Why Hosting Isn’t Cute, It’s Urgent
We need to work our hosting and organizing muscles for the long haul.
For those of you who are newer to my work, for years my journalistic focus was on social and economic issues facing families, care policy, gender equity, and moms and caregivers in the workplace. While lately I’ve been writing mostly about teaching people how to build communities, I still care deeply about those issues and those years of expertise are infused in my topics now. In fact, I care so much about those issues, I realized after deep research and reporting that the long, slow work of social, economic, and political change we need to live in more equitable society where families can thrive ain’t gonna happen if we’re all isolated and drowning in our personal responsibilities. This is why I started researching and writing about building up our social connections in more focused ways. I’ve also realized over the years that people do not make substantial changes to their lives and habits because you’ve convinced them it’s “good for society.” If you have any chance of getting people to change something about how they live, it’s because you’ve convinced them it will make their lives better AND you’ve shown them a relatively easy way to do it. This does not mean people don’t care about the larger world. Apathy is a problem, sure, but a bigger problem is that people feel like doing anything meaningful to make the world better is too abstract, too hard, and has no tangible results.
All of this is why I’m so excited to cross post this essay from one of my favorite Substackers writing about community building, Garrett Bucks. This essay perfectly articulates so much of why I do what I do. As Garrett says, “now is the time to build community like our lives depend on it.” So just host the damn thing already. It really does make a difference.
Members of the Double Shift, join me and Garrett for a Zoom Hangout July 8th at 1pm EST, where i’ll ask him what he’s learned about hosting from his ambitious 50 state interdependence relay to celebrate America at 250. You’ll have a chance to ask this veteran community organizer, and fan of potlucks and deep casual hosting YOUR questions. Can’t wait for this conversation. Members will get a calendar invite with details.
Thanks for supporting this work. I can’t do it without you.
Seven reasons why hosting a silly little potluck (or game night, or porch hang, or book club, or group hike) is essential to defeating fascism
Honestly, I don’t think we’ll win if you don’t
Feb 03, 2026
Over the past few weeks, I’ve fielded the same question dozens of times, always well-meaning, always anxious. “You’re in contact with activists in Minneapolis. What should we do now in case we’re next, if ICE occupies our city the way it’s terrorized that place?” It’s a new variation on an older question, one which rears its head whenever the contradictions of a system built on violence and caste become harder to ignore.
My answer is predictable and, I fear, often disappointing. It doesn’t offer a hero’s path. At first blush it doesn’t match the urgency of the moment. That question (“what do I do?”), leaves so much unsaid (I’m frightened! I feel powerless! I want to take an action that will both calm my heart and send the gun thugs running!). We want to attend a training today and suddenly be leading a neighborhood rapid response group tomorrow. We long for an invite to the secret meeting where every perfect activist step is laid out before us like a treasure map. We crave, whether we admit it or not, “one simple trick,” that will reverse all the ways fascism makes us feel impossibly tiny.
I understand, friends, that not only am I a broken record, but that the song I keep playing sounds like some effervescent bubblegum pop trifle. I understand also that you’re likely hearing the same chorus played from an increasing number of speakers, and that perhaps you’ve grown tired of it by now.
But there’s a reasons why, at the protest I attended last Friday, no less than three speakers talked about community (to a crowd that was actively sharing hand warmers and sandwiches with one another, no less). There’s a reason why Adam Serwer of The Atlantic coined the term“ neighborism,” for the variety of resistance that’s emerged in Minnesota, and why Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, recently opined that “in a democracy, the fundamental civic unit is the neighbor.” There’s a reason why Amanda Litman, whose day job as the leader of Run For Something is pretty damned political, earnestly believes that hosting dinner for friends every Saturday was the “most political thing [she] did in 2025.” And there’s a reason why my favorite foil, Ezra Klein, is now talking about hosting, if not a potluck, then at least some variety of gathering.
You are hearing the same chorus, not because it’s a hip trend, but because it’s true. My friends, you really do need to host a potluck. You need to bake cookies and write little notes inviting your neighbors to a block-wide Signal chat. You need to untether yourself from the urge to clean your house or whip up a fancy meal. You need to host stoop coffee and hang up flyers for park hangs and register for a potentially disappointing community rec class. You need to ask yourself “what’s the thing I most like to do with other people?” and then take the risk of inviting people, even strangers, to do it with you. These are not pleasant distractions from fascism, nor mere salves for loneliness. We need them. Urgently. They won’t feel like enough (and there’s not a guarantee they will be), but now is the time to build community like our lives depend on it.
