Community is a verb

What I know - the only thing I have ever known when my people are under threat (and how I know my ancestors fought tyranny and oppression) - is to go right back to my people and start with individuals there. And community hard.

Yes, community is a verb - community isn’t a thing. It isn’t something you “have”, but rather, something you “do”.

I know this to be true because my ancestors fought for freedom from British colonial rule in India, my grandparents grappled with the horrors of partition when India and Pakistan became separate countries, and I’ve personally navigated this country’s own racism and xenophobia as a first generation daughter of Indian immigrants raised in the Midwest. I have been carried and cared for by my family, extended loved ones and friends in a way that has made me a vessel for love.

And so, every aspect of my lived experience and ancestral wisdom tells me to community is to survive and thrive. My joyful and abundant life is living proof that other people communitied hard to make my existence possible. The only way to honor that - and not break the chain - is how I pay it back and pay it forward in my lifetime. The only way forward as a society is for each of us to take this on as part of re-building our world for the generations that follow.

You can’t have community, you have to be it

As Americans, we’ve been conditioned to see a community as a fixed entity - a neighborhood, or a group of people sharing a common space, identity or interest. But in reality, community is not something that simply exists; it is something that has to be actively and proactively built, nurtured, and sustained through continuous action. It is reciprocal care, collaboration and love.

At the root of it, what does it mean to engage in this level of community? To trust that our risk, safety, joy are wrapped up in each other? It isn’t enough to intellectually know this as a concept. To community requires a much greater commitment to personal transformation, engagement with tension and the ability to be whole enough to hold those who actively disagree (or are even angry) with you, as they too experience the breaking of our public institutions, social contracts, and underpinnings of our society. To community is hard, frustrating and draining at times – it doesn’t always feel good, but it changes each of us in the process. And that is exactly the point.

Without consistent engagement, what we call a community remains just a collection of individuals with a surface connection to one another. Community is built through mutual support and shared responsibility over time. It means stepping up when someone is in need, offering help, and being willing to receive support in return - even in times when you don’t want to, don’t fully agree with someone or are inconvenienced by it. I know we are all under water and it feels like we don’t have enough to keep going. But, when we community, what is available to us and what is possible is both powerful and limitless.

Individuals are the key to building communities and subsequently, creating new systems, norms and culture.

This felt most alive to me recently, as I witnessed the intentional destruction of The United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID was set up to administer humanitarian aid programs on behalf of the US government. It employed around 10,000 people (and as of this writing, that number is now zero). It was based in over 60 countries and worked in dozens of others. USAID programs built goodwill and fostered alliances, while supporting US businesses, universities and civil society organizations (in other words, “soft power”). It’s also saved millions of lives and improved the living conditions of hundreds of millions around the world. Without USAID, the US loses its moral, social and political standing in the world, while inflicting great harm on our own economy and social structures.

I am proud to say that my original professional home is global health and development, where I spent over 25 years. To say it was the most humbling, transformative and inspiring field of work is an understatement. The impact it has on my own worldview is incredibly profound and shapes me to this day. The people I had the privilege of meeting and serving remain a powerful force of love, joy and purpose in my life.

When the executive order to dismantle USAID came down the first week of the Presidential administration, tens of thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world had their life’s work, livelihoods and access to communities they served decimated in a matter of days. Communities around the world experienced devastating and irreparable damage to their health and safety. The swiftness and callousness of the government’s actions left many of us wondering what we could do in the face of such unapologetic harm, while simultaneously grappling with our rage, despair and grief.

In call after call, group chat after group chat, social media post after post - I witnessed friends and former colleagues experience erasure in real time. They spent countless hours worrying about the people they had been forced to abandon. They didn’t know where to get their next job when the entire field had been decimated. They were concerned for each other’s mental health and well-being. And those adjacent despaired over how to help or stem any of these inevitable tides coming our way. We were being pummeled with information and a pace of change designed to immobilize us.

But, guess what happened next? We did the thing we call community.

Some took the fight to court because they had the power and privilege to absorb greater risk for others. Others organized meet ups to share collective grief. Several people provided free career pivoting resources, coaching and workshops. Many offered their homes to people who had to leave their overseas lives abruptly and had nowhere to go on short notice. Friends and colleagues started chat groups to share inside information or started online campaigns to archive resources and tell stories. One organization set up a Foreign Aid Emergency Bridge Fund to provide funding to local organizations supporting front line work. And still others facilitated spaces for people to break bread, be silly, laugh and remind each other that we are all entitled to joy.

