NATIONAL MONTH OF HOPE

On April 5th, protests happened in 1,200 locations across 50 states, criticizing Trump's management of the country. I am appreciative that so many people showed up to protests, yet I am all too aware that so many of my fellow liberal white folks that showed up on the 5th were nowhere to be seen when there were marches for Black Lives Matter. We have to do better and be better. We have to remember who we are. We need to rediscover the humanity we gave up to become white. We have the potential to be so much more when we reclaim what we gave up and reconnect. As we move forward, I am holding onto these words: HOPE, RESISTANCE, COMMUNITY, and SHARED HUMANITY.

Once again, you have the privilege of reading yet another moving essay by Troi McKenzie, a Graduate Social Work Student who has been interning with me. She will be hosting a free 2-hour conversation, Through the Eyes of a Social Work Student: Social Work, Policy, and Hope, in May. To register, click this link: https://events.humanitix.com/social-work-policy-and-hope. More information will follow after this potent essay. 

If you have read past writings of mine, I am sure that it has become clear that community is something that I think is imperative not just for individual functioning but for society and social justice as a whole. But I feel as though, in the past, I haven’t really gone into depth about my feelings regarding the devaluation and collapse of the community in this country and what it’s doing to us. April is the National Month of Hope and (ironically) National Stress Awareness Month. If there was ever a perfect encapsulation of the state of community in the United States, it can be represented by this juxtaposition. It won’t take more than 5 seconds of living in America to notice how individualistic it is as a nation. The me, me, me and I, I, I of people in the United States has become nothing deafening over the last decade, let alone the last couple of years. It is nothing short of alarming to me that such an individualistic nation could get even more individualistic, perhaps detrimentally and potentially fatally so. I want to be frank from the start of this essay. Our lack of community will kill us. It will be the death of us and our society. I will likely stress you out in the beginning of this piece, but as I mentioned, it is National Hope awareness month, so there is a method to the madness. I hope to not only aid in your self-awareness but to also help you understand where we are and push you to advocate for what we could be: a more communal America. We need community more than ever, and though I don’t have all the answers, I do have a voice, lived experience, and a deep commitment to dealing with this deep lack of community and sociability. First, let’s talk about the facts.

An Overview of Community in the United States

I want to start this off with a conversation about a study that I saw about feelings of connectedness in the United States. I knew that from a social standpoint, people were discussing the disconnectedness from other human beings in this country as they were being has on any platform you can think of, from Instagram, Reddit, Tik Tok, to Twitter (currently known as X). But I wondered if, beyond casual conversation there were actual studies done, and lo and behold there was, with some particularly interesting results, especially when you consider who is usually having these conversations about needing community. In 2023, a study was conducted by The Pew Research Center with the purpose of analyzing and focusing on Americans feelings of closeness to others in their community and their country, by comparing data from the United States to data from 23 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Latin American, the Middle East, North America and sub-Saharan Africa. The general results will likely not surprise you as it found that out of all the nations Americans are less likely than people abroad to feel close to others in their country and community, with an average of 83% of adults saying they feel very or somewhat close to other people in their country as compared to the 66% of Americans that hold that view. An average of 78% of adults across the 23 countries reported that they felt connected to their community as compared to 54% of Americans reporting the same feeling. (According to this study, we only get beat out by South Korea, where 50% stated they feel connected to their community.) But what was particularly interesting, to me at least, was that the study found that in certain groups of people, this was more the case than for others. Younger adults, those with lower incomes, those with less education, those who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, and those who are religiously unaffiliated are more likely than other groups to feel disconnected from the community. But why these groups in particular? Why do Americans, more than people in  any other country, end up more disconnected than others? 

