Growing up in Mexico, Pancho learned to see his identity woven with that of his community. He found his own dignity depended on seeing the dignity in others. He helped communities in Mexico and Nicaragua tap their strengths to improve the lives of everyone there — work that required years of building trust. When he followed his American girlfriend, now wife, to the United States, he had to start over. In Houston, Pancho met immigrants with spinal injuries who were denied county medical support for wheelchairs and health supplies, so he became part of the Living Hope Wheelchair Association. Pancho says he doesn’t serve; he accompanies the members as they move from needing help, to living independent lives, to becoming valued community leaders.
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
At age 5, Claudia emigrated with her family from Chile to the United States, but the experience was hardly the American Dream. She lost her sister to a drug overdose and experienced PTSD from living with domestic violence. But instead of these experiences breaking her, they broke her open and helped her create a better life. She knew she was not the only one living with trauma in her Newark, New Jersey school. So after college, she returned to help others overcome their challenges and succeed in school. She started Future Leaders Accomplishing Intellectual Readiness (FLAIRNow) to break down the walls faced by students of different backgrounds and give them the skills to start a career. She learned to accept the bad in the world and still see the good. Every day, she says, her students teach her how to keep turning the bad into good.
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
Katherine Hutton always believed food expressed love, but never imagined her cooking would draw her New Orleans neighborhood together. What started as a way for her to make ends meet, Open Hands Cafe is now a source of inspiration and love for all those who walk in its doors. Serving up more than just delicious comfort food, Katherine uses her tiny cafe to introduce young people to entrepreneurship and create a caring space for those who need it. While her journey through homelessness, hurricanes and hardship has been bittersweet, Katherine takes pride in knowing that everyone feels “loved on” at Open Hands Cafe.
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
Bruce is no stranger to grief. He lost his father to a work accident, then his son, a Marine, died in a motorcycle accident one day after re-entering civilian life. Bruce sank into a depression, cutting himself off from everyone and everything. He saw counselors and read self-help books, and finally drove to a church more than an hour away to attend a GriefShare program he had read about. Talking with others who had also lost loved ones made him feel a little better — or, at least, a little less alone. As Bruce continued to heal, he wanted to give that peace to others. He started a GriefShare program in his church. He believes everyone’s pain is easier to bear when they can also share hope and comfort.
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
NationSwell: David, you’ve spent most of your life as a journalist, author and columnist holding a mirror to society. What made you decide to join the Aspen Institute and lead a project aimed at shifting American culture? David Brooks: It’s clear that we have a crisis of connection in this country. I do a lot of reporting across the country and see firsthand the loneliness and division. So many people feel unseen and misunderstood. Black people feel that white people don’t understand their daily experience. Democrats and Republicans glare at each other in angry incomprehension. There are teenagers across the country who feel that no one knows them well. There are seniors wondering what happened to the warm bonds they remember from the old days in their neighborhoods. Our national problems are really relational problems. I realized that the solution wouldn’t come from Washington, DC. It had to happen in our neighborhoods. Q: How do we solve this crisis of disconnection? How do we make people care about each other? Brooks: It’s already being solved. It’s being solved by people in neighborhoods everywhere. I will go into a town and ask, “Who is trusted here?” Immediately people start reeling off names of folks who are really good at building community and deepening relationships. Sometimes the people they mention work at a suicide hotline or a mentoring program. Sometimes they run a coffee shop where everybody feels at home. Sometimes they are just the person on the block who invites everybody over for barbecue. Sometimes it’s a young woman in high school who sees someone alone and sits down to talk. Q: So, for you, are these people “Weavers” of their communities? Brooks: Yes, they are all Weavers. And they are all very different and yet they are the same in one way. Whatever they do, they lead with love. They create countercultural islands, where love and community are more important than ego and self. The problem is that so far, it’s just islands. So many places and people are left out. Our project began as a way to learn from the Weavers and spread their way of living. Relationships happen one on one. They don’t scale. But social norms do scale. Our goal is to spread this way of living, these social norms that value relationships and community over striving just for yourself. The job is not just to heal division. It’s to find a better way of being. Q: How do you do that? Brooks: Our Weave Project does three things. First, we find Weavers and tell their stories to illuminate their values. Being around Weavers has inspired me to change how I live, to be more emotionally open, to live more as an active member of my communities. We use video, narratives and public appearances to bring the Weaver stories to millions of people, so they, too, will be inspired to live a little more in the Weaver way. Culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.
