Trying to Open Up in a Closed Down Time
To be in and of one’s community
A desire to belong
I’ve had a growing desire to get involved in my local community while struggling to figure out how to do so or even where to begin. I’m far from passively resigned, as I’ve been actively pursuing opportunities in recent years, if it feels like I’m often thwarted or else not getting satisfactory results. This has been nagging at me for a long time. But maybe everything since the Covid-19 lockdown has made the sense of disconnection more obvious, made the desire for connection more salient. Part of it is the right-wing turn toward fear-mongering and oppression, as is typical in populations that experience mass infectious disease spread (Sick Individuals = Authoritarian Societies). The definitive feature of authoritarianism is low Openness (to experience and ideas), a shutting down and a closing of ranks, everyone to their own separate ingroup and you better hope you have a group to belong to.
Still, if the global pandemic was the breaking point, there has been a long term decline that began long ago. With the Progressive Era having ended, already beginning in the mid-1960s in the decade before I was born, public trust had started to decline in relation to mainstream institutions, public and private. Of course, that presaged the orchestrated neoliberal takeover that intentionally and systematically demoralized, dismantled, and destroyed the culture of trust that a democratic free society depends on. It’s finally reached the point that not a single mainstream institution any longer wields majority trust of the American people. That further pushed the American psyche into division and despair, as well as derangement and dysfunction — at times like these, people aren’t at their best.
The long road to crisis
As a GenXer, I grew up in the extended period of the Unraveling, as it’s called in the Strauss-Howe generational theory of cycles, that followed the post-war period of a High (1946–63) and an Awakening (1964–84). Without a doubt, there had been a growing sense of crisis and decline in the late Cold War that, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, continued into the so-called End of History. Then a foul mood took over with moral panic and fear-mongering, culture war and cynicism. That was when the decades of disintegration became a rupture, setting the stage for the present Crisis, ongoing and overextended, maybe not to be resolved for a long while. In the Nineties, it was an odd moment because, even as violent crime rates were dropping, there was a media obsession over a handful of high profile mass shootings. It resulted in school lockdowns that I experienced my senior year of high school in 1994. The sense of a terrified population long preceded the War On Terror.
It got worse over that last decade of the previous century. With anxiety in the air, there was the predictable millennial doom-mongering that culminated in the Y2K bug with predictions of chaos and possible collapse. That was followed up by the stolen 2000 election and, of course, all the darkness that followed. There was the 9/11 terrorist attack, the War On Terror, the police-surveillance state, the imperial presidency, and all the other political opportunism of right-wing authoritarians that made everything worse, thus ramping up the state of terror. Within that milieu, there took hold a culture of Stranger Danger with the ensuing reaction of overprotected children who were no longer allowed outside by themselves. There was a social breakdown as people retreated into the private sphere of their homes. Even one’s neighbors were suspect, one’s community deemed unsafe. No one was to be trusted other than the closest of family and friends.
As already high inequality ramped up ever higher, this coincided with a new wave of gentrification combined with hostile architecture. Across the 2000s under the worsening thrall of neoliberalism, government officials, the business elite, the ownership class, and corporate interests came to see everything public as threats to their power. There was the closing down of the freedom to assemble, such as President George W. Bush’s “free-speech zones.” Even in this liberal college town (Iowa City, IA), the local government, under the direction of the downtown business association, passed laws to push out the homeless, made the downtown pedestrian mall unhospitable to the working class, required permits for even the most minor social activities in public space, put in cameras everywhere to monitor the citizenry, and turned the former People’s Park (AKA Black Hawk Mini Park) into the front yard of a newly built high-rise for the wealthy.
Nationally and locally, it’s been a class war — the rich started it and they’ve been winning for a long time. It was a hostile takeover of the entire society, the culmination of evil scheming that was enacted on the highest levels of power with the right-wing shadow network (Anne Nelson), in cahoots with the Epstein network, in having been detailed in and organized according to the 1971 Powell Memo, initially under the Machiavellian guidance of Paul Weyrich. All of this was gaining hold long long before most Americans, besides radical left-wingers and paranoid conspiracy theorists, were worried about such things. Now the hour is getting late. The United States had already become a banana republic with how activist judges on the Supreme Court used a fiat decision to undemocratically and unconstitutionally hand the presidency to Bush more than a quarter century ago, in spite of the strong evidence that Al Gore had won both the popular vote and the electoral college (The American Dream of Democracy).
