Later this week, we’ll be celebrating Global Community Engagement Day. It’s an annual reminder that organizing works and that it’s difficult to go it alone in anything you do. Communities make our lives easier and more fun, but there’s also intrinsic benefits in belonging to one.
Organizing is the coordination of people to do something in the best interest of their community. It’s an implicit recognition of the power community holds, and any discussion of the former that doesn’t mention the latter is incomplete.
After all, we see the power of organizing every day. Stacey Abrams organized to recapture Georgia amid terrible voter suppression in 2020. Minneapolis organized to hold Derek Chauvin accountable for murdering George Floyd. Across the country, workers are organizing to land fair wages and improved work conditions – and winning.
For a moment, consider a world without community organizing. In the U.S. alone, women wouldn’t be allowed to vote, the South would still segregate based on race, and gay people wouldn’t be able to marry. Even further, we wouldn’t know the names of Barack Obama, Cesar Chavez, or Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The power of community and organizing enabled all these watershed historical moments.
Not all communities have to be, for lack of a better word, so serious, however. You can find community in intramural sports leagues, Discord chats for video games, sports fandoms, and hobby groups. It’s all around us – you just need to be willing to jump into it. If you do, you can spend your time with others who share your passion and can help you improve yourself.
Lastly, communities are a mosaic of personal experiences and beliefs. No two people are exactly alike, so any group of people consists of varied histories informing different opinions. This is the foundation of democracy. Debate inspires strong leadership, effective decisions, and has the added benefit of being fair. Of course, not every opinion deserves equal weight. Prejudice, for example, shouldn’t be held similarly to someone’s favorite movie. The latter is benign while the former is evil. But when made in good faith, debating opinions, which are based on experiences, creates a better world.
So, this Global Community Engagement Day, we should all seek out groups that help us improve ourselves or strengthen a cause. Nobody achieves anything alone, and what better support is there than similar-minded folks? We hope you proactively seek such opportunities and consider making Neighborhood FORWARD part of your community.
