Without community, there is no liberation.
—Audre Lorde
So much of the work of abolition is building a container in which to practice abolitionist culture. The way to build that culture is to build a team. To build a community. This isn’t necessarily based on geography or even on proximity. There are abolitionist teams who work internationally who never meet face-to-face.
This is especially true now, when we live in a whole new world and people are still working from home and finding interesting backgrounds on Zoom. We’re not always in person together, but it doesn’t mean we can’t mobilize and organize successfully.
The concept of community building is really about whom we can trust, whom we can feel emotionally, spiritually and physically safe with, as well as reciprocal accountability. These are the key factors when building the community you want to be evolving inside of. How we practice abolition is critical.
For the last 20 years I have been a part of an intentional abolitionist community. We are multi-racial, inter-faith, multi-gender, multi-class, differently abled, pro-Black, pro-trans, pro-queer, pro-poly and we deeply believe in the theory and practice of abolition. In different iterations, our community has lived communally, met weekly for our social event, called “Tribes Day,” and held monthly retreats to talk courageously about how we impact each other and the ways we can grow individually and collectively.
We have worked really hard to make sure everyone feels seen and heard in our community. We want to grow—as individuals and as a collective—so it’s important that we check in on each other as often as we can to stay centered on the ideals we believe in.
As we have grown older, we’ve dealt with loss, gentrification and tending to our own familial needs. We don’t all live in the same neighborhood, region or country, but we still consider one another a community.
Yes, community can be anywhere you need it to be.
You need every principle we’ve discussed thus far in order to make this one work. This work can’t be done alone. Can you start alone? Yes. Can you read alone and think alone and marinate on teachings alone? Absolutely. No matter what level your work will take you to, it will likely require you to join or build a community—whether it’s a weekly meeting at your kitchen table or a Zoom lecture with hundreds.
How do you build a community? What does it look like to you?
I know that my scenario, an intentional and purposeful work-life community with like-minded comrades, puts me in a very privileged position. I am very aware of that. So I can only say: it is attainable. It takes work, but it is attainable.
Perhaps your community begins with just yourself. You add one more person. This is a community! Don’t think for a moment that if it’s less than a dozen people, it’s not a community. You start where you are, strengthen the bonds as tight as you can and then add on as it makes sense to do so. Community building is fluid and ever changing. Start with how you plan to communicate. Will you try to meet in person? What are your schedules, and how much time per week can you give to building community? Compare work and life schedules and see what makes sense. Offer fine details that help a community grow stronger through future plans, potential job or home changes. What do you want from this work? How often should you take a step back and evaluate your past, present and future?
What needs to happen as your community grows? You’ll need to make sure there are clearly defined roles and everyone knows what’s expected of them. Even if it causes slight conflict at the beginning, it’s more important to have that discomfort now than when you have a community of 50 people who are all resentful because no one has clearly defined roles.
The community for this work doesn’t need to mirror everyone’s role in the outside world. If Ellen is an attorney who specializes in immigration law and she wants to work on that in the community—of course, that’s what she should do. If Ellen is an attorney who specializes in immigration law but she actually wants to make the coffee for every meeting, clean up afterward and oversee the children’s area, then that must be okay.
A community’s development must be led from within. People should be able to define themselves not by their labels but by what suits them. Of course, if you have a member who speaks Spanish or French or Haitian Creole, it would be hoped that they would help as needed. But if someone’s full-time job is translating and that part of their brain is simply exhausted, it might make sense to hire a translator as needed. Just because someone can do something doesn’t mean they are the best person for that task. Consent is a critical practice.
Figuring out who does what may be the more challenging part of setting up a growing community. Everyone should have a role to play, so that there’s an equal feeling of belonging. Figuring out what those roles should look like is not always (or ever) simple to do.
We’ve already talked about how to interact with one another; this is when it gets real. You’re not fond of someone’s ideas, and they can tell. You both choke up and don’t speak at meetings—and the frostiness can be felt throughout the room. You’re not ready to have a courageous conversation. You might just need some space. One of you can take a break from the regular meeting until you have some time to process the feelings and move on from them.
