I’m so excited to announce that my much-beloved friend, Desireé B Stephens, will be working with me on a multi-part podcast series for the entirety of 2026. This series, which will come out at least bimonthly, explores the nuances and challenges of community building.
In this moment, we desperately need community. But so many of us lack the skills we need to build and sustain the very communities that can build and sustain us in return. How is it that leftists (especially white leftists) got so bad at building community? How can we fix this? And what does it even mean to build community?
These are some of the themes we’ll be exploring in our Lessons in Liberatory Community series. This series is for paid subscribers. It’s part of our ongoing attempt to give extra value to the people who sustain our work. This is an addition to our usual editorial calendar, and will not replace any of our individual ongoing projects.
Here is a sample of what we discuss:
Our own experiences bringing one another into our communities—including our missteps. Desiree writes about our shared solstice here.
The work community demands of us.
What happens when we make community transactional, and why mutual aid so often fails.
Why community is not automatic safety.
Why we cannot have sustainable communities without systems for managing and repairing harm.
Please share with us what you think, and what you’d like to hear us discuss about community. In our next couple of episodes, we will dig deeply into community and repair, discomfort within community, and so much more.