That was only possible, though, because the culture of trust had become so weakened and compromised over the preceding decades. By the time the Bush regime was in power, it was largely too late. The few mass movements, from opposition to the Iraq War to Occupy Wall Street, were no match for the new totalitarian social control. But also the ability and willingness to resist, fight back, and organize was simply lacking. For all the frustration and outrage, it felt like the elite were always dozens of steps ahead of the American people, especially with the endless rhetoric of lesser evilism and warnings of wasted votes that trapped us in ideological realism, a bipartisanship that in reality is a one-party state with two right wings. It wore down the public, until American society had fallen into a collective state of learned helplessness. It has felt like a death blow to American freedom, from which recovery feels hard to imagine — or rather, as it’s been said, it’s easier to imagine collapse.
That brings us to the present post-COVID period. But it’s easy to forget that Donald Trump was elected three years before COVID-19 having spread across the United States. Yet in the last year of his first term, he was able to leave his MAGA imprint upon the initial government response that was delayed and weak, disorganized and conflicted, politicized and weaponized, incompetent and ineffective. Because of Bush, the stage was already set for a fuller neo-fascist takeover. With bipartisan teamwork, Richard Nixon appointed right-wing extremists in the Supreme Court, Jimmy Carter established neoliberalism and evangelical politics, Ronald Reagan fully put into motion the neoliberal project and politicized religion, George H. W. Bush formed the link between intelligence agencies and the presidency, Bill Clinton normalized neoliberalism, George W. Bush created the illegal and unconstitutional imperial presidency and police-surveillance state, Barack Obama set it as a precedent by refusing to end it with democratic reform, Trump predictably pushed it further, and Joe Biden maintained the corrupt status quo by having kept the seat warm.
Now in his second term, Trump is still seeing how far it can be pushed before… what? Techno-oligarchic totalitarianism? A mass uprising? Economic breakdown? Societal collapse? A third world war? What’s the end game? But in my thoughts here, I’m mostly concerned with the impact this is having on the ground level and in local communities. No matter what happens nationally, it’s we ordinary Americans who have to deal with the real world costs and consequences, who have to pick up the pieces and do the best we can. There is precisely the problem. It’s not only or even mainly the harm that happens to larger systems and institutions but the affect it has on the human psyche and our ways of relating, the very fabric of our society. I’m concerned about the more immediate social breakdown in that it feels like there is sand in the grinding gears, while threatening to grind to a halt.
The sense of community that used to be
Everything feels harder right now, a constant strain and struggle; requiring more energy and effort, more persistence and perseverance. This stands out to me because, in being a middle-aged GenXer, I can clearly remember when the world was different or at least when alternatives still felt possible. For all the difficulties of the past, the problems often felt distant from the personal and so, by putting one’s head down, one could go about one’s life. Through the Nineties and even into the early Aughts / Noughties (2000s), the new new media hadn’t fully taken over. So, in spite of the spreading and darkening totalitarianism, there remained a sense of viable community where people still did most of their socializing in the real world by meeting people in physical spaces, either public spaces or third spaces. There was a kind of community organizing that happened almost organically in how it simply arose out of people building interpersonal relationships of trust, generosity, kindness, helpfulness, and good will. And those relationships were the foundation of entire social networks within a living community.
That used to exist here in town. Before it was partly enshittified, the pedestrian mall was a thriving public space where community was formed, sustained, enacted, and demonstrated; lived and experienced. It was a regular reminder that we weren’t only individuals but that we viscerally were a shared people, as a collective identity. There was a casual solidarity about it in being able to go downtown where one would see the same faces, many being people one personally knew, although sometimes only knowing them from having met them downtown. In the pedestrian mall, there were lots of open and welcoming social activities that anyone could join: chess games, drum circle, hack circle, juggling, music and dancing, mini-protests, etc. People were constantly gathering, sometimes with intent but often simply to be around others. In the past, people actually liked other people. There was an easygoing friendliness.
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It used to be that almost every time I met someone new we’d quickly discover we had various friends, associates, coworkers, etc in common. Iowa City was a web of interlinked and overlapping social activities, gatherings, groups, organizations, co-op housing, and various sorts of relationships. Once you entered any social network, you were likely hooked into numerous other social networks. It required almost no effort. All you needed to do was be willing to leave your house or apartment on occasion. As an introvert who isn’t particularly sociable and who was severely depressed at the time, I somehow managed to be a part of a social circle of hundreds of people. Simply living and working downtown made me a part of the community. I was on convivial terms with seemingly random people from all walks of life.
Indeed, it’s a small world after all! Or at least it used to be, if now the distance between us has grown vast. This is where comes in my desire to re-create what has been lost, but also where the challenge feels daunting. For example, one of the main centers of the community was the Unitarian-Universalist Society that originally had been located in the heart of the downtown from 1841 to 2017. That single organization may have done more than any other to help anchor the Iowa City community. UU members included many of the most active residents in the town. But it was also a convenient place for various community groups and social activities to happen. Iowa City has always been defined by its walkability and the UU building was conveniently accessible to most people in the community, just blocks from the main nexus of public transportation.