A strong community has plans for relationships that occur within it. Like-minded people, especially when dealing with something as intense as abolition, are likely to grow close to one another, and that can manifest in many ways, from besties to friends with benefits to poly long-term relationships. It can all strengthen the community. Or it can explode it to bits.
Will your community have a hands-off rule in place, with no in-house sexual relationships between members? How will you enforce that? What will happen to those who flout the rule? Or will there be a do-as-you-please-we’re-all-grown mentality? What are the risks there and how will you deal with the consequences?
What should your meetings and get-togethers be like? In Alcoholics Anonymous, each organized meeting has several options. It can be an open meeting, which means anyone can attend, whether or not they are alcoholics, including students and teachers and anyone doing research. It can be a closed meeting, where everyone must identify as having a problem with alcohol and is expected to share their first name with the group for accountability. With some groups, you can’t attend your first meeting unless you’ve been sober for 24 hours; with others, you can come straight from the bar. There are gender-specific meetings; LGBTQIA+-only meetings; Big Book meetings, where they mostly read AA literature; and step meetings, where they discuss one of the 12 steps and start at the first step every 12 weeks.
The list of possibilities goes on and on with different types of meetings that all work under the AA umbrella and have the same common goal. Keep that in mind as you build your community. It should be set up to work for what you’re building. There’s no need to make it identical to anything else you know. As long as you all can communicate, deal with conflict and reflect on your progress, your community will grow.
Bring that imagination principle to community building. Think about what you want to see and achieve, not just what you have seen in the past. Imagine. Build your capacity to see your community beyond what it has traditionally been perceived as.
Over the years, communities have been decimated by infighting. In some cases, external forces infiltrated communities to sow discord and keep them from becoming too powerful. If your community has any form of power, expect that you are known and that you may one day be worthy of infiltration.
Leadership is important. Will there be a single leader and co-leaders or deputies? Will people be appointed or elected? Will there be term limits? Can people be suspended? Ejected? On the basis of what? Because you may be building your community from scratch, leadership is something you may need to handle by default. Then, at some point, be ready to reevaluate what works and where your skill set is best used.
Doing movement work doesn’t mean it has to be all doom and gloom and statistics and court cases. How will your community unwind and team build? How will you make sure you are not overwhelmed and overworked? Good community work doesn’t come with exhausted or worn-down community members. Is there a monthly movie night? (Most streaming services offer a way to watch films “together” at a specific time.) Is there a recipe night where people bring their favorite dish or takeout from a favorite restaurant? Food brings people together. So do massages and mani-pedis.
As your community grows and solidifies, your own thoughts toward the ideals of the community will change. It could happen as your community gains greater wins or deals with greater challenges. It could happen as members’ thoughts change on your stated ideals. It could happen as the average age of your community members becomes younger. Either way, things will change and you need to be prepared for that.
Being nimble is also important. Whatever your community needs, both internally and in the greater world, try to stay educated on the issues that are important. It’s tough to do. Elections are happening consistently, bills are constantly being introduced and reintroduced in Congress, and op-eds that push opinion on different topics, news specials, documentaries, funded studies and research are always fighting for attention—there’s a lot going on that will affect abolitionists, and staying on top of it all will be a central theme in community building. Creating an infrastructure where community members can take on different aspects of this work is key to establishing a sustainable community.
What to Read/Watch/See/Hear: The National Museum of African American History and Culture has a series of lesson plans on Black community building that can be used in or out of a formal education setting. If you are already on your way to building your team, a good resource to check out is a workbook by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan called Fumbling Towards Repair. This workbook is a valuable resource that can provide best practices in addressing interpersonal harm and violence in communities.
What I Know: As the mother of a son who asks questions and is beginning to ask how the world works, I know how important it is to fill up our children’s minds as early and as quickly as we can. They are sponges, and sitting down with them, cutting through all of the daily noise of all of our lives, is the best thing we can offer them. When your child starts playing make-believe, pretending to eat food, take orders and tuck in animals, that’s when you know that imagination is ramping up and they are ready to make sense of their world.
