Scissors or Glue?

As presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her team repeatedly reinforced during this week’s exciting US National Democratic Convention, it is a crucial moment in history for hope, optimism, and change.

Harris is committed to economic issues such as safeguarding Social Security and Medicare, affordable housing, lowering living costs, and corporate tax increases.

However, she also highlighted her commitment to social issues such as women’s rights, gun safety, and environmental protection. 

Threaded throughout her speech were references to the kind of caring neighbourhood she grew up in, the importance of instilling confidence in children and youth, and the importance of each of us looking out for one another.

When pessimism, fragmentation, and divisiveness prevail, we don’t need more scissors – what we need is glue. Local neighbourhoods and the sense of community found there can be this glue.

While it’s true that many politicians focus on economic development, there’s a growing understanding that our quality of life is influenced by more than just jobs and living costs. It’s a complex web of economic and social factors.

For reasons beyond me, quality of life has never quite measured up to the economic development on the other side of the ledger.

As a result, I’ve always been puzzled as to why more people don’t see that when economic development takes priority over quality of life, it’s not just a matter of preference but a serious threat to our personal, social, and environmental health and well-being.

When there is an imbalance and the economy is deemed more important than happiness and quality of life, health care costs escalate, social capacity is reduced, civic engagement lessens, the environment is not prioritized, levels of income disparity increase, community resiliency wanes, investment in learning, growth and development decreases, and innovation declines.

As author Margaret Wheatley suggests, ‘The power of a community rests with the people of the community, not solely with its leaders. I work from the firm belief that whatever the issue, community is the answer.’

Not only is it in communities where we feel less alone and okay to be who we actually are, but it is also about knowing others have your back.

In my community-building work, I often ask people where they have found community and why it was necessary. In one workshop, a woman replied that she refers to her son as a ‘child of the community.’

She went on to explain that the chronic, life-threatening illness of her young son had meant that residents of her small, rural community had stepped up and stepped into their lives by providing not only emotional support but also extensive, ongoing fundraising efforts to help with expenses. She also shared that she and her son were often stopped in the street by people they didn’t even know and asked how they were doing. Somewhat emotional, she continued, “For me, that kind of caring and connecting is what community is all about.”

While her feelings and understanding about the importance of community were pretty straightforward due to her firsthand experience, it may be more difficult for some to articulate and convey what it means. In large part, it is likely because community is about feelings.

Perhaps the most important feelings are those of being connected to others, not being alone, and knowing that others in our community will help us even if they don’t know us. The woman at the workshop still seemed surprised that so many reached out to support her family without even knowing who they were.

This shared emotional connection seems to be the definitive element of true community. That connection results from personal, quality interaction, shared activities and events, and an almost spiritual, difficult-to-describe bonding with other community members.

This sense of community is essential for each of us in that it gives us a feeling that we belong, we matter to one another and the group, and we know our needs will be met because we are committed to being together. And yes, while that may be about something warm and fuzzy and difficult to measure, it’s something that Kamala Harris has managed to capture and mobilize because it’s something we either value as having or want to have in our lives.

To do what Kamala Harris is doing successfully, every politician also needs to better understand that the competencies many once thought of as being “soft” – relationship building, mobilizing citizen-led initiatives, community building - are now the hard currency of successful leadership and the ultimate drivers of the innovation, systems change, and transformation that will be essential for individual, community, environmental, and economic well-being.

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