The Loss of Third Places

If you were going to pick something to blame the current state of the world on, what or who would be on? For me, I blame capitalism time and time again. This profit first, humanity second ideology to me will always be the overarching cause of a lot of issues because, unfortunately greed is the sin that has wrapped around America the tightest. One of the biggest blows to the community is the loss of “third places/third spaces”. In general, third places are physical locations outside of the home (first place) or work (second place) that facilitate social interactions, community building, and social support. What makes these places so unique is not only the diversity of what a third place can be but just the ordinary nature of them, that they are simple, unassuming, and that they are supposed to be affordable. In theory, these third spaces, from public places such as libraries and parks to businesses such as coffee shops, bars, and gyms, should be spaces where people can meet other people and strengthen social ties. The issue with this in 2025, however, is that these places are not nearly as accessible as they used to be, and on top of that, when living in a country where work consumes the majority of people's lives, when are people going to have time to engage with these spaces?

I want you to think about two of the groups that studies show are less likely to feel engaged with their community. The less educated and lower income people. Let's talk about lower-income people first. We are all well aware of how expensive everything has been getting over the last couple of years. But it's not just the price of your eggs that's skyrocketing, it's the price of other services that served as third places. Hair salons, nail salons, bars, and malls are all places where prices of goods and services have skyrocketed. If you get your nails or hair done, think of how much it used to cost to get your hair done. When I was young, getting my hair washed, blow-dried, and straightened used to cost what? $45? Now the same service, at the same location, might I add, is nearly $100. And that is the difference in price over my 24 years so imagine people who are older than me seeing the price differences. Drink/food prices at bars, restaurants, and cafes are so high; how would anyone be able to afford it? Do you think someone who is low-income can spend $20 on an overpriced matcha latte all the time? Not to mention the lack of accessibility of transportation, whether it's a lack of public transport or the simple lack of walkable cities in this country. You can’t get anywhere without a car or an Uber unless you live in a major city like NYC, and even then, that all adds up. If people can’t afford nor can they get to these places without spending an unnecessary amount of money or get in some good cardio, it's no wonder low low-income people feel disconnected from their communities. Not to mention hostile architecture, such as anti homeless benches, you know the ones with all the armrests in between so homeless people can’t lay down or public areas having no benches at all, making a walk through the park, for example, a nightmare for people with disabilities who would benefit from the park in the first place. The fact that you have to pay to get into some beaches on Long Island or to have access to social areas in parks is ridiculous, and I hope others feel how ridiculous it is to pay to be outside. The privatization of areas that should be accessible to all, since they know people will pay for them anyway, has led to the sad reduction of third spaces and cut low-income people off from spaces where they can engage in community activities. While antisocial behaviors are being normalized, which I will talk about later, a lot of people either physically or financially can't be social, even if they wanted to.

The Under-appreciated Nature of College as a Third Space

Another one of the groups mentioned as feeling disconnected from their communities is those with less education. The Pew Research Study I mentioned before found that 51% of Americans without a college degree feel close to other people in their local community, compared to 61% of those with a college degree. As someone with a college degree who feels disconnected from my community and other people, my knee jerk was to get defensive, but after thinking I realized that being in college was the most social I have ever been in my life. Results from the 2024 American Social Capital Survey really put this into perspective for me as I reflected on my time in college and the life that I live now. Colleges are areas full of communal activities and thriving civic cultures, there is always something to do, a club to join, or ways to meet new people. It is a unique place where social interaction and connection is made easy as many people of the same age are in close proximity and clubs based on specific interests are bountiful. Living in the dorms, not only are you in a community with roommates and those in the rooms and buildings around you, but you also have access to building-specific social activities as well. In college, if I wanted to meet people, I would just join a club or go to an event, and I would be able to get my social interaction for the day, something that at the time I never really thought of as a privilege. If people wanted to meet up, it wasn’t hard as there were plenty of spaces from the library, outside, dining halls, lounges, dorms for people to meet up (for free, might I add). Upon graduation, however, I found that I took that ease of social interaction for granted. Friends that I could meet up with whenever, suddenly I could not see as often with new schedules and serious jobs. Places we could meet up at had to be planned a decent amount in advance based on finances and availability. This person hasn’t gotten paid, so we can’t do it that weekend. This person has grad school, this one is at work, and next thing you know, people you used to see all the time you are seeing once a month if you’re lucky. That 2024 American Social Capital Survey found that college educated Americans spend more time in public spaces, for instance 60% of those with a bachelor's degree or higher spent time in a local park, playground, or garden at least a few times per month or a few times per year, as compared to 41% of those with a high school degree or less. Perhaps this is due to the conditioning of college students to spend time in these places or the simple fact that those who are college educated are more likely to have better-paying jobs and therefore live in areas that have more public spaces to gather. 

