Social Resources
Community
"Community is the smallest indivisible unit."
Wendell Berry
Advocates/Services
“started on Staten Island in 1979. The six original founders came together to form a self-selected extended family based on an intention to care for each other while sharing the work, having fun, and addressing whatever problems arise, together. Since then our population has grown to about 65. Our purpose is to bring reason and emotion together in daily problem-solving, in order to create our world, with love, the way we want it to be.”
Articles, Op-Eds, Essays
The Swedish theory of love, Lars Trägårdh.
All countries must balance the freedom of individuals with the demands of the community. Sweden’s solution is unique… To understand Sweden, it is necessary to begin with the tug-of-war between two powerful human impulses: the desire for individual sovereignty and the unavoidable necessity of being part of society... Sweden is of interest because it has created a social contract embracing a strong state but in the service of an extreme form of individual autonomy.
Creating Positive Community Information Exchange, Larry Walker.
The reason behind ICR’s success was Hector’s recommendation for an intentional and disciplined approach to conducting all meetings. He invariably started each meeting by stating the Principles that would govern the conduct of the meeting.
The Trayvon Generation, Elizabeth Anderson.
I have sons who love to dance, who dance in community…find joy the joy in and the power of communal self-expression… Langston Hughes wrote that we must stand atop the racial mountain. ‘free within ourselves.’
Rebuilding the Community Fabric for the Information Age, John Sanger.
A Community is not created by the simple proximity of its parts; rather, it emerges from their integration… Community is such an interesting word, both a noun and an adjective. In recent years, the adjective is more common, i.e., community schools, community policing, community parks, etc. We all live in a community, but do we have a common understanding of what it is? (read more)
Developing Community Voice, John Sanger.
Most good conversations occur between individuals that have some level of equality between them. They are generally one-to-one or one-to-few. As more people enter the conversation, you reach a place where there is a power imbalance i.e., there is a leader or a group at the podium that controls the conversation flow, the quality drops rapidly. If the conversation is an open forum with many individuals participating, it is possible to get a flavor for the problems being discussed, but rarely does it build a consensus for the group to resolve the issue.
If you think about how the community interacts with the public and private sectors, you quickly realize it is not a fair process… (read more)