Preserving the Core: Fostering Community in Quarantine Community – the real kind – looks out for its pieces and parts, its members. Membership in a community doesn’t require a formal process or certificate nearly as much as it simply requires participation. It’s the wild variety of species coming together in a coral reef – my favorite, if imperfect, metaphor for community – each bringing itself to the whole, and each receiving what it needs. It’s the merger of gifts and needs, causes and effects moving together in a dance of interdependent mutuality. In the end, community is fostered naturally when action and interaction are produced as a result of a genuine acknowledgment that our wellbeing is inextricably bound together. By Steve North, Founder of Lifeline Business writer Jim Collins studied a collective 3600 years of corporate history spread among 36 corporations, by pairs, in 18 different industries in an effort to identify what distinguished the greatest corporate organizations from the second greatest, the gold medal winners from the silver medal winners. Sometimes his work required him to identify the difference when there was a near photo finish. In his now-classic 1994 book, Built to Last, Collins distilled his massive research down to four marks of distinction, the third of which was that all of the gold medal winners had wildly succeeded in their determination to “preserve the core and stimulate progress.” One of the great challenges for any organization of any kind is to maintain absolute clarity on what is core, what are the absolute identifying marks of their DNA. The temptation to abandon the core in pursuit of innovation or expansion is enormous under the best of circumstances, but it is death to do so. The allure of a core paradigm shift can be particularly strong in a time like our present moment. As if the normal pressures of life and culture were not enough, add into the mix a global pandemic which changes every rule, every norm, every assumption, and the task becomes even more difficult. It is easy to shift thinking from preserving what is core to stimulating any sort of progress, innovation, or change in an effort to navigate a Page 6 particularly difficult time, and at any cost. In fact, such efforts are likely to be applauded by many. I love that Toledo Streets Newspaper has chosen this very time to re-clarify its core at this intersection of its history and our society’s challenge: To inspire hope, foster community, and cultivate change in individuals and society. It is a core that is worth preserving, and it’s worth noting that TSN has clung to it throughout the COVID-19 crisis. I’m honored to speak here to the second part of that great vision. It’s extra work to foster community during a pandemic, as all of us have seen. How do we do that when we have to stay six feet apart, hugs become ill-advised at best, masks hide smiles and other facial expressions, restaurants and bars close or greatly reduce capacity, concerts and sporting events are canceled, and we need to meet for work and school and worship on Zoom? But community – the real kind – isn’t restricted to particular practices or modes of operation. It consists of invisible bonds more than in physical proximity. It’s the thing that keeps us thinking of one another, reaching out and connecting via what we can do rather than dying because of what we can’t. Our family bonds exist across time and distance, and so do our connections that make us family by something other than blood. In fact, when we quiet the noise of change and fear, many of us have discovered that our mutual wellbeing is more intertwined than we knew, and then we get creative. One of my favorite responses to the stresses of the pandemic was carried out by Toledo Streets Newspaper in late March and through April, at the height of the shutdowns. Shelter-in-place orders meant, among other things, that social mobility was reduced to a trickle and that TSN vendors were at risk for both their physical health and the part of their livelihood that sales of the paper offered. In a move prompted by care for the vendors’ health and survival, TSN’s staff and board took the vendors off the street, barring sales of the paper, and conducted a crowdfunding campaign to see to it that every vendor could receive an amount equal to her or his average monthly income. The wider community in Toledo responded well to the campaign and together an amazing thing happened. I remember Saturday, April 18, when I ran into one of the vendors at the bus stop, and the person raved about what it felt like to receive the first half of that month’s pay just the day before. He knew that what he was a part of was a community in more than just word only. The organization thrived, too. Fostering community anytime – but especially in the time of COVID – means identifying what must be done in order for the community to not only survive, but thrive. The first question is not whether our connection can or should be maintained and nurtured, as if our mutual wellbeing is a negotiable or discretionary thing. Instead, acknowledging the central importance of our communal bonds, our question must be “How?” How will we stay connected, deepen our relationships, and flourish in a time of seeming scarcity. How will we provide nourishment to the roots of our kinship so that they will dig deep and hold fast when everything around us is saying it’s not the season for such growth. Our questions must be oriented not to “if,” but to “how,” or TSN will become a GMO. That’s what happens when the core is not preserved. The organism we were can become an altogether different kind of thing, changed at the genetic level. Some may become convinced that the times demand such changes for survival, no matter the cost in identity. But fostering community is who we are. It’s in our DNA. It’s the grain in our wood, and you can’t take that out. We can change the shape and some of the makeup of the reef, but we cannot, should not, change the fact that we are a reef. Stimulate progress through innovation and adaptation in almost every other way imaginable, but this core is worth preserving. It’s what makes TSN great.
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