Meeting the Moment with Community

Following the recent US elections, our communities face unprecedented challenges and threats. The failure to meaningfully address the concerns of working people has led to a political crisis that will have far-reaching real-life impacts. We know from the first Trump administration that the coming years will bring an increase in attacks on marginalized communities while further eroding our country’s civic capacity and democratic norms.

This alignment of patriarchy, white supremacy, and corporate power will result in policies that affect frontline communities the most. Now more than ever, we must stand in solidarity with each other through a barrage of attacks on immigrants, the trans community, reproductive rights, libraries, schools, the social fabric of our communities, and more.

We have arrived here because politicians at the national level have preyed on our worst impulses – fear, greed, scarcity, disgust. These worst impulses driving the MAGA coalition in the US and a growing number of authoritarian governments around the world will only be defeated if we build a counter-vision rooted in solidarity, abundance, joy, and, ultimately, liberation.

If we want democracy in national and international politics, we have to build and practice democracy locally. We must co-create spaces and projects that build a cooperative understanding and capacity in our own communities.

At this uncertain moment in history, it is clearer than ever that communities must rely on each other to survive. We are the ones who will save ourselves.

So what can we do? We can organize a community of care locally. We can support each other through mutual aid. We can work cooperatively. We can build the social infrastructure to support lives and communities of abundance rather than scarcity.

At Shareable, we collaborate with organizers and allies to imagine, resource, network, and scale cooperative projects. Our educational co-labs, solutions journalism, and ongoing partnerships are designed to meet direct needs and build collective capacity. Projects like food assistance co-ops, Libraries of Things, and emergency battery networks. We host a library of over 300 how-to guides on how you can share more and live better in your local community – whether you want to start with a mutual aid network, a potluck, a repair cafe, or a worker co-op.

We don’t know exactly what the next few years will bring. But we do know this: people power is stronger than the power of fear. Democracy is built in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our neighborhoods. We can join with our neighbors to build communities of care that meet our direct needs and show that another world is not only possible, it is already blooming.

We’ll leave you with this quote from Dean Spade:

“To imagine a society where we share everything, co-govern everything, have everything we need, and don’t rely on coercion and domination, we have to shed the capitalist propaganda that tells us people are naturally greedy, and that without police keeping us in our places we would hoard and harm. Instead, we can notice, as is particularly clear in times of disaster, that people are naturally connective and generous, though we often have cultural baggage to shed from being conditioned by white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Again and again we see people sharing what little they have after storms, floods, and fires, saving each other. Through mutual aid projects, many of us get a chance to deepen those practices of generosity, and make them long-term support systems that we co-govern to help us all survive and mobilize for change.”-Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (And the Next)

Stand with us as we show that people power is stronger than the power of fear!

Resources for This Moment

Here are some resources from Shareable and our network of organizers and allies to help make sense of the election, keep your community safe, plan for direct action, and organize in your community: