If you look at the issues dividing our nation one at a time — which has basically been my job description over the past three years — it’s easy to be left feeling bleak. Diving deep into guns, student loans, free speech, gender, immigration, race, and a host of other social issues central to this particular cultural moment has left me fearing that our nation is in a death spiral. The chasms between us are too wide. The desire to make concessions for the sake of the greater good has bottomed out.
For months now, I’ve played out “radical reconciliation” scenarios in my brain, wondering if any of them might return us to an era when people just generally got along. Back when the debate was civil and we trusted that our fellow humans were engaged in the process of “living and letting live.” Of course, this very notion is a myth. The concept of “civil discourse” is largely the creation of cis straight white men (like myself) and can be roughly translated to mean: “When my ideas of acceptable change defined ‘progress’ and any voice radical enough to make me uncomfortable was casually dismissed.”
Still… the longing for some way forward and the desperation of not being able to imagine what that path might look like was very real. Until, on July 18, I listened to a new drop by my favorite musician. A rare diss track from the typically sunshine-y Chance the Rapper.
And Rahm, you done, I’m expectin’ a resignation —
An open investigation on all of these paid vacations… for murderers.
Woah. Since when does Chano start beefs? Yet here he was, pushing all in — on a track with a chorus that is literally just the phrase “fuck you” — on… Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel?
Chance’s axe to grind wasn’t with a Soundcloud rapper or a contemporary, he was going at his city’s chief elected official. And it wasn’t half-baked diss, either. Chance has long been interested in Windy City politics and has publicly opposed Emmanuel’s $95 million police training facility. Last year, he spoke in front of city council about the issue.
While my head was still reeling from the Rahm jab, Chance went for the haymaker.
I got a hit-list so long I don’t know how to finish,
I bought the Chicagoist just to run you racist bitches out of business.
That’s Chance announcing his purchase of a defunct website, in order to support better coverage of his beloved city. In the era of “fake news” he’d spent his hard earned cash to prop up a platform for local stories by diverse voices. It’s the best swag-shout I’ve ever heard on wax.
And in that moment, after months of troubling over the divided state of our union, something clicked.
***
The next week, still hyped on the Chance drop, I went to see a movie that my friend Vince loved. Sorry to Bother You is the sort of a film that is far rarer than a billion dollar-grossing blockbuster: It’s a weird-as-shit, un-focus-grouped slice of stylized surrealism, written and directed by a virtual unknown (in the movie game), Boots Riley.
The movie is bold. It’s funny. It’s fresh. And, after paying college loans in the early 2000s by working with a shockingly successful black telemarketer who used a “white voice” and went by the name “Sid Viscilé,” I felt particularly connected to its story.
But thrumming beneath the fun narrative devices and madcap absurdism was an agenda. One of the propulsive plot points is a worker strike. An artist uses her creative output to fight for her community. When the big conspiracy of capitalism and the 1% threaten to drown the movie in a twist that is both wildly bizarre and yet totally realistic in scope when compared to other ways the rich are trying to capture wealth from the masses, the answers that Cassius (played by Lakeith Stanfield) arrives at aren’t global. They’re small. They’re found in civic action and community building.
As the credits rolled, I felt like the message I’d drawn from Chance’s song was being underscored with a permanent marker. It’s not exactly “think global; act local” — as my high school crush’s bumper sticker read — it’s more like “global needs to be dealt with, but local is a lot more manageable.”
As a person wrestling with the massive issues keeping us from being “one nation,” this resonated deeply. In fact, Boots Riley practically called this point verbatim when the L.A. Times asked what he hoped people would do after watching his film.
“I’d like people to get involved in campaigns and get involved in organizations that can actually effect change,” he said.
Boom.
***
A few days after seeing Sorry to Bother You and a full ten after the Chance release, this budding hypothesis was hammered home for a third time by one of the summer’s rare bright spots in the news cycle: The story of LeBron James’s new school in Akron, Ohio.
The school is public, gives kids breakfast and bikes, and is focused on “wraparound” programming (there’s a pantry and kids get to bring food home). No sane human on this planet would try to besmirch the name or intelligence of the man who founded it and will foot a major part of the bill. It’s a big, undeniably admirable thing to do.
That’s the message of the summer of ’18: If you want to effect change, start at home, start in your communities, start on your block. LeBron had dominated headlines in the early part of the summer by signing with the LA Lakers, but during the dog days of July he made a splash by staying local. Here’s a man who could start schools or launch initiatives anywhere he wants. He could kick off the LeBron James Caribbean Ocean Keepers Fund and hang on banana boats with his friends all summer.
Instead, he made his biggest move ever in the city that raised him.
***
Though these three unrelated events felt like seismic shifts to me, they don’t come from out of left field. The largest political and social movements of the era are fighting their fights at the community level. Black Lives Matter has turned its focus to building a network of local chapters that can interface to enact change in their cities and municipalities. Everytown for Gun Saftey has been on that tip for a while. The March for Our Lives spawned a tour — with marches and planning committees popping up across the country.
But for those who feel despondent — living in a nation that can’t decide whether to tear itself in half like in Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle or eat itself tail first, like an ouroboros — these three actions feel massive. They offer a directive to all of us: Yes, we have to keep the big picture in play, but the key moves we make are going to be in our own cities, districts, and neighborhoods.
That’s not to claim that the idea of community-focus is perfect, of course. This same rationale could easily be co-opted by the alt-right, the incels, and the neo-Nazis. “Focusing on improving my neighborhood” already has a sort of gentrifying ring to it. And the potential for a regressive application of this idea is huge. After all, the NRA has been thinking globally and acting locally for decades. Extremists have tried to cloister themselves in small towns since the Civil War.
But there is undoubtedly something about community action and activism that threatens those who would divide the nation through hate. Theirs is a movement of tweets and spontaneous demonstrations. Their ideas are traded in the dark, not at the block party. Any sort of discourse that makes them defend their cancerous way of thinking to their friends and neighbors will only serve to further isolate them.
Because in fighting for your community and within your community, like Chance, Boots, and LeBron did this summer, there is a need to know your neighbor. You’ll see them at rallies or town halls or city council meetings. And perhaps you’ll recognize something in them, even when you bitterly disagree, that you both hold in common. Something that reminds you that people are people and that we’ll need to bridge the gaps that divide us if the nation is ever going to be a place where all people can thrive.
God knows, it’s worth a shot.
