Two multi-colored hands reaching for each other.

The How Part 3: So You Want to Build an Activism-Based Community from Scratch.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. I will say it until winter ends in Boston at a reasonable time of year. (It never will.): Building an activism-based community from scratch is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do. It takes creativity, hard work, and for the stars to align in your favor.

But, at least for me, it continues to be extremely rewarding. It channels my frustration and leads to me meeting interesting people from a variety of backgrounds. Besides, I couldn’t imagine my life without my FtGU partner Mylo much less without access to their Spotify account.

I’m not going to give you a step-by-step guide. Guides like those are written by experts. There are no experts in building these kinds of communities in these strange times. Instead, I’m going to list some do’s and don’ts, things I’ve learned by some trial and lots of error.

Don’t

Do this without a partner. First off, you don’t want to become a cult leader. Secondly, building a community can be lonely. Mylo and I spend several hours a week planning, brainstorming, and worrying. If we had to do that alone, it would be incredibly isolating. There is no one I can talk to other than Mylo who knows exactly what this feels like.
Plus, Mylo and I balance out each other’s flaws. Mylo says that without me they would give up, but without Mylo, I would be too afraid to get started.
Make all of your friends community members. Okay, if you don’t recruit a few of them, building a community will be next to impossible, but reserve a few for venting. There’s going to be lots of venting.
Spent all of your time in disaster-prevention mode. In an interview with Bitch Media the activist Walidah Imarisha said,

“In radical movements, we so often fight against something instead of building something else. We absolutely have to do it, but we don’t want to spend all of our energy just challenging what is. We really have to cultivate our ability to dream what will be and to make it a reality. That’s how all significant change has happened.”
Avoiding disasters is important, but solely thinking about potential problems is miserable. Imagine the community building and activism you want to be doing. And when problems inevitably arise, you’ll already know what you want the solution to look like.
Fear the internet. Tweet. Instagram. Blog. Show the world what you’re doing. They’ll either want to join or follow in your footsteps.

A screenshot of Mylo and El meeting via Discord, both smiling. — Mylo and I during one of our infamous Discord meetings.

Do

Ask for feedback regularly. I don’t care how many psychology degrees you have or how many packs of tarot cards you own. You can’t read minds. If you do something disastrously wrong, your community will either lash out at you or disappear altogether. Don’t let it get that far. Hold yourself accountable every step of the way.
Surveys are a great strategy, but don’t forget about everyday conversations. Even briefly asking someone for ideas for future meetings can lead to them hinting at things they’re finding lacking.
Brag. Now is not the time to be humble. If you show enthusiasm and pride in what you’re doing, others will want to join.
Think about money. Regardless of whether you’re building an actual 501(c)(3) or if you’re simply gathering a small group of friends once a week, resources will be spent. Keep track of both the time and the money you invest in your community from the outset. You may never want to fundraise, but if you ever experience financial hardship, you’ll need to know how much it costs to keep your community afloat, even if it’s merely $30 on weekly pizza.
Practice honesty with your community and with yourself. If you’re going through a rough time because, hypothetically speaking, you had an ovarian cyst explode, don’t pretend you’re okay. Communities exist to support each other. Let yours support you.
Take notes during meetings. Trust me on this one.
Share opinions. Activism-based communities work best when people discuss divergent viewpoints. People won’t go to a protest if they don’t know why they’re going. The FtGU community read and discussed the books How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay as well as Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. We knew we weren’t going to agree on everything, so we researched strategies on how to discuss our differences productively.
Political and practical views often diverge, but avoiding challenging conversations only leads to resentment and miscommunication. Talk with your members. Facilitate discussions between members. Never hide your truth.
“Start being brave about everything, driving out darkness and spreading light as well.” ~ my favorite saint, Saint Catherine of Siena

Hands of different skin tones resting on a tree trunk.

The How Part 2: When Your Community is Due for an Upgrade

After you’ve weighed the pros and cons and made the vital decision about whether to find an activism-based community, enhance an existing community, or create a community from scratch, it’s time to take the next steps. That’s fairly simple if you’ve found a community: contact them and go through their intake process if they have one. But if you’re enhancing a community or building one of your own, it’s a bit more complicated. Never fear! The How Part 2 is here!

This post focuses on how to enhance existing communities. Organizations vary in both their structure and member makeup, so these steps aren’t meant to be taken as a precise guide. Instead, think of them as vague directions coming from someone with a visual learning disability who still needs Google maps to go to the grocery store down the street. That’s, in fact, what they are.

How to enhance an existing political community to include more community building

Approach the leadership of your organization, unless of course you are a leader in your organization and have already approached yourself. Make the argument to them that your org would benefit from some community building. Send them my blog posts. Or, better yet, point our specific instances within your particular organization which would have had better consequences if folks were closer to one another. Data is useful. Stories are more effective.
Plan social events with some sort of structure. Although unstructured events can be fun and build relationships, there’s a strong risk that the discussions will turn political if there is no clear alternative. So, run a game of Among Us or Blood on the ClockTower or a group workout. That way, community members will have to discuss something other than the upcoming protest or last night’s newstory.
Once COVID is over, provide drinks, alcoholic or caffeinated. People like to have something to sip during awkward silences.
Encourage others to plan their own social events. People are invested in the things they create. Hopefully, this creates a positive feedback loop leading to more and more events.