That was to change, though, as they perceived themselves as having outgrown their space. But maybe that should’ve been understood as a reason to form a second location, not to throw away what had been carefully built over 176 years. As part of a car culture, the upper middle class whites in the UU leadership apparently didn’t comprehend the importance of being part of a walkable community. They moved the organization to the suburban outskirts of another nearby town. It would now take you hours to walk there from downtown Iowa City. They did this in exchange for a larger building, which is understandable, if also naive in not recognizing at what cost it came. It’s the same impulse that has eliminated neighborhood churches, neighborhood stores, and neighborhood schools… and, well, destroyed neighborhoods. Within neoliberal realism, the unquestioned hegemonic ideology is that bigger is better, that ever greater concentration and centralization is progress.
When it was still downtown, the UU was the place where I met many people, developed close friendships, and strengthened my sense of belonging to this place. It was with the remembrance of the UU as part of the Iowa City community that I finally made my way to the new location and attended regularly for about a year, but it soon became apparent that it was no longer the same kind of organization. Something that it used to possess was now missing. If some of what was lost is intangible, other aspects are easily identified. For example, many of the Iowa City residents who would’ve attended in the past no longer do, while a large part of the present membership is spread across numerous nearby towns. The connection to the Iowa City community is now tenuous at best. I was hoping that the UU, as in the past, could serve as a juncture point for reconnecting with the Iowa City community. And theoretically, it still could.
It retains ties to the old social networks, if maybe it’s in the process of eating its seed corn. Some of the membership does still live in Iowa City and some of the UU-affiliated groups still meet in Iowa City. But location matters. In not fully belonging to any community, it no longer feels like a fully welcoming space, maybe having become too large and so turning impersonal. For the most part, it didn’t seem like anyone overly cared if I was there or not. What is obviously missing is the younger crowd and random walk-ins who, in the past, would’ve showed up at the downtown location. These are the people who less likely have their own vehicles. The average age of the membership has shot up. Observing the regular attendees on Sunday morning, the main demographic is now older people and the second largest is young families, in both cases mostly upper middle class whites in spite of Iowa City’s growing diversity.
Group retreat and enclosure
I have to wonder if those involved in the UU have noticed the dramatic change. Maybe it stood out to me because I wasn’t a slowly boiling frog. I stopped attending the UU in the mid-2000s, although I might’ve popped in a few times in the late-2000s. Either way, it was more than a decade that I was gone, during which they moved. I might’ve returned much earlier if they had still been at the old building, as it was less than two blocks away from where I’d been living until the COVID-19 lockdown when I moved in with my elderly parents further out at the edge of town. When I did finally show back up at a UU service, nothing about it felt familiar, in spite of seeing a few familiar faces. Part of it, though, was likely that the whole mood of society had dramatically shifted. Liberal groups like the UU are now in a siege mentality. Everyone is hunkering down in place. Maybe that even influenced their motivation to leave the community, to isolate themselves at a physical distance, so as to entirely separate themselves as a group.
Whatever was the motivation, the demographic that is particularly missing from the UU at present is the younger generations, the specific component that defines the Iowa City community. Sure, there are some young children with their parents. But teenagers are almost entirely missing. And those in their twenties are mostly absent too. That is to say GenZ is not represented in the local UU, if neither are they found in most formal religious organizations and other similar institutions. Even Millennials are sparsely present at UU services. The average age of UU members is probably in the range of the Boomer Generation, mostly retired and set in their ways. As a GenXer, I must admit I don’t feel much personal resonance and identification with Boomers, much less Silents. Maybe it’s because I live in this college community where I’m surrounded by a new crop of young college students every year. In this town, there is an eternal youthful energy, something that no longer defines the aging membership of the local Unitarian-Universalist Association.
Because of life experience, I feel more empathy and concern for, as well as solidarity with, the generations immediately following my own. In being a last wave GenXer on the generational cusp, I’ve always personally known many Millennials. As for GenZers, they’re the children of my brothers, cousins, and friends — I’ve watched them grow up and the first wave of them has been hitting the adult world. They are also most of the college students I see and interact with daily. If one is interested in getting involved with community organizing and volunteering, it inevitably will mean dealing with GenZ, as it’s always the young who are most active and engaged, especially in a college town. Too many people my own age are simply preoccupied with heavy duty adulting, from children to careers, along with taking care of aging parents. I can accept that, if it would be nice to connect and socialize with other GenXers.
