What Community Investment Looks Like
Here's how we weave
We started talking last week about weaving the fabric of our communities back together, in light of the recent election results.
And I know that something like that can seem kind of hard to envision.
How does that look, practically?
Beautiful metaphor… but what does it actually mean in how I live my day-to-day life… or in the visions I cast for myself, my family, my neighborhood, my city?
Don’t fear, dear ones.
I want to start us off today with some real-life examples that I have experienced and/or witnessed myself, in the hope that it’ll help us start to weave together.
Neighborhood Community Meals
My friends in a nearby neighborhood started organizing weekly community meals — a chance for any and all to come for a free meal and fellowship.
I believe their neighborhood association was given a grant to kick it all off, and after that point, individual families sponsored a meal as they could.
Families with kids were especially welcome, with activities for the kids planned at every gathering. Food options were inclusive, allowing for special dietary needs and different pallets — and I noticed that they seemed to be aiming for fun themes every week. Things like “Breakfast for Dinner,” or “Taco Night.”
The stories I heard from these gatherings were so heartening. Neighbors that lived close to each other were meeting each other for the first time. Friendships were formed. Connective glue amidst their community was being solidified.
Laundry Help After Baby
My mom’s mom — grandma Ione — had many babies. Nine total! They were a pretty typical Catholic family in post-World War II America, in that Baby-Boom age.
As you can imagine, their household was often a fairly chaotic riot of kids and activity, with visitors from their neighborhood and church and other communities regularly passing through and joining the family’s story.
I know my mom’s childhood neighbors by name, because I’d hear stories about them so often while growing up. I got a visceral sense of just how connected they were.
From my mom’s perspective, and that of her siblings, a new baby was always reason to celebrate. She remembered fondly how, when they got the news of an impending arrival of a new sibling, they’d all pour outside the house, clanging pots and pans and cheering, to announce the news to the world.
From my grandma’s perspective, however, a new baby was often an overwhelming prospect. I get it! Especially now, being an adult with an adult’s perspective. My grandpa was a butcher — not exactly the most lucrative career. And my grandma not only had to care for that many humans, she had to figure out how to feed them, and how to keep a cozy home, with minimal financial resources — all of this in addition to the fact that there were only three bedrooms and one bathroom in that home.
My mom recounted that Grandma Ione would often cry, when she was pregnant again, a fact that I’m sure could not entirely be attributed to hormones.
Knowing how overwhelmed she surely was, I’m extra-aware how meaningful it was that the neighbors actively helped and participated in their lives.
One of the ways they did this, which seems almost inconceivable in comparison to my 2024 experience living in the very same city, is that her neighbors apparently would take all of the family’s laundry, when she was home with a new baby in the postpartum period, and they would wash and fold it all. (I’ll add here, just because it helps you picture this better, that automatic washing machines were not yet a thing.)
Can you believe it?
Can you imagine something like that happening still?
Healing with Heart
In Milwaukee, there’s an org called CORE/El Centro that is very close to my heart.
Not only do I love its mission (providing integrative wellness services like acupuncture, reiki, massage, yoga, and movement classes in a bilingual environment, primarily to a population of low-income immigrants), this is the org for which I first fundraised. CORE is the first chapter of my fundraising story.
From the beginning, CORE had a program it called Healing with Heart, which was a way for folks who could afford their services to come there for them (vs. all of the other for-profit options out there) and pay full-price (or even more), so that folks who couldn’t afford them could partake also.
I LOVE this model.
In my mind, this is one of the purest ways that community can be transformational, in our capitalistic world. Capitalism creates winners and losers. Some people are much better-equipped to “make it” in capitalism, meaning they have all the money they need to live good lives. Others, for various reasons, will struggle.
Here, those who are surviving and thriving in our economic model willingly reach out in solidarity with those who are not.
This isn’t charity.
This is saying, “I need these services. You need these services too. We all need these services. So let me help make them possible for you... so we all can thrive.”
Mutual Aid in Minneapolis
Life was hard then.
We made it easier.
During the Uprising of Spring/Summer 2020 (after the MPD’s murder of George Floyd, which reverberated out from an epicenter here in Minneapolis, to become global), existing day-to-day in this city was… dicey.
I’ve written about that time more vividly here.
What I want to focus on today was how much networks of mutual aid began being woven in ways they never had before in this city.
People from every neighborhood were coming together and organizing, primarily online. Shared Google docs and spreadsheets were getting passed around. People broadcast needs on Twitter and other social media, and others responded to those needs. People in areas of the city that were not on fire brought basic supplies to folks who had lost their homes and/or businesses.
I have never otherwise seen that kind of solidarity in Minneapolis — before or since. And I genuinely hope that we can rekindle it.
Your Turn
So.
Having soaked up these examples…
What comes to mind for you?
How have you seen this kind of community come alive?
Let’s collect examples here, as a way of informing how we might begin re-weaving the fabric of our communities back together, going forward….
With Love,
Cecelia 💗