The future is community

How to navigate through uncertainties

12 minute read

This is the second part of a series on the possibilities for national breakup of the U.S. The first part looked at the potentials. This part sets out pathways to navigate through the uncertainties of the future.

Necessity drives us together

The future is community.

That might seem like a paradoxical way to begin a piece on the potential for break-up and conflict in the U.S. But it is the fundamental insight into how we navigate through whatever is coming.

And that is highly uncertain. There are multiple scenarios for how a U.S. future might unfold.

We might find all this talk of a “new civil war” to be hyperbolic exaggeration and find a way to muddle through as a nation, divided but finding our common interests in staying together greater than our centrifugal tendencies.

Or triggering events might cascade into situations barely imaginable today. After all, in 1860 and early 1861, the bloody Civil War years to come were foreseen by almost no one. What would be the outcomes of a close 2024 presidential election with results disputed by one side or another? Will we see the U.S. break into pieces, with red states and blue states going their own ways, in an official division or less formal but de facto split? There are many tendencies in that regard already, with blue states moving more progressive and red states becoming more conservative. Will mass civil unrest break out? We simply don’t know. But the possibilities are obvious.

In any event, the way through the coming years is to build strong communities at every level, from our cities, towns and counties to the states where we live, to the bioregional, and, yes, to the national, and international. Our emergent crises are so large and pressing that only community will see us through. Crises can pull people apart or us together.  It is my conviction that necessity will drive us to new levels of cooperation and community, not as mushy idealization, but as real connection. Whatever the outcome, the future will belong to those who develop the strongest bonds of community and human solidarity.  

There are two forms of community. Communities of place and communities of interest. The first is tied to specific geographies, the second to commonalities that transcend geography. We will need both, and will have to deal with some of the paradoxes this entails. More on that below.

A failing political system

First, we need to understand what is driving us apart. We rely on our political systems to accomplish tasks too large for us to deal with on our own, as individuals or private organizations, and to resolve conflicts rising from limited space and resources. The U.S. political system has been failing for some time on both counts, failing to address basic needs and solve fundamental problems, and this is the prime driver of the divisions we face.

Failing to address basic challenges is causing the conditions of most people’s lives to become more difficult. That is true almost wherever you look. Housing costs are skyrocketing. The healthcare system leaves many unable to afford needed treatments, and drives more into bankruptcy. The educational system is falling behind many other countries. The gap between the top income groups and the rest is growing, with more and more wealth concentrated at the top. The climate crisis intensifies while fossil fuel burning increases. Meanwhile, ballooning military expenditures suck the oxygen out of everything else, driving record national debt and interest payments.

When people’s lives grow more difficult, it is easy to create scapegoats and generate culture wars that divert attention from the real sources of the problems, to set up divisions that prevent us from addressing those sources. Looking at the widespread failures of systems, the sources are pretty clear - interest group politics forwarded by powerful elites who use their money power to preserve status quo situations that benefit them even while those situations are failing more and more people. By buying politicians, controlling media narratives, limiting the frame of debate to exclude voices calling for fundamental change. Thus challenges intensify, as do divisions.

The way to navigate through these dilemmas is to build movements around solutions that do address those needs and resolve those problems. In essence, to build both communities of interest and place focused on the common good. That has to come from grassroots political organizing.

This is true whoever is elected in 2024. There is excitement at potentially electing the first woman to the presidency, and a woman of color. But, barring massive public pressure, whatever the election outcome there will be a continuation of policies that are driving us deeper into crisis. We need to be clear about this.

On climate, Harris is obviously far preferable to Trump, who has promised to dismantle climate policies. Under a Harris Administration, there may even be further climate legislation, though that is contingent on the uncertain prospects of a favorable balance in Congress. Nonetheless, Harris is already mouthing the “all of the above” language on energy policy invented under the Obama Administration and continued under Biden that made the U.S. by far the largest gas producer in the world, as well as the top oil producer. Oil drilling permits under Biden significantly exceeded those under Trump. Even if policies increase renewable energy production, it will not be meaningful unless fossil fuel production is diminished as well, rather than continue to reach record levels as it has.

