My 2025 A to Z Challenge theme is activism. I’ve been a Black Lives Matter activist for over a decade. I’m not an expert. I do have experience to share and I’m hoping to learn from your experiences, too. We’re all in this together.

C is for Community, the second step that I’ve been talking about in presentations recently. Community rests on the firm foundation of Self-Care and forms the firm foundation for Action.

Community is Effective

Community is effective. A researcher at Harvard discovered, by analyzing resistance campaigns in history, that change happens when 3.5% of the population actively participates in nonviolent protest. With that number, oppressive authoritarian regimes have been toppled.

A follow-up discussion paper in 2020 uncovered a couple of exceptions but still contained a lot of hope for sustained activism.

I wondered what Erica Chenoweth had to say more recently and was happy to discover this interview by Rebecca Solnit.

Community is Safety

Community provides safety in numbers. I stand vigil each Saturday with Black Lives Matter signs, so I’ve seen how this works. Numbers matter. We get fewer negative responses when we have five or more people than when we have four or fewer. We keep doing it when we have smaller numbers, because we’re holding space for more people in the future, but it is good to be aware of the dynamic.

There is also a psychological safety in numbers. Unexpected emotions show up when we do something new. Anger is often the emotion that will get us to commit to attending an event. But participation in a resistance movement is well outside the comfort zone for most of us. Society gives us subtle and not-so-subtle messages to not rock the boat. Those messages are designed to trigger shame and fear.

For years, I drove to my weekly vigil with a voice in my head that said, “Uh. Oh. You’re gonna get in trouble.”

A community gives us new messages that help us fight back against our psychological preference to stay in our comfort zone. A community makes resistance and protest feel more normal. A community reminds us that the real danger lies in doing nothing.

Community is Fun

The final benefit I want to highlight about community is that it’s more fun. There are always moments of laughter during our weekly vigils and during any organizing meeting that I’ve been to.

The fun of community is my best answer to discouragement. If I’m sitting home alone feeling isolated and discouraged, I know that it’s time to schedule a walk with a friend, or attend a meeting, or show up at a rally or protest. I will return home reinvigorated to continue this work for the duration.

Who are you in community with? Do you know of groups that you could join?

I’m continuing to be engaged with the Black Lives Matter grassroots organization that I’ve been part of for ten years and a book group that specializes on race in America that I’ve been part of for even longer. I recently began attending some committee meetings with my township’s Democrat Club. I follow a bunch of pages and groups on Facebook that help me stay aware of things like what the St. Louis area is doing to participate in this Saturday’s nationwide protests.