How to enhance an existing community to participate in more activism

Have an honest conversation with yourself before you act. How unified are your community’s political values? To be clear, they don’t have to be perfectly aligned. You might believe that the downfall of capitalism is necessary to curb the climate crisis whereas another member of your community believes that government restrictions will suffice. Both of you would be comfortable attending a climate change protest. However, if your community is extremely politically diverse, incorporating political activism may not be the best move. Instead, you could focus on charity work like raising money for Child’s Play.
Pull out the tea and finger pb&j sandwiches (I hate all other sandwiches) and host a book club that reads books about political issues. Activism begins with education. And if the members of your org aren’t a particularly politically charged bunch, start simple. No communist manifesto necessary. If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson is a YA book that is political and also leads to everyone balling their eyes out. I highly recommend it.
Invite your fellow members to volunteer for a political organization. This is logistically easier than attempting to organize your own event and shows the members of your organization what activism looks like and how rewarding it is.
Remember that protesting isn’t the only option. Protestors need to be fed. Voters need to be called. Activist organizations need fundraisers. Choose activities that fit your organization’s needs and capabilities.
Don’t make it miserable or overly time-consuming. One or two events a month is enough. If people aren’t invested and the work is too difficult, they’ll stop. Be more patient than persistent.

None of this is easy. Humans are strange and unpredictable creatures. Unforeseen problems arise. Go slowly. Breathe frequently. Incremental progress is still progress.

Next week, I will discuss the preliminary steps involved in starting your own activism-based organization and embrace the opportunity to brag about my accomplishments.

The How Part 1: Your First Big Decision

Assuming that my last blog post convinced you that activism-based communities are necessary for activists’ survival, you’re probably thinking, “Oh $#!+, I don’t have one of those.” Deciding how you want to gain community is the first step to solving your conundrum. Luckily you have three options. I will list them all in order of ascending difficulty and describe the pros and cons of each of them. Read on comrades!

Option One: Find a Community

The Pros

This one is listed first for a reason. Once you’ve found a community, the rest is pretty easy. You will have to put effort into becoming an active member and time into building relationships and learning the norms of the group. But the logistics should be done for you.
A bonus perk is that you’ll learn community-building skills from the leaders of the group. The best way to understand communities to join one.

The Cons:

Thriving activism-based communities are hard to find, and finding one that fits your needs may be next to impossible. There are options. In big cities like Boston, cooperatives are popular (but that involves moving), the Sunrise Movement has hubs around the country (but that’s geared towards young folks), and there’s always From the Ground Up (but that’s just me humblebragging). But none of these may be what you are looking for. That’s the issue.

Option Two: Enhance an Existing Organization

The Pros:

If you’re already a member of a thriving activist organization that doesn’t have a community element or a community that should really be doing more political work, now is a great time to improve your organization! With already established relationships and structures, this is far easier than trying to create a brand new community. In fact, in the weeks after the 2020 BLM protests, a member of my Harry Potter and the Sacred Text group organized meetups for non-Black members to educate ourselves so that we could practice better allyship.

The Cons:

Easier does not mean easy. You’ll have to change or add to the existing structures within your organization. This could mean holding additional meetings, reevaluating leadership hierarchies, and/or disrupting routines. While some members of your organization may be all for it, others may be resistant.
Activism organizations that have never built community or community organizations that haven’t participated in activism may have a lot to learn. Communities that aren’t explicitly political will need to adapt to having political conversations. Activist organizations that don’t build community will have to learn to have conversations outside of politics. Don’t be surprised if these changes don’t happen overnight.

Option 3: Build Your Own Community

The Pros:

We need more activism-based communities. Period. More and more people are turning to their jobs to build community out of desperation. And, despite recent election wins, we still need political action. By building an activism-based community, you will be part of the solution.
You’ll gain all of the leadership skills you’ll ever need.
You can start by inviting the friends and comrades you already have. It’s a great way to enhance existing relationships.
It will be the most rewarding experience of your life. From the Ground Up has changed everything for me. Everything.

The Cons:

It will also be the most difficult experience of your life. It’s a lot of work. It requires social skills, logistical skills, and balancing idealism with practicality. It’s a 24/7 job.
You might fail.

That may seem like the worst possible note to end on, but failure is part of the process. And I don’t mean that in the Edison-failed-10,000-times-before-creating-the-lightbulb way. (In fact, he probably tried closer to 3,000 times, but no one really knows.) I mean that the very act of trying is an act of political resistance. Even if you don’t find a community to join, or the community you work to enhance resists, or the community you build falls apart, trying involves imagining that community is possible and worth fighting for. As adrienne maree brown put it, in her book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good,

“I believe that all organizing is science fiction—that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost everything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness, brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality.”
adrienne maree brown

Imagine a community that reimagines the world. It’s the first step towards liberation.