M.M. Volume 01, Issue 08

APRIL 2025

It Takes Work to Be a Community.

It takes work to be a community. And every single day, we’re invited–called, really–to put in that work.

This is both our opportunity and our responsibility. In the face of isolation, repression, and systemic erasure, we get to choose each other. Again and again.

Community is not a convenience. It’s a (r)evolutionary way of life. The utopia we’re stretching toward is global harmony and balance, stretching from the most local street corner past ever-changing national borders that we know can’t contain us. Look at the birds and butterflies.

We know that “peaceful” doesn’t nearly describe the world we live in, nor does it express the world we’re building. But justice, liberation, reconciliation, and healing? These are values that make peace more plausible. They are what make it real, more often, for more people, and more beings. And they only exist through practice.

Living (as in staying alive) together takes labor. It requires participation. It requires choice. As our mothers remind us: no one is coming to clean your mess. That’s a Western, individualist fantasy. In the natural world, nothing is guaranteed, and nothing is handed out. But everything is connected. Every living thing is in some kind of relationship with the thing right next to it, as well as the thing across the planet. The idea that “it takes a village” is not outdated; it’s essential.

Community labor is cyclical. It includes moments of activity, transition, and rest. This rhythm keeps us alive. To opt out of this labor is fatal. That is by design. Isolation has been an oppressive tactic for as long as humans have understood isolation to almost certainly mean end-of-life.

We see this clearly today:

• Anti-trans legislation is proposed to interrupt healthcare.

• Book bans and censorship policies are designed to interrupt learning.

• Abductions and detentions are used to interrupt belonging, family, and love.

When care is interrupted, state dependence (and repression) expands. But community-led care, love, connection… This is our (re)source. We are our own resource. It’s our resistance. It’s what we build freedom movements from. Our love and learning cannot be taken away from us, though they can be misdirected. It’s up to us to keep aligned with liberation.

We have agency. Each of us has the right to self-determination. And we must defend it with everything we’ve got. Listen to that need for communion. Follow the urge to stay with your people. Because staying connected is how we live. It’s how we win. It’s how we make worlds.

This Is Our Call: Gather, Support, Act!

Gather: Come together in numbers, in neighborhoods, in celebration, whether it’s for Springtime, Arab Heritage Month, or a school walkout.

Support: Feed each other. Heal each other. Share resources. Stand for land justice.

Act: Refuse to comply with systems that are set on erasing who we are. Practice new ways of being in friendship and community.. Live into the world we deserve and know can become. Transmute your love and your grief into action.

We are here. We are not alone. And the work of regenerating community will carry us forward.

We love you,

Maya LaFlamme & J. Gia Loving

GSA Network Co-Executive Directors