For me, part of my story is that while my home life wasn’t able to always provide that kind of imaginative support, at some point I started seeking it out myself. If I hadn’t gotten randomly sent to audition for a rigorous performing arts school in junior high—I don’t know where I’d be. Because my mom wasn’t focused on that. Once I saw that imagination, felt it, tasted it, that was it. I never let go. I knew it was there. I just didn’t know what it was—or what to do with it.
We can’t underestimate the importance of elders in our community. They can be the backbone of a community (not by default). Those who choose to build are invaluable. I was blessed to have a relationship with my great-grandmother throughout my childhood. She passed when I was twenty-one. Every time I told her I wanted to have an impromptu show for her, she would roll her eyes but she was there. She gave me 100 percent of her attention. Let’s practice being fully present with each other. Presence is invaluable.
What You Know: Community building can seem daunting, but most of us are wired to do it. Our family of origin is often our first community. We may not build it from the ground up, but it’s our first understanding of what community building looks like, for better or for worse. You’ll have some moments where you’re not sure if what you’re building is sustainable. As long as you’re giving it thought, each step will help you sort your goals.
You also know that we have to focus on self in order to build a community. If for any reason you are not in the best space personally, any community you try to build will not have a solid foundation. Before you begin a community, think, what are your own goals, personal and professional? What are you doing to make them happen? Are you stunted in any way? What about your health? Are there any health screenings or doctor/dentist appointments that you’re overdue for?
Don’t let community building become something else to divert you from the important things. There’s no sense in building organizations and communities to talk about bettering our world when you’re overdue for a mammogram or a prostate screening. Get a clean bill of health. Maybe you get your finances together before you start organizing. You can get a free credit report and see where you stand and what you want your next personal goal to be.
Mind, body and soul should be calibrated before you take over the world.
Those Who Can Show: Kendrick Sampson was born and raised in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, the son of Daphne Smith Sampson and Hoyle Sampson Sr. Growing up biracial, he reflects that while his lighter complexion afforded him certain privileges, he also experienced an internalized self-hatred for not “being enough” of one thing or the other; he now recognizes this is really the colorism we all learn from white supremacist culture.
As a teenager, Sampson’s experiences with systemic injustice intensified—he remembers being pulled out of his car at gunpoint by a police officer who accused him of stealing his mother’s car. The officer claimed that Kendrick “fit the description,” but after discrediting the baseless accusations, the young Kendrick was left disturbed and uneasy.
It became clear to him that, no matter how “light skinned” he appears, he is still a Black man in the eyes of law enforcement. This interaction would later be foundational in his development as an abolitionist freedom fighter and would greatly shape the trajectory of his acting career in Los Angeles, California. In just a few short years, Kendrick has successfully built a powerful and radical community of people at every level of the entertainment industry that is challenging the industry to be an ally in amplifying the voices, stories and vision of a world that is just for everyone.
In 2019, Kendrick founded BLD PWR, a nonprofit initiative. His organization is successfully connecting people in his hometown in Texas to the work that is happening in Los Angeles and across the nation—binding together a multitude of experiences, analyses and wisdoms that are enriching our movement for the better.
Kendrick is a master community builder and communicator—he has successfully built bridges in spaces that would intimidate most, but he has done it unapologetically and confronted age-old institutions with searing, acute criticism. He is unabashed in his interviews, candidly stating that “[Hollywood is] actually an oppressive capitalist, white supremacist system” that has been complicit in perpetuating the culture of violence in Black and Brown communities in the United States and in the world. Kendrick calls out this billion-dollar industry for the harmful systems it has created internally within its privileged walls and the oppressive culture it has shaped through narratives that reinforce police violence and anti-Blackness in television and film. Kendrick is relentless and refuses to believe that this creative and imaginative industry cannot do better. Through the organizing efficacy of BLD PWR, he is transforming the way that mainstream media is representing the uprisings that center the defunding of police in defense of Black lives. Taking it a step further, Kendrick co-wrote a letter that was signed by more than 300 Black actors that urges the entertainment industry at large to divest from police and invest in the Black community. The letter bluntly states that “[t]he lack of a true commitment to inclusion and institutional support has only reinforced Hollywood’s legacy of white supremacy. This is not only in storytelling. It is cultural and systemic in Hollywood.”