Second, we bring Weavers together, online and through in-person gatherings. We’ve learned that Weavers crave each other’s company. They want to know, “I’m not alone.” They want to meet other Weavers to laugh together, share each other’s burdens and learn from each other’s wisdom.
Third, we spread Weaver skills. Building good relationships is hard. How do I talk to someone with depression? How do I help people heal from trauma? How do I organize a community gathering and keep people engaged? How do I weave across racial or ideological lines? We want to spread the wisdom that’s already out there in the community. Q: What makes Weave unique? How is your project different from other groups that support community development and neighborhood organizations? Brooks: Wonderful organizations are doing important work in their communities. Their services are crucial to supporting people, but their work alone will not create the kind of society we dream of. Look back on the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and 2000s. In those decades, there were foundations that spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build community and expand social mobility. There were millions of volunteers who dedicated hundreds of millions of hours to this work.
They did good work and helped many people. But the fundamental trends did not change. Social mobility declined. Social trust declined. Polarization got worse. All that work didn’t bend the curves.
They didn’t bend the curves because they focused on creating and scaling good programs. The vast majority of Americans are not in programs. Most of the care in society is informal — friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers and parents.
If you really want to change society, you have to work to change the rest of us. You have to change the culture. You have to change the norms – what people think is the normal way to be a neighbor and citizen, the way a good person behaves. If you’re not doing culture change, you’re not going to bend the curve and make fundamental change.
Weave’s hope is to be one of many organizations that shift people’s perception of how they want to show up in the world. What kind of person do I want to be? How can I live a more connected life, where I deeply see others and where I am deeply seen? How can I lead with love? Culture change is vital. Q: In today’s society is cultural change on that scale really possible? Aren’t we too steeped in values and a pace of life determined by technology, social media and the pursuit of money and fame?
Brooks: Culture change has happened before and it’s happening now. Back in the 1890s, America was coming apart at the seams just like now. But the Settlement House movement, the Social Gospel movement and the Progressive movement shifted culture and norms and produced 60 years of greater cohesion.
By the 1960s, people found those communities stifling, so they created a counter-culture that emphasized individualism, freedom from restraint, liberation. Think of all the old rock anthems: Free Bird, Rambling Man, Born to Run. They shifted culture again. Today, individualism has gone too far. People acknowledge that. Now the tide is turning again. People from every walk of life, every ideology are talking about connection, relationship, interdependence. Cultural change is already happening. People want to come together, to form new kinds of community. Weave is highlighting those who are on the leading edge of this new way of life.
Weaving is not some complicated legislative agenda. It’s us creating connections that make our hearts glow and souls shine. It’s us spreading that kind of love and care to the people around us, who may be lonely, stressed, or marginalized. It’s us creating a culture where that seems normal, a culture in which it’s easier to be good.
I was in Waco, Texas recently having breakfast at a diner with Mrs. Dorsey. She’s a formidable African-American woman in her nineties who was a school principal for many decades. I was a little intimidated by her. “I loved my students enough to be disciplined,” she told me, firmly.
As we were having breakfast, a friend of hers named Jimmy Dorrell, a white guy in his sixties, came in and grabbed her by the shoulders and beamed into her eyes and said, “Mrs. Dorsey! You’re the best! I love you!” Her face lit up like a thousand suns. They were just there in that moment together, two friends who were making their town a better place.
I remember thinking, I want to be able to do that. I want to be so emotionally open and so caring toward people that I can make heart-to-heart connections with a friend even when I’m just walking into a diner. I want to be so deeply connected and so gift-giving that I radiate joy, the way Jimmy Dorrell does, the way the Weavers do.
This article was published in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
For as long as he can remember, Mack McCarter has felt a duty to serve. A former pastor in Texas, McCarter returned to his Louisiana hometown in 1991. It was there that he began spreading a new message — one of racial reconciliation — in the historically segregated city of Shreveport.
One Saturday, McCarter, who is white, drove to a majority black neighborhood to meet people. When no one opened their doors after he knocked, he chatted with a few kids on the street instead. McCarter kept going back, week after week. It took three months before doors finally started to open.
McCarter’s Saturday efforts eventually led to Community Renewal International, a faith-based nonprofit that has transformed Shreveport by facilitating stronger relationships among community members. Trained volunteers might organize neighborhood social gatherings, for example, or help out when someone is sick or hungry. The nonprofit has also built 10 community centers in low-income, high-crime areas. Called Friendship Houses, they offer everything from family movie nights and service projects to after-school educational programs. In the neighborhoods where the centers operate, crime has fallen by an average of 52 percent.