COVID and Chronically Online/Anti-Social Behavior

But beyond these external factors, there is some personal accountability that people are going to need to take regarding this loss of community. The saying goes that when you point fingers at people, you have three pointing back at you, and this truly encapsulates one of my biggest issues with building community, which is that people don’t even try. I largely blame this on the post-COVID rush to normalcy and chronic online behavior from young adults exacerbated by the pandemic. After the peak of COVID, there was this rush to some form of normalcy to the point where, frankly I can’t even remember when people just stopped wearing masks. It just seemed like one day, everyone was acting as if we were not just in a global pandemic. It wasn’t until people began to “readjust” in the years after that people really began to see the changes in social norms. No one even thought about what 2 years of quarantines, isolation, six-foot mandates, masks, glass partitions, Zoom, anxiety, and telehealth appointments would do to people's ability to socialize. Not to mention, developing children and teenagers spending formative years of school not mingling with peers, enjoying prom, graduation, sports nights/field days, or clubs, instead, they were stuck at home with their families on Zoom. No one could have anticipated it, as no one could have even imagined a pandemic to begin with. In the face of a lack of community and immense political unrest, during ages where belonging is a developmental need, where do you think these young people went to find community? Social media. 

TikTok reached the peak of its popularity during this time. An app that was originally just dancing, cosplayers, and young kids was suddenly full of people of all ages and various niches, which made it the powerhouse social media that it is today. TikTok quickly became my most used app, and I found myself finding creators that I enjoyed and topics I was interested in. It was also where I got a lot of political information, as I joined during a time marked by the murder of George Floyd and watched TikTok develop its political side, which during this time was new for the app and showed things the mainstream media would not. And while finding community online is not necessarily a bad thing, being stuck with social media as your only form of entertainment is. As the years went on, it became quite apparent how chronically online people were becoming. If you're not sure what chronically online means, you're lucky, but in general it is in reference to people who spend such large amounts of time on social media that they no longer know how to interact with others in a healthy manner nor respond to things in any other way other than nuclear, whether online or in real life. But the chronically online phenomenon I really want to discuss is the breeding of and normalization of antisocial behavior. One of the worst things to come out of the internet is the misuse of psychological terminology and therapeutic language. Some of the most common terms being misused are gaslighting, hyperfixation, OCD, intrusive thoughts, overstimulation, and boundaries, among many others I’m sure you can name. But the most nefarious one to me has been the misuse of terms like “self-care” and “you don’t owe anyone anything”. The former is usually in reference to ways of taking care of yourself in times where being able to take care of yourself seems like a privilege. You know, things like taking a walk, playing with your dog, using a face mask, treating yourself to your favorite snack, and overall cherishing and prioritizing your mental well-being. But somehow “self-care” has devolved into protecting your peace even if it's to the point that you isolate yourself from others. Pair this with the “you don't owe anyone anything” phenomenon and you have a recipe for disaster. This formally boundary setting phrase, originally in reference to not owing those who harmed you anything, for example, you don’t owe your abusive mother a relationship, has been rebranded to I don’t owe anyone anything at any time. Suddenly, people have begun to complain about picking friends up from airports, going out to dinner, helping a friend move, hosting gatherings, and even basic communication with friends like texting or a phone call. If you are in a community with people, if you call people friends, by nature of being in a relationship with them, you owe them something. You owe people you call friends a call or text more than once every other week. Yes, life gets busy, but is it so busy that at the end of the day or on your lunch break you can’t message and say just that? That you are busy. The internet's most annoying quality is its ability to put a bunch of people with problematic ideals in an echo chamber where the outlandish things they believe are echoed and amplified to wider audiences. There is always someone online to validate even the most objectively wrong thoughts and behaviors. The reality is that community and relationships are going to be inconvenient sometimes. I am an introvert to my core, and there are times when I made plans in advance, but then once the day came for the plans, I really didn’t want to go. But you know what I did? I went. Because that is what you have to do to maintain relationships. It's also something about platonic relationships in particular, that makes people not want to take it seriously. If you can understand that ignoring your romantic partner all day long is rude, why is it different for platonic relationships? It's also rather interesting because people online constantly complain about not having friends and wanting them but then display the above behaviors at the same time. People want the village but then complain that the village attempts to serve its purpose. People want to take and reap the social and emotional benefits of community without having to give anything in return, which is something that deeply bothers me.

