Radical Community Care
Aisha Hauser, MSW
Lead Ministry Team, Church of the Larger Fellowship
What does radical community care look like, in what ways can we be the ones to offer the welcome hand to hold and the compassion that bonds us together?
Within systems of oppression, we can find examples of radical community care, the kind of care that exists in spite of efforts to subjugate entire communities.
One example of radical community care in the form of community organizing happened in the spring of 2020 in Los Angeles when a landlord sent an email to 300 tenants informing them they must pay their rent, the landlord did not blind copy the tenants thus sharing the contact information of all the renters with each other. One of the recipients hit reply all and suggested a rent strike. The renters joined the Los Angeles Tenant Union’s effort launched amid the pandemic called Food Not Rent in an effort to build their network of renters who do not want to have to choose between having a meal and having shelter.
This is an example of creative and radical community care.
Another example are the many urban farms that have been cultivated across the country. Urban farms are crucial to communities that have been impacted by food deserts, areas where access to fresh and affordable food is nonexistent.
Growing and sharing food is one of the most fundamental ways to offer community care. In 2012 NFL player Jason Brown at age 29 walked away from professional football and multi-million dollar offers to live on a farm and grow food to give away.
Brown knew nothing about farming and in fact learned how to plant sweet potatoes and cucumbers by watching YouTube videos. He recalls a conversation he had with his agent:
“My agent told me, ‘You’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” Brown recalled to CBS Sports in 2016. “And I looked right back at him and said, ‘No, I am not.’”
To date, Brown has given away over 100,000 pounds of sweet potatoes and 10,000 pounds of cucumbers to food banks all over his home state of North Carolina.
Brown, having been born and raised in North Carolina, felt a commitment to return to his roots and give back to the community and state that raised him.
What all of these examples have in common is people building on relationships. We cannot exist in community without relationship.
The invitation to all of us is to remember that nothing is inevitable, we can engage in and create the radical community care needed to transform our hurting world.
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