COMMUNITY IS A VERB

The left keeps replicating the systems we claim to fight. But something's shifting. Here's how we build movements that include everyone — even the imperfect.

An old Tweet by Lindss_tastic

SOMETHING IS SHIFTING. Do you feel it? In every progressive space I’m in, people are hungry for a new culture on the left. We’re exhausted by the politics of division. We’re done with cancel culture. We’re ready to build movements wide enough to hold all of us — because that’s what it’s going to take to save this world we love. All of us.

I keep hearing many of the same words being used in our spaces.

Solidarity.
Belonging.
Revolution.
Community.
Liberation.
Love.

All of which sound great to me.

Yet here’s the thing about these words: They’re not just taglines on shopping bags and hashtags in your posts. They demand a fundamental shift in how we operate. They’re verbs, not nouns. They require us to reject the comfortable binaries we’ve been fed. To resist the seductive pull of performance. To actually give a fig about each other in real, messy, imperfect ways.

We’re talking about building real coalitions across difference — not for symbolic wins but for actual improvements in everyone’s lives.

Universal healthcare.
Housing as a human right.
Education that doesn’t bankrupt you.
Jobs that don’t destroy your soul.
A planet that isn’t on fire.
Trans kids who get to grow up.
Women who control their own bodies.
Communities in the middle of America who aren’t abandoned to economic fuckery while being told their poverty is their own fault.

Maybe we’re finally ready for justice that connects instead of separates, transforms instead of punishes? Maybe we’re ready to actually live the principles we hashtag?

But let me back up. Because to build this new thing, we need to be honest about what hasn’t worked . . .

Looking back at recent social justice movements, I see both their power and their contradictions. We were often punitive while talking liberation. We built new hierarchies while denouncing hierarchy itself. And identity politics — a tool meant to illuminate oppression — sometimes became a wedge driving us apart rather than the bridge bringing us together (mainly looking at you, white male leftists, who turned unpacking privilege into a competitive sport where you somehow still won every time).

Here’s the brutal truth: The left too often replicates the very systems of oppression we claim to fight. Same hierarchies, different vocabulary. Same exclusion, better branding. Same punishment, progressive packaging.

I’ve experienced this firsthand. We all have. We’ve all been booed off stage, chewed up, and spat out — not just by the fascists (that’s expected) but also by supposed allies. I’ve always found the messages that cut deepest came from people who claimed to be on the same side as me. People so busy policing how others show up that they forgot to show up themselves.

I’ve seen far too many well-meaning people believe they need to chain themselves to buildings in order to make their resistance count; to prove their worth, their solidarity, their revolutionary credentials. And look, those big gestures have their place — they definitely matter — but they’re not what we ALL need to do. It doesn’t work that way. I mean I knew someone brilliant who genuinely believed they needed to scale a 300ft high landmark to show they cared enough about Palestine. But what breaks my heart is that they didn’t understand what so many of us don’t understand . . .

The quiet work nobody sees often moves mountains more than any spectacle ever could.

Listen, no shade to anyone who’s fallen under that spell. I have too. We all have. It’s seductive, thinking that the loudest action is the most effective, that visibility equals impact. But we need to recognize it in ourselves and just be authentic. Just be fucking real. Show up as yourself, not as who you think the movement needs you to be. Stop beating yourself up because you can’t scale monuments or lead marches or whatever heroic shit you think “real” activists do. Just do what you can, as often as you can, and for the love of all that’s holy, stop judging yourself and everyone else for not being revolutionary enough. And remember — ‘what you can’ looks different for everyone. For some, it’s marching. For others, it’s surviving another day. All of it counts.

Because right now, while we’re arguing about whose activism is pure enough, real shit is happening. In LA, they’re deploying the National Guard against people protecting their neighbors from ICE. In Gaza, human beings are being genocided. In state houses across America, they’re legislating trans kids out of existence. In board rooms, they’re deciding which communities to poison for profit. In small towns, people are choosing between insulin and rent.

