The Case for Community Hubs: Why Social Media Isn’t Enough
Social media communities have limitations that the left needs to overcome, and community hubs could help.
For any candidate on the left, being able to navigate and use social media to their advantage is a critical skill, especially when so much of their support base consists of young people. It’s how Bernie was able to build such a massive, involved group of donors and volunteers and why many of his “radical” ideas are now popular among the mainstream. It can serve as free advertising, and enables the spread of ideas in a faster, more egalitarian way than traditional media ever could or ever will. And most importantly, it is oftentimes how we become familiar with leftist candidates in smaller races, who can then elicit nationwide attention and win races against ideologically mainstream candidates.
Social media has also helped leftists build something that has been lacking in left-wing circles since the downfall of labor: a (loose) sense of community. Community and a sense of common purpose among peers is essential for building power, establishing common goals, and helping to socially normalize ideas that, decades ago, were considering socially unacceptable to hold.
And yet, despite all the positives of social media engagement and outreach, I think that in order to establish a sustainable, mainstream, and united leftist movement, we must start building stronger communities in real life. Establishing physical community hubs dedicated solely to leftist politics are a potential way to do this.
In the book “The Socialist Challenge Today”, authors Sam Gindin and the late Leo Panitch discuss the idea of community hubs in relation to Greece’s socialist party, SYRIZA. As an aside, Panitch was a giant in leftist intellectual thought who sadly passed away last week due to COVID-19 complications. His work is amazing, including this book which, for a limited time, you can get for free on Haymarket Books.
The idea of the community hub was one of the most fascinating takeaways I gathered from the book. In their view, the hub serves to directly connect office-seeking and office-holding leftist politicians with the working-class constituencies they represent. They would function to establish “links to working-class organizations and community networks”, which would undoubtedly have the effect of dramatically increasing the power of the working class in local and even national politics.
But besides the ideas Panitch and Gindin mention, the benefits to community hubs are plentiful. They can help connect people with similar but different ideas, establishing a sense of camaraderie with people that hold different opinions within the left. And by extension, they’re perfect education centers to learn more about leftist politics and different strains of leftist thought. With lectures, club meetings, discussions, etc., one of the direct benefits would be the fostering of discussion and strategizing among ordinary citizens.
In-person discussions would also drastically lower some of the hostility levels and infighting we’ve seen in leftist circles recently, primarily on Twitter. If you’re lucky enough to be out of the loop, there has been an online shitstorm about the idea that The Squad could force Nancy Pelosi to hold a Medicare For All Vote. Without getting into specifics, things got way too heated. Just psychologically, having intense political discussions online tends to bring out the worst in us. In-person discussion is far more likely to lead to constructive debate that doesn’t collapse into hostility.
These could also serve as the new strategic centers for leftists, uniting multiple activist groups under one roof. This is certainly a powerful proposition; it creates one, combined power bloc that has far more influence than any individual activist group could. It would encourage centralization among local groups that would not only lead to an increase in power and clout, but a more effective campaigns and activist efforts in general. With combined resources and a central strategic plan, community hubs could amplify the efforts of activist groups.
Most of all, these community centers could be a method to reach the mainstream, establishing serious inroads in demographics that most leftist ideas have never reached.
I think there is really something to be said about the loss of community in the US. As Dr. Carol Morgan wrote in the Huffington Post a few years ago, “We need to have connection, not isolation. And while most people don’t live in tribes any more (at least not in this part of the world), I think our basic human need for connection and community hasn’t gone away. It’s just not being satisfied as well anymore.” Now that COVID-19 has completely fractured our in-person communities, Americans are seriously yearning for community connections. Leftists might find that establishing community hubs that appeal to more traditional means of socializing might broaden the base of support for leftist ideas.
This type of marketing strategy is a huge change of pace for a movement that has been largely focused on social media. However, it won’t come without precedent. An amazing experiment is underway in Colorado Springs, where in late September, leftist activist groups in the area actually did establish a leftist community center. They opened the hub as a method of building political power to challenge the traditionally right-wing local government, as well as to provide leftists in town with a sense of a united community.
Going forward, it’ll be interesting to see how successful this hub becomes in forcing change in local politics. If they see some tangible benefits to the community hub, leftist groups around the country should take note, and consider how similar hubs in their own local areas could strengthen the efforts of local activist groups fighting for leftist ideas.