Service-minded neighbors like McCarter are everywhere, yet most seldom draw attention to themselves. These humble leaders are weaving connections at a time when community ties throughout the U.S. are frayed and risk coming apart. Inspired by their work, the Aspen Institute, along with the New York Times columnist David Brooks, launched Weave: The Social Fabric Project, an initiative that identifies and supports the people quietly working to strengthen America’s communities.
The project began by cold-calling towns and cities across the U.S., said Brooks, Weave’s executive director. They’d simply contact civic leaders and ask, “Who do people trust most in your community?” As they began hearing the same names over and over, the Weave staff hit the road to connect with these trusted community members. Brooks would invite them out for a meal and ask about their lives, their communities and their work.
Common themes emerged from the cross-country conversations. For example, people kept mentioning hospitality — not in the usual way, but as a radical act. To them, friendship and generosity meant an always-open home or simply showing up for others without hesitation or expecting anything in return. When someone was in trouble, these “Weavers” said they always found a way to help.
Their jobs didn’t define them. Some were teachers or business owners. One ran a distillery, another a coffee shop, and one was a parking lot attendant. But what they all had in common was a dedication to lifting up others in the face of today’s self-striving culture. Like McCarter, these people made relationships and community success a priority ahead of status, power and money — and often, in spite of personal hardship and pain.
Weavers … are quiet rebels, working for the common good in a society that values the individual.
In an interview, New Orleans native Katherine Hutton shared how much of her early life was marked by intermittent homelessness and abuse. Instead of isolating herself from strangers, she welcomed them by opening a restaurant in the same neighborhood she’s always called home. Today, people flock to Open Hands Café not just for the crawfish, red beans and rice, and gumbo, but also for Hutton herself. She provides food — and company — for her customers, doting on every one of them.
Weavers like Hutton and McCarter are quiet rebels, working for the common good in a society that values the individual. They emphasize what they have in common with strangers, not how they differ. And they’d rather risk intruding on someone’s privacy than failing to offer support when someone seems isolated and might need a visit, a hug or a sympathetic ear.
Weavers don’t see themselves as doing charity work. “To them, ‘charity’ is the ultimate dirty word,” Brooks said. “In their view, we all need each other. We are all taking this walk together, helping each other with mutual needs and dreams.”
At a time when many in our country feel disconnected and lonely, when families and towns are torn apart over social issues and politics, and when suicide rates are rising, we need more Weavers, said Brooks.
Weavers know that effective change starts at the local level. They know that small gestures can snowball, leading to community-wide impact. And they know that simply showing love can be the most game-changing act of all.
As McCarter put it, “When I meet you, I assume there’s a bridge from my heart to yours — and I am coming over!”
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
Asiaha, her husband and daughter were set to leave their Chicago neighborhood, Englewood, to live in a suburb. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just leave the kids playing in dirt and broken glass in empty lots. She couldn’t be one more person to give up on the neighborhood where she grew up.
According to an analysis of the FBI’s 2018 uniform crime reports, Englewood’s violent crime rate is about two and a half times higher than the national average, and property crime was nearly eight times higher, according to estimated data. Vacant lots are everywhere. The Chicago Sun Times reported that the neighborhood had the second highest number of property demolitions in the city, with very few permits to rebuild. An eye-opening 2011 report in the Chicago Tribune noted that the many vacant, boarded-up homes you see in Englewood have “kept [the neighborhood] in [a] downward spiral.” Asiaha only knew how to lead by putting her love for her community first, and that made all the difference in getting her community to believe in Englewood again.