The conservatives? They’ve been playing the long game for decades. DECADES. And y’all, I am here to tell you, they don’t all agree — the corporatists think the religious zealots are useful idiots, the libertarians can’t stand the authoritarians, the suburban soccer moms clutch their pearls at the militia types — but they show up together when it counts. They’ve been placing their bricks, one by one, meticulously building their vision.

Meanwhile, what are we doing? Writing lengthy diagnoses of problems without solutions? Crafting hot takes that get clicks but don’t get people fed? We’re so busy performing our credentials online that we forget to actually BE radical — which, at its root, means getting to the root of things and changing them.

Here’s what we need to understand: It’s not about performing our politics for applause. It’s not about choosing sides in false binaries. It’s about collective liberation. It’s about knowing that every brick we remove from their walls of isolation and greed, we need to have another brick of mutual care ready to replace it. Because otherwise the whole thing crashes down on the most vulnerable.

Here’s the thing: The system doesn’t really give a shit about your individual consumer choices. It’s built to persist regardless. Capitalism keeps extracting wealth whether you shop organic or not. White supremacy keeps killing whether you’ve read all the right books or not. The machine grinds on because it’s a SYSTEM, not a collection of individual behaviors.

We have to reject binary thinking. We have to stop pretending that there’s only one way to resist, that you’re either a revolutionary or a sellout, that you either burn it all down or you’re complicit. That thinking keeps us small. It keeps us fighting each other instead of the systems crushing us all.

You know what I think is actually radical? Understanding that we can reject systems while surviving under them. For instance, we all know the Black Panthers fed children through their breakfast programs using resources and infrastructure from the very system they opposed — because those kids needed to eat TODAY while the revolution was built for tomorrow. ACT UP infiltrated government agencies and pharmaceutical companies while simultaneously shutting down the FDA — because people were dying NOW and couldn’t wait for the system to be overthrown. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days, and every single one of those days, Black folks still had to get to work, still had to earn money, still had to exist within the very capitalism and white supremacy they were fighting. Every successful movement has thrived in this messy contradiction between revolution and survival.

Fred Hampton understood this when he built the Rainbow Coalition (see photo) — bringing together Black Panthers, Young Patriots (poor white Southerners), and the Young Lords (Puerto Ricans). You think everyone in that room agreed on everything? Hell no. But they agreed on one thing: The system was crushing all of them, and they were stronger together than apart.

And on that, organizers from marginalized communities have always been at the forefront of these movements because they’ve had no choice; their survival has always depended on resistance. We, all of us, need to continue centering their voices, learning from their strategies, and following their lead. But — and this is an important but — that doesn’t mean sitting on your ass waiting for someone to tell you exactly what to do, it doesn’t mean turning them into your personal revolutionary Google, and it doesn’t mean that every person with a marginalized identity that you meet speaks for their entire community or has all the answers. Nobody elected them spokesperson, and they can be just as wrong, or confused, as anyone else. Treating people as walking encyclopedias of oppression instead of complex human beings isn’t solidarity; it’s another form of performative (racist, bigoted, ableist) bullshit. Real solidarity means listening to many voices from affected communities, recognizing patterns in their experiences, and following their collective lead — not cherry-picking the one person who tells you what you want to hear.

So here’s the question: How do we get people to actually care?

How do we move beyond binaries? Beyond performance and into action? How do we get people to care less about posting and more about community? How do we get people to SHOW UP however they can?

How do we take down one brick and replace it with another? How do we fundamentally change the culture of our homes, our communities, our states, our countries, our world?

How?

Well, we show up. Authentically. As who we are. How and when we can.

It’s not just “fuck capitalism” — it’s building resilience outside capitalism NOW. Start that tool library. Create that community garden. Build that mutual aid network.

It’s not just “fuck the system” — it’s creating alternative systems that make the old ones obsolete. Set up that free clinic. Organize that childcare collective. Start that community defense network.