The drift toward war between the great powers of the U.S., China and Russia is likely to continue. There is a fundamental consensus on foreign policy between the two parties that emphasizes increased military spending and confrontational policies with the other great powers, rather than diplomacy. On Gaza, though Harris has called for a ceasefire, the U.S. continues to ship weapons to Israel, despite the obvious genocide taking place. The disgusting display of 58 standing ovations for Netanyahu during his recent speech to Congress reveals the basic unanimity between the two parties on the issue.

The oligarchic concentration of wealth that has intensified under both parties is also likely to continue. The obvious solutions are increased taxes on wealth, capital gains, and income of both high net worth individuals and corporations. Trump has promised yet more tax cuts, but whether tax increases capable of meaningfully reversing wealth concentration would be passed under a Harris Administration is highly doubtful. Both parties rely on deep-pocketed donors who do not favor such an outcome.

The need for progressive organizing

That drives toward the need for communities of interest at that national level, drawn together by common policy goals. Significant progressive policy advances will come only with concerted organizing and people power action. Though a Democratic Administration leaves open doors that would be closed under a Republican Administration, the impetus for change will not come from the inner circuits of DC, controlled as they are by big donors. They will come from people organized to put pressure on elected representatives. The power of money to frustrate change can only be overcome if millions of people mobilize to demand it.

The signature climate legislation under the Biden Administration is a perfect case in point. The Inflation Reduction Act provides substantial incentives for technologies that reduce climate pollution. But it would never have been passed without deep rooted organizing that built a broad constituency for a Green New Deal. In the end, the IRA was far less ambitious than proposals put forth by organizing groups such as the Sunrise Movement. And it contains compromises that actually facilitate permitting of fossil fuel drilling while supporting doubtful solutions such as hydrogen and carbon capture. But the fact it passed at all is a testimony to grassroots organizing efforts. It still falls far short of the level of policy action that is really needed to avert climate catastrophe. That will require continued and increased mass mobilization focused on demands for reduced fossil fuel use and all the infrastructure and economic changes needed to achieve it.

Similarly, even though Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, it is only continuing pressure from the streets that has yielded calls for a ceasefire from major elected officials. Compared to the horror taking place, that might seem like thin gruel. But organizers are going up against U.S. policies dating back to the creation of Israel in 1948, backed by an entrenched, well-funded Israel lobby.  Only people power organizing will generate the change needed to bring justice to the Palestinians.

At the same time, we need a revived peace movement. The world is at a level of nuclear danger unseen since at least the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and perhaps ever. But unlike those times, or in the 1980s when the nuclear freeze movement broke out, we seem to be sleepwalking into catastrophe. We have no control over what Russia or China are doing, but we need to take responsibility for our own country’s substantial role in driving global conflict rather than seeking diplomatic solutions. We need to demand diplomacy and reduction of the bloated military budget in order to meet critical needs on the homefront.

Finally, the only way that wealth concentration will be reversed is a movement for just taxation. We desperately need public investment in a range of public goods, from affordable housing and truly universal healthcare, to clean energy and transportation that moves away from auto dependence. Wealth gained from monopoly control over technologies, mostly developed in the public sector, must be turned back to the public good. The growing use of robotics and artificial intelligence promises to destroy many jobs and concentrate wealth further. A basic guaranteed income will probably be required, and that must be funded by capturing some of the wealth those new technologies create. Only massive organizing pressure can pass the needed just taxation policies.

Communities of interest must come together throughout the U.S. around efforts to solve problems afflicting people across the political spectrum. They can build a new basis for consensus and unity. Centrifugal tendencies in the U.S. are now intensifying to the degree that the country could fall apart. As my recent post documents, the bonds of national unity are more frayed than generally understood. If there is to be a coherent U.S. not torn into pieces, the only future, I believe, is through communities of interest that effectively forward proposals to realize the common good. Seeking a way to navigate beyond the conflicts that divide us, real world solutions that meet human needs are what can unite us.  

The local and state

Many of us find more meaning in realities closer to home, where communities of place and communities of interest merge. That is understandable. Place is the more natural and organic experience of human life. We don’t all have to pursue the same pathways. There is plenty of room for action and community building at all levels.

