The app for independent voices

Elizabeth M. Johnson (she/her)'s avatar
Elizabeth M. Johnson (she/her)
Mar 6
Beginning Where You Are

Exactly this. Build the relationships well before you need them.

  1. Offer to set up a MealTrain for a neighbor having surgery.

  2. Put a “swing on me!” sign on the playset your teens don’t use.

  3. Join your neighborhood list serve, listen to what people are saying, asking for, talking about. (don’t have one? start one!)

  4. Make time in your week to dictate a voice memo to a friend who you miss. If your schedules are too wild to connect IRL, set up a time to chat by phone.

    Let’s all STOP buying and extracting stuff and invest in living breathing people.

I was struck by a line from a Minneapolis resident in this deeply reported New York Times Magazine piece: “I’ve been telling people, if you want to really be prepared for stuff like this that’s going on in Minneapolis right now, you need to know your neighbors.” In other words, these horizontal networks and patterns of mutuality don’t pop up out of nowhere. You have to build the groundwork before you actually need them. You have to stop believing in the logic of extraction for long enough in your week to invest your time and energy into building something else.
Rosie Spinks
Mar 6
at
12:42 PM
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