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On Cultivating + Finding Your Community: A Toolkit for Building Local Peace Economies

Written by Daisy Carter, Local Peace Economy Coordinator

The first time that I found myself searching for community was during a process of deep personal transformation. I had just dropped out of college and had been bedridden for months prior due to health issues. As a poor, young black femme in Kentucky, who was slowly growing into my own queerness and building a black radical politic during this period, there were only a few places that I felt safe and that I could connect with people. I was living in a small college town that didn't have a lot of people that looked like me or shared the same struggles as I did at that moment. And by the time that my body finally bounced back and I was ready to break isolation, the COVID lockdown hit,  and I was moving through a visceral kind of grief after the murder Breonna Taylor. By that time, I was fully activated into both the environmental justice and Black Lives Matter movement, but still felt unbearably alienated. The direct actions I had led and attended during those times gave me a sense of the community that I wanted to be a part of, but the feeling quickly died once the action was over. The community that I had previously associated myself with didn't resonate with me anymore - I was surrounded by friends that had divergent interests and values that were beginning to compromise my own.  I knew that in order for me to feel safe, feel supported in my organizing, and build genuine connections with people around me, I needed to actively find and build my own community that would do so. 

Community is resistance. Community is love in action. In this time of genocide, rising fascism, economic struggle, and climate disaster, our communities can act as the lifeboats that keep us from sinking. While many of us may belong to different communities or social circles, we can still feel a sense of disconnection, alienation, and unease. We face similar struggles at this moment - we are trying to understand what it means to be in community, how to find it, how to sustain it for our personal and collective wellbeing.

Here is a guide that help you understand your personal needs for connection, people and places that could help fill in the gaps, and action steps that could help you start building your own community:

Self, Communal, and Historical Awareness - Self Directed to Community Engaged

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Self Awareness - The first step to any community building process is to arrive with a deep awareness of oneself, privilege, needs, concerns, cares and responsibilities. Self-awareness helps us to root out our biases, our fears, and our boundaries (or lack thereof) so that we can actively and authentically engage with the communities we want to build. A strong community will continue to serve your process of self awareness and responsibility.

  • What are your values? 
  • What is important to you?
  • What is your role?
  • What are your needs?
  • What do you have to offer?

Community Awareness -The war economy thrives on division, creating the types of conditions where we are unable to find time to learn or fully sit with the complexity of the communities that we currently live in. Individualism has eroded our curiosity for others who are not in our immediate circles and interests, which exacerbates the conditions of isolation we feel.  Building community awareness helps us to move beyond ourselves to ground in the issues, cultures, and lives of those around us. 

  • What communities are you a part of? What communities are you not a part of?
  • Do you work in service to the larger community?
  • What are some cultural values in your community?

Historical Awareness - Our personal and collective experiences are all rooted in events that happened in the past that still have deep impacts on us today. We could turn to the past to further understand our current conditions, ways that we connect, and understand our community’s values.

  • How has your community moved through struggle in the past? 
  • What cultural practices have been preserved over time?
  • What did community celebration or grief tending look like?

Mapping Exercise:

Take some time to do some historical mapping of important people, spaces or places in your neighborhood that have provided room for community building to root itself in the past.What impacts does this have on you or your community today? (refer to pg. 128 of the Local Peace Economy Workbook, Mapping Community History)

Build A Shared Purpose and Vision - Limitation to Imagination

Strong communities are usually guided by a clear purpose, share alignment in values, and work together to meet their material needs to transform their lived conditions. Rooting your community in a collective purpose and vision encourages people to stay engaged, stay accountable, and motivates others to take action. It gives them something to belong to, to feel responsible for. When the purpose or vision of your community is not clearly defined, it could easily lead to conflict and confusion.

Group Activity

Identify 5-8 people in your community that you may want to start a local peace economy project with in the future. Come together to answer the following questions:

  • Why is your community coming together at this moment?
  • What do you hope to accomplish together?  How do you want to do this together?
  • What do you want to practice together?

Cultivate a Sense of Belonging - Alienation to Connection

Belonging is a fundamental human need - it encapsulates deep feelings of connection, responsibility, and safety within social groups, places, and individual and collective relationships. 