It is also a political fact that people power can have more immediate impacts in places closer to home, in states, cities, towns and counties. As often noted, they are the laboratories of democracy. Most political innovations start in localities and states, and then move to broader levels. For instance, the movement for higher minimum wages began in cities such as Seattle, and then reached states such as Florida. Movements for public banking that free local governments from Wall Street financing are taking root in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, and states ranging from New York and Wisconsin to Arizona. Efforts to establish affordable social housing are underway in cities including Seattle, Kansas City and Washington, DC, and states including New York, California and Rhode Island. If there is a path to single-payer health insurance, it will be through efforts now underway to pass it in a number of states.

Building communities at the state level is important. The states are products of history, having boundaries that are often artificial and encompassing quite different cultural and natural regions. Nonetheless, they are a political reality with deep impacts on people. States such as Minnesota and Washington have gone more progressive, while others such as Texas, Florida and Tennessee have moved hard right. These centrifugal tendencies could well result in a de facto division of the U.S. in coming years. I doubt we will see literal secession such as is being advocated in states ranging from Texas to California. But states could nullify federal law, on issues such as immigration, guns and abortion, resulting in practical disunion.

Even the reddest states have strong blue minorities, and the bluest states substantial red elements. Creating greater political balance in states is vital to tamp down momentum toward division. One of the factors driving states in such starkly different directions is legislative gerrymandering done by dominant party politicians to tilt the balance even more in their direction. Restoring democracy at state levels is crucial. For that, nonpartisan legislative redistricting commissions that take the matter out of the hands of politicians are vital. Some of the most successful examples are Michigan, Arizona, Colorado and California.

Again, much as at the national level, the way to build community and bridge divides at local and state levels is to forward practical solutions that make a difference in people’s lives, that address the difficult situations people are facing with answers that build the common good.

The bioregional

So far I have been talking about communities of interest and place based on political movements. And because the potential for national breakup is a political matter, this is appropriate. But for the longer term, for dealing with the underlying crises facing our civilization, we need to build community on a deeper, cultural level. That is the bioregional.

The bioregional is where the community of interest becomes the community of place, focused on rejoining the human community with the natural community in which it is embedded. Our most profound civilizational crisis is ecological overshoot, as has been well documented by many studies. Climate disruption is most in the foreground, but the deteriorating conditions of lands, water and biodiversity, and the overburden of chemicals such as nitrogen, phosphorous and toxics, are also pushing humanity over the line. Our heavy footprint is crushing the future. We need a new community with nature to restore the balance.

Here, we must embody a certain level of paradox. Realities of nation and state are in many ways contradictory to the realities of the bioregional. The abstractions entailed in dealing with these political realities, with their artificial lines drawn across the landscape, can draw us away from deeper realities of nature. Yet we must somehow be able to keep these seemingly opposite realities in mind. Political systems at national, state and local levels deeply impinge on natural realities. Climate disruption and global warfare come home to the bioregional level. Thus, to build the bioregional community, we need to deal with these political facts on the ground, even as we create cultural alternatives more in tune with natural realities.

In a way, this is not so contradictory. Much of our challenge is to build economies in harmony with nature, and that entails building a new sets of economic institutions in the places we live. Public banking can finance a whole set of alternatives, including social housing, ecovillages and other new community forms. It can help create a network of businesses based on goals beyond profit, such as Class B corporations and worker-owned cooperatives. Many of those can generate circular economies that eliminate waste and build sustainable materials chains reducing the need for mining, logging, and other forms of natural resource extraction. Community broadband can help form new media outlets that let us tell our own stories. Action in existing localities and states to create new institutions can generate the basis of bioregional economies.

A key fact about place as a unifying principle for community is that it creates a solid, palpable basis for coming together as neighbors. Where abstractions at broader national and state levels can generate division, the face-to-face reality of local community grounded in bioregional reality can join people together. In the long run, this is the community that is points most to the future.

It is impossible to predict outcomes in U.S. political reality. It may be that we work through the coming crises to build a new sense of national community. Or our divisions may be so great that we go separate ways, de facto or officially. In any event, it is crucial we build communities of place centered on our localities and bioregions. They will be the fundamental reality however events unfold. Whatever the outcome, the most solid path to the future will be to build communities that draw us together around the common good, communities of interest and place. It is through these that we will navigate the uncertainties of the coming years. The future is community.

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