I was watching Neighborhood Wars, which is a program in a “list format” that documents interpersonal stuff that happens in different communities. It seems in every episode there’s at least one thing about the community coming together for some cause, such as everyone coming together to defend an immigrant whose lemonade stand got attacked, or everyone coming together to investigate whether a boy actually committed a certain act of assault that he was accused of (haven’t a number of us been in that situation). Think back to the original Spiderman movie when the citizens of New York City started throwing stuff at the Green Goblin and saying “you mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!”
While this was on, a Québécois acquaintance that was visiting my home for some casual time lamented “hélas, cela n’arriverait jamais ici” (roughly “if only that happened here”), probably unaware that the community once drove someone out of town who was trying to incite sentiment and came by to give me a hard time personally (someone I am known here as having talked both about and toward before; their clique was last seen giving a “final awareness message” about me). All despite the fact the only reason I myself barely escape having a “weird flatlander” reputation to this very exclusive community is due to my home once belonging to my grandfather, not helped by being a French Polynesian descendant.
Does your hometown community have any moments like this?
Some redneck spray painted shit like “go home” on a Mosque in my rural hometown. Like, literally illiterate levels of redneck. I think they literally spelled “Canada” wrong in one of the messages.
When people saw it in the morning, the community SWARMED the mosque with cleaning supplies to scrub it off. All the school kids made posters saying stuff like “You ARE home”. By noon, the mosque was cleaned and windows plastered with the posters the kids made.
Kinda pissed me off that the national headlines neglected to mention the community response.
Made me realize pretty early on that ragebait sells and the media knows it.
There are probably countless instances of communities banding together that you’ll never hear about. Doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
When I was a kid my house burned down, and we had several families take us in for short stretches, and I remember clothing and toy drives for all of us. It was pretty neat.
We actually have these fairly regularly, usually related to sick kids.
One girl collected like a million and a half dollars in pennies to build a place next to the hospital for families with sick kids to stay at for practically free.
My church is proactive in doing good while on earth. As a community, we put spotlights on organization in need, 50% of the collection plate is split with them. Stuff like shelters for the unhoused, food pantry service, fundraisers, community clean up projects. Despite the nightmares around us in the modern world, being a part of a UU organization helps me keep going. If our community was devastated by an awful event, I know I could go to the Sanctuary & we’d figure out a plan to keep people safe. People would have each other’s backs.
Depends on how popular with the town. My town in the Midwest US (and many small towns) were incredibly clique-y. I watched a kid break his leg who was on the football team and he got praise, special seats at school events, and the town donated to his family.
The same month one of our schoolmates lost a parent. No one did anything except for “our prayers are with you” and “we’re so sorry”. No one donated to their family, the newly single parent, or made meals or anything.
My own mother was shamed out of the her church mostly because people thought she was annoying, which she is, but fuck all that forgiveness stuff right? Sorry she’s not fun at the Bible study, so we’ll just start excluding you from our events.
People preach that there’s small town nice. I have never seen it. I’ve seen judgemental and selfish assholes banding together. They say they’re nice while scorning people actually in need. I moved to the city and I am happy to be away. No one gives a fuck about me, so that’s the same, but it’s a uniform no one gives a fuck.
I can’t say I don’t relate in a way. It was unusual that people ever banded in my favor, and they still technically see me as the odd one out, just in a way where I’m at least good enough to defend under those circumstances (perhaps they were defending more than me, though I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth here, and I’m not saying any of this to throw shade). Before I lived where I do, I was in another area with a similar “town” environment but which was very openly selective, once literally caring enough about the school janitor to announce his retirement on the announcements but then do nothing when one of us had our life changed forever due to a car accident. I tend to find myself on the bad side of cliques because of how different I come across and could typically never count on community support. But then circumstances end up surprising everyone, and hard.
My own mother was shamed out of the her church mostly because people thought she was annoying
What church was this?
The isolated, rural place I grew up did something like that. There was a young guy who had grown up here, but was born in Asia. I can’t remember the exact details, but basically he got a criminal record for something (although it was commonly believed that he’d actually taken the blame for something he hadn’t done to protect his girlfriends brother who was on probation or something) and because of some recent anti-immigration policies from central government, he was going to be deported back to Thailand (or wherever) even though he didn’t speak the language and hadn’t been there since he was a baby.
The local community were outraged and campaigned against it, saying he was a valued and responsible member of their community, then when immigration officers were sent they protested and prevented them from taking him. No idea how they came up with a legal justification in the end, but he was allowed to stay. And it certainly made me respect the place more.
