Sarah Byrnes

The challenge is always what’s the particular role of an individual person or of an individual organization. The discernment process is something that everyone is working on, figuring out my role in this systems change.

On Saturday, March 21, fifty organizers and activists from all six New England states (plus one intrepid Californian) gathered in Keene NH to discuss resilience, Transition, and the future we want to create.

A new vision for New England’s food.

Lonely people are more easily controlled and scared, and they are more inclined to accept the status quo. Isolated individuals have little reason to believe in their own agency. It is only by forming networks and communities built on solidarity that most people can make a difference.

People around the country have been forming small groups like Resilience Circles and social action affinity groups. These groups are a way to relearn skills of mutuality, consensus-building, story-sharing, and real listening. They form an essential piece of the architecture of social movements built on solidarity and relatedness.

But pulling together a small group can be a real challenge.

As a nation, we seem to be constantly better at keeping each other at a distance. That means we aren’t so good at the skills required to live in community and use consensus: real listening, compromise, self-awareness, personal reflection. In this context, it’s radical simply to try and make connections with each other—to get closer rather than farther apart.