Besides the UU, I’ve so far sought out to join two other groups. First off, for a time I paid membership dues to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or, as more commonly known, Wobblies. They sent me material to read and set up an introductory meeting on video chat, but the video chat didn’t work and no one attempted to personally contact me. New members should never have their first experience of a group be through an email and video chat. In old school civic and labor organizations, meeting in person to create shared community and solidarity was one of the main purposes. I would’ve thought that was common sense knowledge, but I guess that’s no longer understood by some. There is a local chapter here in town with active members. They should’ve set up an in-person meeting, either involving all new members or just for me. If unintentionally, the message that they conveyed is that I wasn’t needed or wanted, nor mattered all that much. They didn’t even send a reminder to pay my dues and so I stopped. It just seemed they were unconcerned about new members and uninterested in promoting the growth of membership. I could join if I wanted to, but it appeared to be irrelevant to them what I did or did not do.
I don’t know if it has to do with the decline in learned social behavior, in how social isolation and insular private space has become the norm. An entire generation has now grown up without a strong sense of supportive community and large social network, since so many were mostly kept protected and isolated at home for the first 18 years of their lives. Then again, maybe normal social behavior has overall crumbled for everyone of all ages under the oppressive stress of adverse conditions right now. As the UU showed me, even older people seem to have become withdrawn and out-of-touch, not putting much energy to reach out to anyone and seeking to include them. So many people are going through the motions and little else, as if anything beyond that would be more than they have to give. There just isn’t much excitement and hope, as so many have become stuck in a holding pattern, just maintaining things as they are.
Not wanting to give up, I tried another group, that of a local mutual aid organization, with an anarchist bent. They have some active programs, such as bringing supplies to homeless camps and publishing a newsletter. They seemed like they could be a good fit with more of the youthful energy as seen among activists. Plus, the person I emailed actually wanted to meet in person, so as to size me up. That was a positive sign. But upon meeting this individual, I too wasn’t made to feel overly welcome or needed, if not rejected either. Still, it was made clear that I was actively not invited to attend official meetings and organized activities. The only suggestion I was given was to possibly submit a piece for the newsletter. My contact for the group explained that they recently had an internal conflict. So, understandably, there was maybe a disinclination to throw a new person into the mix. Fair enough.
Still, it felt off-putting. It’s strange to be treated as irrelevant and unnecessary when attempting to freely give away my time, energy, and skills as a volunteer. One might expect that an organization dependent on volunteers would place a high premium on volunteers and so would find a way to directly, personally, and immediately include new prospective volunteers, even if only in basic ways. But my sense is that, like so many other groups, the ingroup had already been formed. Anyone new is perceived as much or more of a threat, a problem than a benefit. That is how groups act under pressure. It’s an authoritarian impulse of enforcing a clear, strong boundary between insiders and outsiders. It’s sad to be in a society where people feel so stressed, anxious, and fearful that they mistrust or feel wary toward even members of their own community. It creates a high bar to entry that is tiresome and demotivating.
Matching expectations to the times
Maybe I’m asking too much during a period of authoritarian takeover. Apparently, this isn’t a time when conditions are conducive to seeking new group membership. Most people are just psychologically and socially shut down right now. If it might be precisely in hard and harsh times that we need group belonging more than ever, it simply isn’t the best time to seek joining new groups, rather solidify the relationships one already has. For those who don’t have an established ingroup, I suppose they’re simply shit out of luck. Unfortunately, my suspicion is that many people are in that unenviable position of struggling alone and barely surviving. It’s not only about recent MAGA fascism, as community disintegration has been an extended, ongoing process since mass urbanization began more than a century ago. It’s just finally culminating and erupting as part of a meta-crisis, as we approach the moment of there being nothing left to hold it all together. We are close to the last Jenga block being pulled out.
But in my case, I’m not in a desperate situation. I do have a set of strong, close, long-term relationships of friends and family that share this community with me. And I have enough acquaintances that, when downtown, it’s not unusual for me to come across someone I know and can chat with. I’ve been in Iowa City long enough that I don’t doubt my belonging here — it’s my childhood home, after all. Plus, it’s a small enough town that one isn’t lost in the faceless masses. So, I’m not in immediate need to join some group and be accepted. It’s not as if I feel overwhelming alienation. Still, it would be nice to find a way to maneuver myself back into the larger sense of and situatedness within local community. But I might need to lower my expectations and simplify my approach, at least for the time being. More basically, I just want to get my foot in the door anywhere, even if it’s simply volunteering at a soup kitchen or a food pantry. I’m sure some volunteer group would have me, even if it wouldn’t be my first or second choice.