To belong is both an internal and external process. The feeling of belonging is something that arises from within. It is the full acceptance of self, and giving permission to others to witness us whole. The war economy asks us to shapeshift, adapt, and perform in order to fit into the status quo, stripping away pieces of us that makes us who we are. On the other hand, the feeling of belonging is something that may not feel accessible in the places and spaces that we gather in our communities. We must remain open to the ways in which our culture makes space for individualism to proliferate itself - where we are forced to perform for recognition, respect, or social status. Not only is cultivating a sense of belonging an imperative for building community, but for our personal health and fulfillment. According to a public health study conducted by Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, U.S Surgeon General, about one in two adults experience loneliness. This “epidemic of loneliness” was exacerbated following the COVID-19 pandemic, fueling a culture of social isolation and lack of connection. 

Reflection Questions

  • How can you cultivate a space of belonging for you and your community?
  • What conditions have you experienced that give you a sense of belonging?

TAKE ACTION: Create a practice of “bridging”! Bridging can be described as curating events and spaces for communities that don’t usually know each other to build connections, share stories, and begin the trust building process. These individuals usually come from different backgrounds, identities,and cultures. 

To create a “bridge”, you’ll need the following:

  • Two strong facilitators
  • An accessible place to gather
  • Community agreements

Here are some questions or activities to consider for your bridging practice:

  • What are conversational prompts that you can provide for people to learn more about one another and build connections?
  • What are offerings that people can bring to one another? (ie: food/potluck, art, etc.)
  • What is the type of culture you want to foster during your bridging practice?

Building Trust and Accountability - Problem-Solving to Managing Complexities 

Accountability is the radical choice to be in community with others. It is the understanding that harm, tension, and misunderstandings are bound to occur in our relationships and communities. Accountability asks us to sit in our discomfort, to acknowledge our actions, and create a long-term plan to improve the way we show up if we are committed to the growth and resiliency of our communities.

Accountability is a two way street - oftentimes it is something we expect of others, to rely on our community to hold us accountable for the way that we show up and let us know when we are moving in ways that are outside our values. But it is through self-accountability that we open up space to trust ourselves and allow others to put their trust in us. Trust is one of the backbone of building a peace movement. When we don't trust ourselves, when we don't trust others that we are building community for the first time, this limits our collective possibilities. This could lead to replicating harm in spaces that were intended to transform carceral tendencies and patterns in our communities.

  • Be aware of your communication style - Take a moment to reflect on the way you communicate with your community- would you consider it to be open, honest, or direct? Are your conversations deep or surface-level?
  • Practice deep, active listening - Are you listening to learn or to respond? 

Here are some tips to practice active listening in your community:

  • Get grounded and be present
  • Establish eye contact
  • Avoid interruption
  • Ask open-ended questions to deepen your understanding 
  • Honor your commitments 
  • Self responsibility 

Community accountability can be described as a community-led process that ensures members of a particular community live into their values, honor their commitments, and accept the consequences, positive or negative, of their actions. It is through this framework that we address conflict, harm or violence in ways that don’t rely on the carceral forces of the state. Community accountability makes it possible for peace economies to exist and thrive.

The accountability process that a particular community chooses for themselves is influenced by the culture of the group, and can come with varying consequences that are all understood by the community facilitating that process.While there is no right or wrong way to move through an accountability process, we need to be mindful of tendencies towards punishment, vengeance, and violence.

The Five C Continuum, developed by Loretta J. Ross, lays out a framework individuals can use when responding to conflict:

  • Calling out - This is most reminiscent with public shaming, but may be the most accessible pathway for individuals who have historically not been able to rely on communities or the state to hold others accountable 
  • Cancelling - Ultimate expression of prison industrial complex
  • Calling in - Not the opposite of “calling out”, but choosing to turn to love and respect instead of shame when we are holding someone accountable
  • Calling on - Requesting that an individual or group improve their actions, but refusing to invest the time or energy towards that growth
  • Calling it off - If a perpetrator/harm-doer is unwilling to move through self-accountability, the process of community accountability is halted until they are ready for self-reflection

Reflection Questions:

  • What is a set of values and practices that your community can turn to in the event of conflict, harm or violence?
  • What roles in your community may need to be formed to address tensions or facilitate conflict transformation? 
  • What are systems and strategies that can provide participatory ways for your community to be involved in your accountability process?

Activity: Pod Mapping Exercise (developed by Mia Mingus from BATJC)

A pod, according to Mia Mingus, refers to a specific relationship between people who turn to each in the event of conflict or violent, harmful, and abusive experiences. Use the diagram below to map out the people in your life that could help support in cultivating community safety, accountability, or work to transform behaviors. 