I really only have one close friend, whom I have been friends with since I was 14, and it has been quite jarring as well as difficult accepting this new dynamic between us where we can’t just hang out on a whim multiple times a day. Instead, we have to plan things way in advance because of either her schedule or mine or the simple fact that we don’t have the money to go out. This can’t be normal, it isn’t normal. And frankly I refuse to accept this as a reality for me as a young adult. I see so many people talk about wanting friends. I mean, posts with hundreds of thousands of likes, so how is it possible that everyone is still isolated? In truth, it is likely a combination of the structural barriers I mentioned above, stunted social skills exacerbated by COVID, and political divisiveness like never before. Those who are more Democrat leaning find it hard to feel connected to their community, and this most likely has a lot to do with not only their political beliefs but also chronically online behavior as well. The infighting and holier than thou attitudes of those on the left is getting to a point where community organizing spaces, you know the people who are supposed to help bring us together, are being torn apart from the inside out. Not to mention finding friends that have your same political beliefs is quite difficult when often in the beginning stages of friendship you don’t even talk about stuff or people are not upfront about it. I had an instance where I met a girl that I was really getting along with, and quickly ended that budding friendship when she made a homophobic remark. I mean it’s that bad. And I, like many others, are not compromising my morals and values for a friendship or romantic relationship. Wrap all of this up with the bow of a mental health crisis in the United States and it's no wonder we are so disconnected and lonely. 

What do we do now?

    So, what do we do? I know this is a question on everyone's minds nowadays regarding literally everything, but what do we do? We clearly have awareness of the issue, and there are plenty of people that want to have a community, so where do we go from here? People have the ability to interact with others; they just need a push. I remember back in college when the power went out during my junior year. All these people who would usually just sit in their dorms suddenly were outside, playing sports and talking to their neighbors. You know what happened when the power came back on? Everyone just went back to their rooms. When TikTok went dark in January for literally a couple of hours, I went back to watching long-form content (i.e., movies, video essays), something I hadn’t done in such a long time since my brain has just gotten used to 1-minute videos and 2x speed on everything. Part of me wanted the ban to stick so that I would be forced to reduce my screen time. But the moment it came back, I was right back on the app. It’s like second nature to go on these apps, and to be transparent, my struggle has been in making myself get up and do stuff beyond scrolling because when I’m not online so much I do genuinely feel at peace. I think it has just become a norm for all of us, so it is hard to imagine a world in which we do not engage in these habits. 

