honest feedback around perceived missteps, self-aware examination of group mores.
Bibliography
https://bookshop.org/p/books/care-work-dreaming-disability-justice-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/16603798 https://disabilitycovidchronicles.nyu.edu/a-long-winter-crip-survival-guide-for-pandemic-year-4-forever/ https://brownstargirl.org/tools/ https://brownstargirl.org/suicidal-ideation-2-0/
Pages that link here:
- ↤ root
Broken links on this page:
- ↛ Preparedness
- ↛ Conflicting Access Needs
- ↛ Harm Reduction
- ↛ Solarpunk