  • Write your name in the middle circle.
  • The surrounding bold-outlined circles are your pod. Write the names of the people who are in your pod. Write the names of actual individuals, instead of things such as “my church group” or “my neighbors.”
  • The dotted lines represent “movable” people. These are individuals that could be “moved” into your pod, but you may need to work on trust-building or understanding their values more. 
  • The larger lines represent your networks, communities, or groups that could help resource your pod. 

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On Building Commitments - Individualism to Self-Responsibility

Commitments help us learn how to rely on ourselves and create space for others to rely on us. Commitments keep us accountable and promote sustainable action to achieve the vision that we have for ourselves and our communities. Cultivating community is a non-linear process that doesn’t always provide immediate gratification. It takes time, and a real personal investment into the people that are in your community. Creating short and long-term commitments can help break down this process.

Here are some reflection questions that could help you map out short and long-term commitments you’d like to make for community building:

  • What is a small gesture you could commit to?
  • How do you want to show up for others?
  • How do you want others to hold you accountable?

Short-term commitments - Actions that you could take within the next 3-6 months that help you find community + cultivate a sense of belonging (ie: giving a neighbor a ride, attending community events, take a class, etc.)

Long-term commitments - Actions that you could take within the next 6 months - 1 year that help you sustain your commitment to community building (ie: host a community event, build a mutual aid practice with your community, etc.)

Conflict Transformation - Problem-Solving to Managing Complexities

We can't be in community with one another if we don't develop a capacity to move through and transform conflict. This is a moment in our movements where we're experiencing different levels of conflict, whether it's happening on the interpersonal, communal, or professional levels. It's important that we remain open to the ways in which we replicate carceral, punitive ideologies that we've been conditioned into by the war economy so that we could be in right relationship with our community.

Conflict transformation is often conflated with conflict management, which is an approach that usually aims to “keep the peace”, or fails to get down to the root cause of a particular problem. Conflict management also implies that the individual or group working to address the conflict removes the survivor or victim from the process to impose their own solutions. Conflict transformation tells us that we must not move around a particular issue, but move through it all. Tension, arguments, disagreements, and other terms related to conflict are all generative tools to help us create closer, more dynamic bonds and boundaries within our communities. 

Reflection Questions (from Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown): 

  1. Do you increase or decrease tension or dramatic moments that happen between you and loved ones? Co-workers? With peers/partner organizations?
  2. What is your first reaction to conflict?
  3. How do you feel and what do you do when you witness:
    1. Anger
    2. Joy
    3. Tears
    4. Depression
    5. Imbalanced power dynamics

On Mutual Aid and Building the Commons - Competition to Interdependence 

Mutual aid can be described as people coming together to meet their own survival needs, while working to transform the conditions of their suffering (ie: food, housing, water, care + belonging), with the understanding that the systems that are in place are purposefully designed to exacerbate their suffering. Mutual aid is the glue that has historically held our social movements together, and sustains our organizing. 

Mutual aid is not the end-all to community building - there are many of us that are involved in mutual aid projects or practices that still uphold transactional , charity- based relationships instead of solidarity-based ones. Mutual aid is most effective and impactful when we intentionally practice accountability, honor our commitments, transform conflict, and work to be in right relationship with those that are most impacted by the oppressive systems we live under. 

A key indicator of a strong, resilient community is the ability to build a community commons, a type of mutual aid project and third space that works to create a place where people can convene, share resources and labor, and make decisions together. A community commons can act as a bridge for connection, but can also help to actualize the goals, visions, and values of the communities that we belong to. It could be a great starting point for building foundational infrastructure for local peace economies in your own locality.

Group Exercise

Identify 5-8 people that you have developed deep relationships and bonds with during your community building process. Gather together to brainstorm, identify struggles within your community, and think about how the community can come together to forge solutions through a mutual aid lens. These questions can help guide you in creating your own community commons. 

  • What is the political climate in your community?
  • What are the needs of the most impacted by the war economy? What are your personal stakes?
  • What are some of the issues your community faces?
  • Do you have a friend or ally that would be willing to help coordinate/provide a community commons space? A local business or another third space?
  • What are resources, skills, or labor that you would like to exchange in your community?

Resources

On Community Building

On Belonging + Connection

Trust and Accountability

Conflict Transformation

Building Commitments