Here are a few reasons, seven to be exact, why all this community talk isn’t just a cute distraction from the real work of liberation. The message here isn’t just that we’re stronger together (though we are), it’s that we ignore each other at our peril.
Build community, my friends, because our lives do, in fact, depend on it.
REASON ONE: The skills you and your neighbors need to resist fascism aren’t actually all that hard to learn. What’s going to slow you down is not knowing each other in the first place.
If you ask activists in Minneapolis how they’ve actually spent the past few weeks, you’ll hear about sets of actions that are either incredibly intuitive or that can be taught in relatively short workshops. There’s nothing particularly tricky about learning the SALUTE format for reporting ICE activity. You don’t need a doctorate in social movement theory to organize a food delivery spreadsheet. We all know, intuitively, how to blow a whistle. What is time consuming, however, is vetting strangers who want to join a Signal group, knowing which nonprofits can offer fiscal sponsorship for a mutual aid campaign, which churches or businesses have room for an emergency meeting, and who on your block is more flexible during the day or the night. The people who have been most effective in Minneapolis this past month aren’t the big talkers with the loudest megaphones. They are those who already knew their neighbors, who could be key connectors when, on a dime, an entire city raised their hands looking for something useful to do.
REASON TWO: Sure, you’ll eventually need to build relationships outside of your existing social spheres, but you won’t learn those skills if you don’t practice with those closest to you first
There’s a counterpoint that I receive pretty frequently, when I tell people to just host a damn potluck. It’s a presumptive critique, resting on the cynical hypothesis that not only will prospective community builders only reach out to others who share their same class, racial and political background, but that they will inevitably stay stuck in those same bubbles forever.
I’m actually sympathetic to this concern, to a point. There are absolutely examples of ostensibly “community minded” efforts (particularly in white, professional class circles) that exist primarily to protect privilege and fortify echo chambers. America is dotted with wealthy neighborhoods that can throw a solid Memorial Day BBQ, but whose residents oppose every new affordable housing and school integration initiative. There are no shortage of ostensibly “welcoming” megachurches, but whose doors are only truly open to those able to walk a very specific path.
The problem with this rebuttal, though, is that it disregards how human beings build and strengthen new behavioral patterns. Having trained thousands of community builders across the country, I find that the neighbors who are most skilled at cross-community relationships are those who first exercised their muscles close to home. That’s the difference between being a colonist or a savior versus somebody who just can’t help expanding strong webs of connection outward. Instead of aimlessly tilting around trying to find somebody else’s community to welcome you in, you act as a representative of a loving network ready to meet similarly bonded groups on equal terms.
There are beautiful examples of this approach in Minneapolis right now. I’m being deliberately vague, to protect activist identities in a high pressure moment, but some of the most trusted organizers across that segregated city are skilled bridge builders who simultaneously do an incredible job of convening welcoming events in wealthier, whiter, more sheltered corners of town, but who also build trusting coalitions with fellow organizers from Black, Brown and working class neighborhoods.
Another example. Here in Milwaukee, a good friend of mine (who also happens to be one of the most skilled community organizers I’ve ever met) recently founded an alternative church, the Kairos Collective, based on an ethos of radical hospitality. The group that coalesced around him, at least initially, shared a lot in common. They were disproportionally white, middle class, and straight Gen X parents. But they intentionally practiced taking care of one another, and then slowly and patiently forged new ties with like-minded communities across the metro area: a majority Black congregation with deep roots in its neighborhood; a younger congregation with a large percentage of queer and trans members; a participatory food bank whose clients are also volunteers. The Kairos crew has been able to forge strong cross-identity relationships, not in spite of their focus on building trust with each other, but because they practiced how to care before reaching out an open hand.
There’s a key difference between the gated “communities” that stay closed forever and the connectors whose webs keep pushing outward. Shared spaces stay insular if their goal is to reinforce traditional power structures. If, by contrast, they exist to challenge power, they can’t help but seek out new ways to blossom. That’s the difference between something dying and something being born.
Read the rest on The White Pages! 👇
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I’m super intrigued about Garrett’s big relay potluck. Is it coming to NC? It seems like a thing that could fit in beautifully with the Bull City Shares. I’d love to be part of it, but can’t take the lead.