This article was published in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
Homelessness is on the rise in Austin, Texas. In 2018, more than 7,000 people experienced homeless in Austin, according to the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO). On any given day there are over 2,000 individuals living in shelters or unsheltered — a number that’s risen nearly 5% between 2018 and 2019. But building a community can play an important role in supporting individuals experiencing homelessness. Since 1990, Art from the Streets has been doing exactly that. The organization helps the housing insecure find a greater sense of stability through art. Three times a week, individuals gather at a local Austin church where they can paint for free during an open studio session. There, artists have a refuge from life on the streets while also building a greater sense of community. “We create a place of safety for people who are on the street to be able to come inside to just be, and be supported to create,” co-founder Heloise Gold told NationSwell. “I don’t refer to this as ‘art therapy’ per se, but it is very therapeutic.” Art from the Streets also helps its artists get paid for their work. For the past 27 years, it’s hosted an end-of-year show and sale where artists are able to sell their original pieces for 95% of the profits. In more recent years, Art from the Streets has opened an online store to sell reprints and merchandise. Artists earn 60% of the proceeds from reprints, while the remaining 40% goes to support the organization. Though the sale of artwork is important, Gold maintains that it’s the sense of community instilled that drives Art from the Streets’ mission. “The heart of the program and what I was wanting in the beginning, that essence is still apart of this program,” said Gold. “We really want people to be apart of the community and to be influenced by each other.” More: This Website Empowers People in Need to Make Art — and Sell It for Thousands of Dollars
The following article is adapted from “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life,” by David Brooks, out now from Random House. Every once in a while, I meet a person who radiates joy. These are people who seem to glow with an inner light. They are kind, tranquil, delighted by small pleasures and grateful for the large ones. These people are not perfect. They get exhausted and stressed. They make errors in judgment. But they live for others, and not for themselves. They’ve made unshakable commitments to family, a cause, a community or a faith. They know why they were put on this earth and derive a deep satisfaction from doing what they have been called to do. Life isn’t easy for these people. They’ve taken on the burdens of others. But they have a serenity about them, a settled resolve. They are interested in you, make you feel cherished and known, and take delight in your good. When you meet these people, you realize that joy is not just a feeling — it can be an outlook. There are temporary highs we all get after we win some victory, and then there is also this other kind of permanent joy that animates people who are not obsessed with themselves but have given themselves away. I often find that their life has what I think of as a two-mountain shape. They got out of school, began their career or started a family, and identified the mountain they thought they were meant to climb: I’m going to be a cop, a doctor, an entrepreneur, what have you. On the first mountain, we all have to perform certain life tasks: establish an identity, separate from our parents, cultivate our talents, build a secure ego and try to make a mark in the world. People climbing that first mountain spend a lot of time thinking about reputation management. They are always keeping score. How do I measure up? Where do I rank? As the psychologist James Hollis puts it, at that stage we have a tendency to think, “I am what the world says I am.” The goals on that first mountain are the normal goals that our culture endorses — to be a success, to be well thought of, to get invited into the right social circles and to experience personal happiness. It’s all the normal stuff: nice home, nice family, nice vacations, good food, good friends and so on. Then something happens. David Brooks and Jenn Hoos Rothberg hosting the “Repairing Our Social Fabric” Panel at the NationSwell Summit 2019 in New York. Some people get to the top of that first mountain, taste success and find it … unsatisfying. “Is this all there is?” they wonder. They sense there must be a deeper journey they can take. Other people get knocked off that mountain by some failure. Something happens to their career, their family or their reputation. Suddenly life doesn’t look like a steady ascent up the mountain of success; it has a different and more disappointing shape. For still others, something unexpected happens that knocks them crossways: the death of a child, a cancer scare, a struggle with addiction, some life-altering tragedy that was not part of the original plan. Whatever the cause, these people are no longer on the mountain. They are down in the valley of bewilderment or suffering. This can happen at any age, by the way, from 8 to 85 and beyond. It’s never too early or too late to get knocked off your first mountain. These seasons of suffering have a way of exposing the deepest parts of ourselves and reminding us that we’re not the people we thought we were. People in the valley have been broken open. They have been reminded that they are not just the parts of themselves that they put on display. There is another layer to them they have been neglecting, a substrate where the dark wounds and most powerful yearnings live. Some shrivel in the face of this kind of suffering. They seem to get more afraid and more resentful. They shrink away from their inner depths in fear. Their lives become smaller and lonelier. We all know old people who nurse eternal grievances. They don’t get the respect they deserve. They live their lives as an endless tantrum about some wrong done to them long ago. But for others, this valley is the making of them. The season of suffering interrupts the superficial flow of everyday life. They see deeper into themselves and realize that down in the substrate, flowing from all the tender places, there is a fundamental ability to care, a yearning to transcend the self and care for others. And when they have encountered this yearning, they are ready to become a whole person. They see familiar things with new eyes. They are finally able to love their neighbors as themselves, not as a slogan but a practical reality. Their life is defined by how they react to their moment of greatest adversity. The people who are made larger by suffering go on to stage two small rebellions. First, they rebel against their ego ideal. When they were on their first mountain, their ego had some vision of what it was shooting for — some vision of prominence, pleasure and success. Down in the valley they lose interest in their ego ideal. Of course, afterward they still feel and sometimes succumb to their selfish desires. But, overall, they realize the desires of the ego are never going to satisfy the deep regions they have discovered in themselves. Second, they start to rebel against the mainstream culture. All their lives they’ve been living in a culture that teaches that human beings pursue self-interest — money, power, fame. But suddenly they are not interested in what other people tell them to want. They want to want the things that are truly worth wanting. They elevate their desires. The world tells them to be a good consumer, but they want to be the one consumed — by a moral cause. The world tells them to want independence, but they want interdependence — to be enmeshed in a web of warm relationships. The world tells them to want individual freedom, but they want intimacy, responsibility and commitment. The world wants them to climb the ladder and pursue success, but they want to be a person for others. The magazines on the magazine rack want them to ask, “What can I do to make myself happy?” but they glimpse something bigger than personal happiness. The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered. At this point, people realize, “Oh, that first mountain wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.” The second mountain is not the opposite of the first mountain. To climb it doesn’t mean rejecting the first mountain. It’s the journey after it. It’s the more generous and satisfying phase of life. And it can happen at any age. These people show up in the world differently. They’ve found a better way to live. They put relationships at the center of their lives. They weave thick connections and a tight social fabric in their communities. They inspired me to start on this path after my world crumbled. I created Weave: The Social Fabric Project to tell their stories and inspire others to be “Weavers.” Take some time to meet these Weavers and consider if you are ready to climb your second mountain.
