What builds community in a divisive era? Across the U.S., it's altruists and volunteers dedicated to helping others
They are the glue that holds communities together, stepping up to assist their neighbors in times of crisis, need, and other challenges. Some are volunteers whose projects uplift their neighborhoods; others work to preserve their community’s culture. Still others are Good Samaritans who help older residents get basic necessities, or assist those displaced by disaster. And on and on.
On this day, our path farther into Badger-Two Medicine—130,000 acres of sacred, forested terrain for the Blackfeet Nation—is temporarily blocked by three grizzlies. The other cause for Blackfeet leaders is teaching traditions to a generation that many elders say is plagued by problems they link to the influences of Western culture.
The documents state that to the government, paying Native Americans a fraction of their land’s worth and removing them from it would be more convenient and “agreeable to the forms of justice, as well as more merciful, than to assert the possession of them by the sword.” Fox collects sweetgrass at Badger-Two Medicine, the site of sacred land that Blackfeet leaders have been fighting for decades to protect.In an effort to link younger generations with their roots, Blackfeet leaders take children on field trips throughout the sacred land to teach them about the ancestors who lived there and the value in keeping it free of development. The plants, the wildlife, and the soil all have ties to the tribe’s cultural traditions.
The Blackfeet see the land as their keeper. It’s where they learned about buffalo running and pack building from the wolves and got their songs from the birds. The Blackfeet way of life is imbued with the spirit of the land. One without the other means both cease to exist in the same way. Leaders are passing on those lessons, with increasing urgency, to Blackfeet in Browning. Each July, the nation’s traditions are honored at the North American Indian Days celebration.
Jamesha Irving gathers vegetables at Covington’s urban garden at the Georgia Street Community Collective in Detroit with her fiancé, William Knight, and daughter, Alijah Davis.It’s a typical morning scene at the collective. Early in the day, the vibrant green crops giving life to tomatoes, cabbages, eggplants, legumes, and more are awash with gold, as if being watered by the sun. The sounds of dogs and goats, pigs, roosters, and a colony of stirring bees drown out the sounds of the city.
“It was dirty,” he says. “There were always vacant lots, but they had always been maintained for children to play on. I knew that if I just cleaned them up, people would dump on them again, but if I planted stuff, they might not.” “It’s somewhat spiritual for me,” Covington says. “It’s like a sanctuary. People come here and don’t want to leave.”Ifrah Yusuf talks with families who have recently emigrated from Somalia to Garden City, Kansas, and warns them to be wary of rental agreements that take advantage of refugees. She worked with an organization that offered assistance programs and services to the growing Somali population, but when funding ran out, she continued to provide help on her own.By 3:30 a.m.
Birgitte Randall, a nurse, says many who remain in the town are living without a safety net. And everyone was affected, so residents couldn’t lean on neighbors who’d likely lost their homes and jobs themselves. “We used our community to get what we needed,” Elisabeth says. “We would get what we needed without the rules.”
Bantewski describes his sores as phantoms he can feel but not see. Elisabeth and Denise, meanwhile, teach his companion the wrapping technique so she can dress his legs at home. Almost four years after the fire, Bantewski is living in a tent trailer. The Medspire team is trying to find him a proper trailer before winter.
For Johnson, keeping close to her faith is about keeping control, and keeping control is necessary to maintain the community. Her religion and her advocacy go hand in hand, embodying what Tocqueville called “the spirit of patriotism.” Over the entryway of her home hangs a small wooden plaque that reads: “Gigi & Papa’s, where memories are made and children are spoiled,” though the children here are anything but.
At Westside Elementary School, everyone knows her. Most of the neighborhood parents have put her name on their children’s parental contact list at school. So if the kids are acting up, they call Johnson. The remote island is perhaps best known for having been a U.S. Navy bomb training range and testing site, for which it became embroiled in an ongoing fight over astronomically high cancer rates that prompted decades of scientific study and congressional concession pointing to military pollution—specifically the use of plutonium and Agent Orange.
With a smaller group of 15 volunteers, the nonprofit organization, which relies mostly on donations and grants for funding, could use some beds and medications for distribution to clients. But right now it’s focused on staying in operation and stocking a kitchen where food is prepared for weekly deliveries to as many as 45 people, most of whom are bedridden.
speaks with employees as they prepare to run the printing press in the basement of the newspaper’s office in Welch, West Virginia.Welch News, Nester remembers visiting the newspaper office while she was in high school. Her mother worked in circulation 57 years before Nester came to own the paper, and her sister served as an editor as well. For Nester, buying the paper was a personal endeavor as much as a business acquisition or a journalistic imperative. It was about people like the women of her family who made a home here.Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
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