It’s not just saying it all needs to burn while sipping a Pinot — it’s lighting controlled fires that clear the way for new growth. Run for that school board. Organize that tenant union. Build that worker co-op.

Firstly, we need to stop focusing on the theory — we know what’s wrong. We don’t need another *wake-up call* or philosophical diagnosis. We need blueprints for change. We need tangible solutions that we can all start doing today.

For instance, perhaps your resistance might be . . .

• Creating a bail fund

• Joining the anti-ICE protests around the country

• Growing food and sharing it

• Running for school board to protect trans kids

• Filing pro bono asylum cases

• Offering your couch to someone facing deportation

• Filling a community fridge

• Teaching English at the library on Tuesdays

• Checking on your elderly neighbor

• Setting up a phone tree for ICE raids

• Starting a free breakfast program at your local mosque, synagogue, or church

• And shutting the fuck up when necessary.

All of it matters.

All of it chips away at the systems.

Second, we build alternatives NOW. Not after the revolution. Now. I.e., we need robust mutual aid.

Mutual aid isn’t charity — it’s creating networks of support that exist outside state control. It’s disabled folks teaching us what real interdependence looks like, because they’ve never had the luxury of pretending they don’t need community. It’s proving we can take care of each other without the state’s permission. From LA to Gaza to rural America, people are already doing this. Not waiting for permission. Building it, brick by brick.

Third, we need to recognize that community is a verb.

It’s not something you have; it’s something you DO. And it knows no borders — not the ones on maps, not the ones we draw around who belongs in a radical club and who doesn’t, not the ones between “online” and “real life” activism.

A verb.
A constant.
A place of becoming.

Listen, if you’re still waiting for the perfect way to show up, if you’re still worried about not being revolutionary enough — this is your sign to just fucking start. We don’t all have to climb the same mountain. We just all have to be climbing.

The fascists want us divided. They want us so busy fighting about tactics that we don’t notice them stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. They want us performing resistance on social media instead of building it in our neighborhoods.

Nothing says “fuck your systems” like communities that take care of their own. Nothing terrifies authoritarians more than people who’ve figured out they don’t need them.

Because here’s the thing about bricks. Like I said above, when you take one out, you better be ready to put another in its place. Otherwise, the whole thing collapses and guess who gets crushed? Not the people in the penthouse. They've got helicopters and offshore accounts. It’s always us at the bottom.

But brick by brick, we can build something new. Something that centers our universal needs for dignity and freedom while honoring our different experiences. Something that transforms instead of punishes. Something that includes instead of excludes.

We’re at a crossroads. We can keep doing the same shit — the performance, the infighting, the gatekeeping, the replication of hierarchies and systems we claim to oppose — or we can build a movement actually capable of winning. Not just winning elections or policy battles, but winning the world we deserve. Where kids in Gaza can dream about the future. Where trans youth can just be kids. Where communities aren’t sacrificed for profit. Where showing up imperfectly is better than not showing up at all.

The old culture is dying. What we build next is up to us.

None of this ‘phoenix from the ashes’ stuff happens overnight. Rome took centuries to fall. And I don’t know about you, but ‘letting it all burn’ isn’t the revolution I want; it’s a multigenerational catastrophe that will hit the poorest first. Because — quick reminder — it wasn’t the emperors who starved during the Roman Empire’s collapse.

So enough with the regression.
Enough with the binaries.
Enough with the performative bullshit that keeps us small.

We have work to do. Tangible actions, not theory. Bricks to place, not stones to throw. Communities to build, not comments to post.

Because history is made by the humans who show up and do something for the collective good. Not by those who perfect the art of critique while the world burns.

P.S. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been offline for a while — dealing with health stuff, immigration battles, and a few other things that aren’t fully resolved. Yet watching what’s happening right now, I couldn’t wait on the sidelines any longer. Sometimes you just have to show up imperfectly rather than wait for the perfect moment that never comes.