I haven’t worked in that sector for a decade, but I knew I had a choice to do something for the individuals right in front of me. So, I began planning a day-long retreat for friends who wanted to learn more about how to pivot careers using the skill sets they acquired in global development (like I had). I joined text threads to learn people’s stories; re-connected with former colleagues to give my support, and reached out to friends outside the sector to activate them – did someone know how to revamp CVs? Experience their life’s work changed because of a circumstance out of their control and offer some light at the end of the tunnel? I talked to everyone I knew about the impact this would have on people’s lives in my circle of influence. I made a list of every banned book and documentary and made plans to buy them. This is how I pay it forward and hold my time in the chain together to community. I won’t know everyone who is on the other side of what I offer - and I likely don’t agree on everything with them either - and it doesn't matter. That actually isn’t the point. People had to put things down. So, it is my turn to pick it up. I community by convening.

To be clear - the international development sector is not a monolith. Nor is the call for how to reform the sector. It has its share of the same challenges we all experience. But, we started with a recognition that we had to share the risk, grief and action - in collective measure for any one of us to survive. Community was happening at every level of the sector, at every organization, at every country office. So much of our collective progress is being destroyed, but that doesn’t mean we don't exist. It never has. History teaches us that people working for the collective good is the reason all people survive and thrive.

We have what we need to choose and protect one another. It's built into our bones. It is a memory we already own; we know how to dream dreams we haven’t made a reality yet, if we can quiet ourselves enough to listen to it.

Fascists planned for this moment, and we need to dream beyond their plans.

We are not in a political, social or cultural “moment” in this country. In real time, the social contract is being rewritten in a way that we are not yet able to fully grasp. But more violence, trauma, and the collapse of basic rights are certainly on the horizon. Let’s be honest with ourselves – we’re no longer in a position to significantly change the course of what is happening at the federal government in the immediate or near-term. The speed at which entire public institutions and lives have been upended and disappeared is unprecedented. In the last few months, millions of people have been stripped of their rights, dignity and livelihoods - from defunding vital health services and programs, to mass deportations, to gutting educational resources, to the ongoing criminalization of trans people and free speech. And this is just the beginning.

For the last 8 years, I co-led a national organization that supported state elected officials to move boldly for a new future. We’ve mobilized hundreds of legislators in service of advancing progressive policy across the country, sat in the White House with federal and state officials coordinating strategies on any number of policy issues, participated in delegations of legislators and movement partners designed to activate their power in creating new solutions for challenges our communities face. All the while, the rule of law is falling apart and new policies are being introduced to drastically change institutions and norms to embrace a more punitive, restricted and racist government.

The most underwhelming and infuriating response is the naive belief that taking away power from extremist factions through elections will repair the harm. Or that only building with people who agree with you and have similar analyses builds durable power. In fact, it only serves the few in the long run. Relying on the media’s talking heads is a woefully inadequate way to counter those who are rewriting the truth. Please. We are so far beyond those tired strategies alone; ones that don’t fully grasp the severity of what is in front of us and more importantly, underestimates the power of individuals to transform themselves and rebuild the system. Much of the damage to public institutions and civil society has already occurred; its repercussions lasting for decades.

To be sure, part of how we fight in the short term is to stay informed (without drowning), make visible what is happening to those experiencing the most harm, and lift up what we learn with our circle of influence. Some part of the resistance ostensibly includes ensuring elected officials represent us in government and use our power to change things from inside. Still another strategy is to mobilize people to pay attention to what is happening around them. Some organize protests.

But, it isn’t as if systems, governments and how we build with each other didn’t need full-scale change already. And systems, cultures and the law are, in fact, built by people. We have always needed something different than the protection or incremental change of the status quo. We are at the precipice of a whole re-imagining. Now that everything is being broken, we can either figure out ways to react to every action and its corresponding, devastating result, or prepare a key part of our resistance to building a new system and set of norms that works for us all. A primal and instinctive part of me vehemently rejects rebuilding what broke or the idea that we don’t have power to effect change that we actually need.

For a durable response, we need our own delightfully unpredictable, inclusive and people-centered playbook. The backbone of this playbook is to community, as in the verb. Let’s not mistake this work for what it is: community in action.

Current norms disincentivize community – but we can make a different choice

I can’t stop thinking about community as the way forward. The next crushing waves of losses are already here (and they will continue well beyond this posting). Civil society is actively under attack. The trickle down effect on the next few generations cannot be underestimated. So, it’s time to go back to a different kind of basics.

Now ask yourself – how do you community? Maybe you cook for others when they are sick. Or you’re a caretaker for someone who needs a babysitter. Do you have a garden to distribute fruits and vegetables to others in need of healthy food? Can you take on the role of storyteller or historian? What about facilitating a banned book club for the children in your community? Can you participate in mutual aid so that folks can be carried through until they figure things out? Do you know how to work the system to ensure inclusion for transgender kids? Can you offer safe haven to young people who are grappling with loss of recognition in the public sphere? Can you help build an information network for the underground resistance? Can you do the internal work of being able to listen to and community with someone with whom you do not share the same ideals?