The basis of his key ideas is that donations, while important to fund these movements, are not enough and, for Kendrick, are only superficial and do not translate to the structural transformation that needs to take place if Black lives are to be truly valued.
If you follow Kendrick on his social media platforms, you can catch a glimpse of his astute tactics—he reels you in with Hollywood allure (read: a headshot or shirtless selfie) and, once he clickbaits you, you read the fine print and you realize that he’s actually educating you on the latest action or campaign that you should be supporting. His ability to leverage his unique position as a storyteller to deepen, complicate and expand our narratives has been vital in this movement to transform how we are represented. A cultural shift in mainstream media is key if we are to win, because the most difficult part of fighting for our freedom is being able to imagine what our freedom can look like and then fighting like hell to make it a reality. Kendrick is training and leading the vanguard of creatives who will authentically tell our stories and open up the pathways where abolition, healing, and freedom are on the screen and in daily lived practices.
How We’ll Grow: Plain and simple: without community, we don’t get free. Even though many communities, like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, were flawed, both in their beginnings and at their heights, we can learn from them and avoid the bumps we know will be in the road waiting for us.
Think long-term. What happens if you pivot in a different direction, can your built community stand on its own? Can you step away from a community you’ve built? Absolutely! It’s a testament to the strength of what you’ve built when you can move on and know that the ideals you’ve put into place are there. Nimble is good. Audre Lorde’s life, spent building communities, is an example of how it looks when it’s time to move on and set up a new (or just an additional) community. Every group will not fill every person’s needs, creatively or otherwise. You can’t expect every community to be a perfect reflection of yourself. It wouldn’t work well if it was. Our communities can benefit from creating a space for nuance and complexity. This is how we learn and grow together.
The Real World: In the early days of BLM, we received a large donation from a (very) famous celebrity. We were very appreciative and knew exactly how the money would be best spent. We were also nervous. The celebrity was very firm—keep it anonymous. In the early days of our social justice era, people in certain industries wanted to keep their involvement with Black Lives Matter quiet. (I’m happy to see that people are much more transparent now about these things.) We gave our word that we would keep it to ourselves. Then, another comrade in the movement spilled the beans on social media. They were exhausted from hearing disparaging comments being made about this person. So they posted: Celeb XYZ just donated to BLM so there. Oof. Even though the comrade wasn’t an officer within BLM, they were a reliable source, and the press started to swarm me and my co-founders to find out if it was true. Obviously, we couldn’t lie.
Here’s where your community comes in. For me, let’s call my main support during this time Benny. He called the day our benefactor’s identity was revealed. I was shaking with nerves. Personally and professionally, I wasn’t prepared for this kind of scandal. I had given this person my word! It wasn’t my fault, but no one wants to hear that.
Benny called me every hour on the hour, offering advice, giving me only necessary updates and guidance. He made sure I ate, took breaths, remembered that this, too, would pass. In that particular moment, when the other members of my different communities were laden with their own issues and weren’t able to show up for me, Benny did.
He reminded me that it was a luxury problem. Someone had given us our largest donation to date. It was going to help a lot of people, I had done the best I could to keep it quiet and it just didn’t work out that way. When I’m in the real world, just a human putting one foot in front of the other, I need the Bennys in my life to show up for me unexpectedly. My community sometimes has community within it, and that’s very precious to me. You will have that moment. Make sure you are nurturing the relationships with the Bennys in your life and community.
GUIDING QUESTIONS
1. Do you belong to an established community of any sort?
2. Do they have goals as a group?
3. Do you have an idea of what your ideal community looks like? Describe it.
4. Are you familiar with historical, established communities and how they were able to maintain? Or not maintain?