I am truthfully not sure how to encourage millions of people to put the phone down but one thing we can do is advocate against corporate greed and for the protection of free and accessible third spaces. One example of this is continuing to support current initiatives and putting pressure on local and state governments to continue their support of funding. Advocating for community also intersects with other social justice initiatives, such as protecting the unhoused. A lot of the reasons that public bathrooms are locked, there are fewer places to sit, the  benches that we do have are uncomfortable, and anti-loitering and trespassing laws are put into effect largely because of anti-homelessness bias, money, and racism. Advocating against laws that disproportionately affect marginalized groups is an important step in protecting third spaces (I recommend The Sum of Us by Heather McGee to learn more about how bias has ruined social spaces for all of us). I’ve mentioned this in prior writings, but simply doing small things for people you are close to and creating that norm can also help change this anti-social mentality. It has gotten to a point where people now look at people who do things for their friends as “wasting their time” or “doing too much”, so changing the collective attitude means that we must not wait for others to do things for us. Instead we create norms by actively trying with no excuses. Trust is not easy, and I struggle with it myself, so I promise this is not a holier than thou attitude as much as it is a plea for people to come on this journey with me together so we can do something new. Look up any local activities and share them with people you know (and hey maybe people you don’t). If people are going to be on their phones anyway, why not put them on to free/cheap activities they can do either alone or with others, especially as the weather gets warmer? I myself am learning to get comfortable having experiences alone, which may seem like the complete 180 of what I have been talking about, but if you go to things alone you may be surprised at the opportunities to meet people you would have never had had you stayed at home waiting for a friend to climb into your bedroom. Effort is what everyone is going to have to put in if we want to protect and save the community. Life will always throw curveballs, but community is the key to building resilience in our communities. I hope anyone who reads this sees the value in community that I do or perhaps is brainstorming ways to build better relationships with those around us. Rejection may be scary, and mental illness may be paralyzing, but there are so many people going through the same things as us with the same desires for connection as us. Relationships won’t fall from the sky (I know I wish), but if we all make the effort in some little way, even though old habits die hard, change is obtainable. I am making little changes, from putting my phone down for at least 30 minutes a day to making the effort to try to plan outings with friends and family so I know I am contributing to the relationship. Community requires effort, advocacy, and frankly a love of human beings. Not having it will be the death of society as we know it, and we must fight to protect the community and us. After all, who keeps us safe?

WE KEEP US SAFE

Sources

Free Presentation by Troi McKenzie: Through the Eyes of a Social Work Student: Social Work, Policy, and Hope

Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/social-work-policy-and-hope

A Conversation with a “Woke” and “Broke” Black Woman

Arc Lifework Session #11

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

7:00-9:00 PM Eastern

Register Here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/wqmkhfp/lp/d20ddb57-c4d2-48df-beb4-a75dbcb50791

Unpack the compelling and raw lived experiences of Stephanie Colon, a "woke" and "broke" Black woman navigating systemic oppression, racial trauma, and the complexities of identity. This 90-minute interactive session will be an unapologetic exploration of how Stephanie’s life, plagued by intergenerational racial trauma and internalized racial inferiority, has shaped her story as both a survivor and a thriver.

The event will begin with a powerful entrance song, I Can’t Breathe by H.E.R., setting the tone for a deep reflection on race, identity, and survival. Stephanie will share intimate stories, from the racial aggressions she faced as a child growing up in a white neighborhood to her tumultuous experiences in interracial marriages. Each part of her narrative serves to highlight the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and the resilience required to navigate and dismantle white supremacy.

Stephanie Colon is a dedicated advocate, storyteller, and community organizer with over 40 years of experience in grassroots activism and mental health advocacy. As a PhD candidate at Prescott College, she uses her lived experiences to shed light on the intersection of race, mental health, and systemic oppression.

Ms. Colon's work as a performing artist and storyteller creates brave spaces where art serves as a tool for healing and liberation.

The People’s Institute of Survival and Beyond:  Undoing Racism/Community Organizing Workshop

Upcoming Workshops: 

White Affinity Groups: Robin DiAngelo and Amy Burtane Facilitation: https://www.robindiangelo.com/affinity-group-course/

For White men: Conscious Action: A facilitated course for white men committed to racial and gender justice: https://www.equityindata.com/conscious-action

Robin Schlenger