In other words, can you work on behalf of those whom you have yet to meet and be changed by? If not, collective collapse is coming for all of us, no matter who you voted for - and waiting for it, anticipating the chaos or denying it until it happens - will not help and is completely futile. We can and must community now.

The one thing everyone has to commit to offering is participation in community - and not leaving it just because someone doesn’t agree or you have divergent views on how to get to a desired outcome. To choose community in that instance is your work. You have to keep engaging, in the love, growth and messiness of yourself and others.

This is the new level of responsibility that calls to us in these conditions.

And so we must accelerate. Our vision for what comes next has to take both a long-term organizing and world-building view, as well as a reimagining of how we community to protect the most vulnerable among us, and thereby, protecting all of us. This is a time for our values to be bolder and more visible. This is a time for us to be dreamers, to be the thing we wish to see in the world. It is a time to fuel ourselves with joy, rest, imagination - more than ever. To community is to protect this for each of us. Without it, we cannot - and I say - should not - build something new.

There’s a “good” way to community - and it’s not always (and often not) comfortable

And still - what does it mean to take care of each other when we are depleted and extracted from on a daily basis? When we must keep going beyond tomorrow, next month or the next year? To community is not just a process or step-by-step action items. It requires significant emotional resilience and labor. And risks are not equally distributed across lines of difference or within communities, so it cannot be equally absorbed either. Who and how risks are taken and shared changes on any given day or circumstance.

We must all assess our own risk first and absorb what is ours to absorb. This is how healing (albeit slow) happens. It is how we begin the long arc work of stitching our communities together. I know what my mother did in her lifetime was healing she passed on to me. She couldn’t do it all – so she charged me with doing the healing that was possible in my lifetime so I didn’t pass that burden on to my daughter. I ask myself - what is the risk (and the work) I own for others because of my power and privilege? To be able to answer this question is my ongoing work. It doesn’t have a singular answer nor is that work ever completed.

In America, I must carry risk for Black and Indigenous people. As a part of a South Asian Hindu majority, I must carry risk for my Muslim brothers and sisters. As a self-identified heterosexual woman, I must carry risk for my LGBTQIA+ comrades. As an immigrant with documented status, I must carry risk for undocumented immigrants. As someone who endeavors to be a good ancestor, I must carry risk for everyone’s children. Who are you able to carry risk for? There is no right or perfect way to do this - and certainly not a comfortable one - but that cannot be the litmus test for whether or not we do it. Proving that we could be community before offering it shouldn’t be the requirement. We have to community with each other in the ways we individually can in order for us to all have a chance as a whole. It’s hard, it's messy and it can be draining. - but, there is no other way forward.

What does it take for us to community?

I operate in and between spaces with people that are 100% aligned with me about how we collectively move towards a more just world to those who have wildly different theories and practices of how to get there (many of whom are in my own family). So, I grapple with what it means for my own work that people who are diametrically opposed to the way I see and build the world are the same people that would, without question, give me everything they have, in any hour of my or my family’s need, and are the first to show up to contribute to our joy. We community without asking for proof that we belong to each other. I know it isn’t always this simple - and believe me, it is really challenging, personal work (more on this to come). But, it is part of my work of this lifetime to hold the complexity of people and see what’s possible in a world where we are fueled by transformation and love first. We choose each other every time because that is how we all thrive. Not everyone can take that risk at the same time, but I determine the risks I can take. And so, it is my responsibility to do so.

Said plainly, true community is not about surrounding ourselves only with those who share our perspectives, but about learning to coexist, communicate, and collaborate, despite differences. And of course, community has boundaries. But it also recognizes that diversity in thought and experience strengthens and heals a community, even when it’s uncomfortable. Growth often comes from these interactions, as they challenge us to expand our understanding and find ways to work toward shared goals, despite personal or ideological differences. Because cutting people off is doing the work of fascism.

This requires deep personal transformation. To truly build and sustain community, each individual must commit to self-reflection, emotional growth, and an ongoing practice of love for ourselves and each other. To see humanity in others as the first thing we reach for and offer grace in moments of conflict. Being community means we don’t owe each other; it’s an implicit agreement that comes in the form of choosing each other - in good and bad times. It means paying it forward is a love language.

Only through this personal commitment can communities develop resilience, compassion, and true connection. When individuals can transcend this, the system will be built by that foundation. Community is built not only in moments of comfort, but in moments of sacrifice and challenge, where individuals place the collective well-being above personal convenience. We can remember it, be it, model it, teach it.

Just start with the one thing you can offer someone who needs help. The rest is catalytic.