Lately, I’ve been digging into a question that’s both urgent and uncomfortably familiar: What does community look like when coercion becomes currency and solidarity feels subversive?
Drawing from the history of the Brownshirts (BROWN-shurts)—the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SHTOORM-up-tie-loong)—I’ve been exploring how ideological extremism fractures civic trust. Their tactics didn’t just silence dissent—they reshaped the emotional architecture of neighborhoods, turning fear into glue and conformity into currency. The racialized “people’s community,” or Volksgemeinschaft (VOLKS-guh-MINE-shahft), taught us that exclusion can masquerade as unity when the soul of democracy is stripped out.
But the project I’m building through The View from Sol 3 is not about mourning that erosion. It’s about mapping resilience.
Together with Copilot, I’ve been assembling tools:
- Workshop frameworks on ethical solidarity and street-level resistance
- Essays that blend historical precision with local relevance
- Multimedia content that transforms civic history into teach-in material for Billings and beyond
This work is not abstract. It’s grounded in local realities—bedbug control as ecological justice, community radio as narrative repair, and art as disruption. From mutual aid networks to strategic civic engagement, we’re drafting a blueprint for pluralism in an age that demands easy answers and spectacle politics.
If you’re wondering whether hope is a viable tool for resistance, I’m here to say: yes, but only if it’s paired with rigor, local organizing, and the courage to speak in the voice of community.
More to come—zines, slides, teach-ins, and strategies. The soul of community isn’t lost. It’s just waiting to be remade.