Upswinging - Increasing Civic Engagement Starts with the People Right Around You
(Dean Street, Brooklyn - just south of 4th Avenue)
I’ve been exploring issues and themes from The Upswing by Robert D. Putnam. Next, I want to look at grassroots activism at its most basic level.
Two years ago my neighbor Julio and I painted this sign. I’m not writing about it because we are great guys (of course we are), but rather because the backstory is relevant to why I believe connecting with people right around you is key to deepening civic engagement in our society.
This sign sits at one end of our block in Brooklyn; what’s pictured here is its second iteration. An earlier version was smaller and less aesthetically pleasing. It sits on a cinderblock wall fronting a small parking lot behind a NYC public service building; the lot is used by a church across the street. Although not necessarily lovely, LOVE is a pretty nice message and people on our block liked that the original version was there. It got tagged with graffiti, and either the building manager or the church got concerned about the graffiti and painted over the wall. In an instant, “LOVE” was gone from the block, and people were upset.
I live on an unusually interconnected block. There is a “block president”, and pre-COVID, we took turns attending the monthly community liaison meetings at the local police precinct and reporting back. Also pre-COVID, we had three block closings/year in the warmer weather so kids could play on the street and adults could socialize. We have a listserv through which people offer things up they no longer need or to borrow tools. And we chat about the garbage on our sidewalks, disturbances from neighboring businesses and, of course, the LOVE sign. Not everyone participates, but a fair number do in one way or another.
When the block got agitated about losing the LOVE sign we started brainstorming ideas. We explored getting a city beautification grant but that seemed daunting, and we were eager to deal with before it became a bigger problem. A few of us volunteered to just take care it. But it wasn’t our wall.
At the time we didn’t have a great relationship with the church using the lot, most of whose members travel from outside the neighborhood to worship here. We reached out to the pastor and explained our concerns about the sign. He designated a member to serve as a liaison to our block association, and we coordinated a date to repaint the wall. We put LOVE back on the block – in color, larger and symmetrical. It isn’t a thing of beauty, but it is better than what was there before, and it’s not uncommon to see people posing for selfies in front of it.
One important by-product was an improved relationship between the church and block residents. Our liaison joined the list-serve and made sure that the church came to participate at the next block closing, and they chipped in for the bouncy castle. We advertised when their youth were doing a car wash.
None of this is terribly momentous or deep, but it is reflective of a degree of connection and mutual responsibility that characterizes this particular block. And it accounts for how people have helped each other through the current crisis.
We’ve all been tested by the stress of the COVID period, and we missed our block closings last summer. We were maybe one week into the crisis before cooperative shopping arrangements cropped up on the block. At one point we were sharing grocery and kosher butcher deliveries, and a weekly fish CSA pick-up with various constellations of neighbors. As the crisis extended the listserv discussion extended to helping not just each other, but also responding to the racial justice issues that had erupted, and helping the church at the other end of the block that hosts a feeding program on Tuesdays. I know many other mutual aid networks have bloomed during the crisis. I suspect they are catalyzed by people whose experience of neighborly interaction and mutual interdependence mirrors what I’ve seen on my block.
Putnam’s Bowling Alone documented the decline of a range of civic engagements across many sectors of American society from a peak in the post-World War II period. The bowling leagues and synagogue brotherhoods and sisterhoods that characterized the suburbs of my youth were largely gone by the time we were raising our kids. Bowling alleys were for birthday parties or staff socials – not places we went every week with the same people as part of a close-knit group.
These kinds of civic attachments are critical building blocks for knitting a social fabric in which people are invested in others around them. They are part of what make you feel part of a larger group. They are an antidote to the social isolation that characterizes too much of our society today.
People may be finding new communities in online spaces, but we are also now seeing the darker side of online communities committed to anarchy, exclusion and destruction. Those people too, are seeking and finding community. We are reaping the harvest of too many people siloed in limited communication channels, never building real relationships with people who don’t look, think, vote or worship like them. The loss of many pathways to in-person, hyper-local civic engagement removed one of the ways in which we might best overcome the chasms in our society today.
Yes, some neighborhoods are largely homogenous and not terribly diverse, but many are far more diverse than most residents assume. Organizing at the street and neighborhood level opens up new connections, and new relationships, and an appreciation of interdependence that can improve people’s quality of life.
Last week I got another view into this, as part of a group of Jewish professionals meeting with Tyler Kleeberger, the pastor leading the community at The Farmhouse in Metamora, Ohio. The Farmhouse was created when Tyler was sent by the Methodist church to lead a small and dying congregation that had abruptly lost its pastor.
Tyler, along with the rest of the team at The Farmhouse, set about creating a different kind of community focused first and foremost on learning about and responding to the immediate needs of people in the area. They didn’t start with focusing on holding worship services and imploring people to come; it was already patently clear that a traditional approach to building a Methodist church community was failing to draw people. Rather, they focused on the fact that this rural area was losing population and jobs. People had issues around income and food insecurity, and they felt alone and isolated. The Farmhouse began with a response tailored to the area – barn parties - where people could bring and share food, listen to some music and talk with one another. It provided a direct response to both hunger and loneliness, and people started coming in greater numbers. The Farmhouse grew to become a place where people came together to celebrate, to mourn, and to talk with each other about the issues in the lives and community.
Tyler shared how their approach is informed by Wendell Berry’s “eyes to acres” philosophy, which I’d do an injustice by trying to paraphrase here. But at least for Tyler and his colleagues, it guides them to focus on their community in terms of the area you can see around you. The further away you go, the less attention you are able to pay or meaningful relationship you can maintain. It is way of approaching and building a hyper-local community in a rural setting. (You can learn more about The Farmhouse here).
What I love about The Farmhouse is how rooted it is in the culture and ethos of its place. A barn party would not translate neatly to my block in Brooklyn, but our block parties are not far off the mark. What’s different about The Farmhouse is how intentional its approach is, which gives it greater potential for impact.
Neighborhood or community organizing isn’t the answer to all the challenges of engineering an upswing. That also requires systemic solutions to big problems. But it is one important ingredient to strengthening civic engagement, because it focuses on where people experience daily life, and gives them a way to knit themselves together in common purpose.
Whether we live in cities, suburbs or out in the country, there is a pathway to making our society stronger. More connecting and organizing among the people right around us, more neighbors talking to each other about what is important for their communities, their children, our future – I'm pretty sure this will help.