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
Picture your local convenience store. It might be the 7-Eleven around the block or that one bodega with the best drip coffee. The image that comes to mind is likely filled with shimmery, plastic-wrapped candy bars, brightly colored lotto tickets and, well, unhealthy food. While bodegas and corner stores often aren’t known for healthy snack options, they are known to foster community. Bodegas, most commonly found in New York City, have a deep history. Puerto Rican and Dominican business owners coined the term in the 1960s, and over the decades they’ve become places to share stories, celebrate cultural identities and strengthen neighborhood ties. Since they’ve become centerpieces in their communities, bodegas often become a point of outreach and information sharing for nonprofits and other organizations. For bodegas located in low-income neighborhoods, where knowledge about nutrition is lacking and healthy food is expensive and often inaccessible, messages around healthy eating become even more important.t That’s why LaRayia Gaston decided to fuse the low costs of bodegas with the health of Whole Foods. She launched LaRayia’s Bodega, a healthy take on the traditional convenience store. Step inside and you won’t find Twix Bars or cans of Pringles, but crystals and candles in the entryway and a counter teeming with healthy granola bars, jars of organic pasta sauce and natural juice boxes. And while most of the products have “all-natural” or “organic” written before its name, every item in the Westlake, California, store costs $5 or less. “The price point is the activism, the price point is the focus,” Gaston, the bodega’s founder, told The New York Times.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B24rB18g0XT/ Beyond packaged food, the convenience store, which opened in August, also has a café offering homemade meals. Everything, from the salad to soups, is vegan. It’s all priced under $5, with options ranging from Caribbean-style potato coconut soup to jackfruit tacos. “This is about giving people a chance to have fresh foods,” Gaston said. “There are people who want salads that don’t have the means. I have war vets that are 60 years old that are like, ‘Give me arugula today, baby.’” The store is part of Love Without Reason, a nonprofit started by Gaston about four years ago. Outside of the bodega, the nonprofit also provides vegan meals to people experiencing homelessness on Skid Row, a 50-block area with over 4,750 homeless individuals. Gaston and volunteers gather food from grocery stores and restaurants that would have otherwise been thrown away and turn it into meals. The nonprofit delivers about 10,000 meals each month to people in need. Similar to the meal program, the bodega receives misshapen fruit for free and many of its packaged snacks are donated, offsetting some of the café’s costs. Eventually, the bodega aims to also support veterans, at-risk youth and people experiencing homelessness with jobs and job training. “We want to address everything — food injustice, food waste, homelessness, giving people a second chance. I wanted to kill multiple birds with one stone,” Gaston told L.A. Times.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3QXLWXgMKE/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B3QXLWXgMKE/http:// Besides the goal of offering affordable, healthy meals, Gaston aims to make the bodega a space to celebrate neighbors and strengthen community. Whether it’s a weekend birthday party or an open mic night, Gaston wants to foster relationships inside the little store. That’s why she settled on the term bodega. In Los Angeles, the term “bodega” isn’t often used — “tienditas” is much more common — but Gaston grew up in New York and was raised by Puerto Rican Caribbean parents. Calling her store a bodega is a way of reflecting her roots. “A bodega is personal,” Gaston told L.A. Taco. “It’s knowing people on your block.” More: Kids Are Learning to Read in a Place You’d Never Expect: The Laundromat
