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What's trauma got to do with it?

Building collaborative, trusting and resilient communities in a time of fear.

You’re reading Future Community, a newsletter for people working at the intersection of community and content – the fundraisers, organizers, storytellers and network builders seeking to build a more just and sustainable existence.

CW: This post discusses gun violence and, way down at the end, suicide. The intent is to explore how organizations can better recognize and address trauma to build trust and stronger communities.

Last week Jordan Neely was killed on a New York City subway when a bystander “approached Mr. Neely, put him in a chokehold, and held him until he became limp.” [New York Times]

In Kansas City (Ralph Yarl), New York (Kaylin Gillis), and Atlanta (Heather Roth and Payton Washington) people (notably young people in these examples) have been shot for ringing the wrong doorbell, using the wrong driveway or getting into the wrong car.

There are countless little and big reasons for these events. But in many ways they’re the product of systemic fear and trauma that dehumanizes the people around us.

We’re also living through a pandemic that has killed over a million Americans and continues to have long-term impacts. Climate change is scaling up the reach of natural disasters.

And we live with distraction. Stories about all this. Debates over cause and motive leave little time to focus and little energy with which to be well.

An aside: I write this knowing I’m not mentioning incidents to what happened in the past 10 days in Allen, Texas or Cleveland, Texas or Brownsville, Texas. Those are tragedies. Perhaps greater ones. It’s doubly tragic that we need a language to convey value or gauge impact of these events. How do we write of any of this when there is so much of it?

Recognize the Impact of Trauma

Does it make sense for communities and organizations to better recognize and address the role trauma is playing and will play in lives of their supporters, staff and broader community?

Like it or not, our donors, members and email lists are made up of people constantly struggling with climate disaster, gun violence, inequality and pandemics. There’s a lot of talk about drops in individual giving. Falls (and rises) in giving are most always associated with “the economy.” Perhaps trauma, fear and dehumanization drive people to withdraw from community engagement and membership.

Tying fundraising results and strategies to economic indicators makes sense. But it limits our view of what’s happening and what’s possible.

We can’t only optimize our recruitment, fundraising and testing for those with financial and other forms of security. These audiences will lead us towards policies and politics that favor the fortunate, preserve power and aren’t interested in systemic problems. These are also audiences that may continue to shrink. One can only evade the sources of trauma for so long.

Organizations should also question their role in creating instead of healing trauma. Crisis-driven messaging dominates advocacy and fundraising communications of groups doing wonderful environmental, human rights and social justice work, including those organizing and working alongside communities.

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Community Resilience

Our communities, supporters and staff need us to both recognize, solve for and support trauma. That’s a big ask. One far greater than the remit of many (most) nonprofits.

Fortunately, there are models, partners and opportunities to do more of this work and do it better.

The pandemic taught us that organizations can engage in community support beyond our mission.

A team of researchers from the University of California at San Diego and the city of Los Angeles looked at developing trauma resilient communities through community capacity-building in 2021. The team recognized the impact weather disasters and the pandemic had on the ability of communities to feed and shelter people. Over time, these and other events wear down community resiliency.

They found correlation between trauma informed community practices and community health.

We found that capacity-building among community-based partnerships is effective at disseminating trauma-informed education and training, conducting outreach and engagement, linking community members with resources, and increasing help-seeking and social connectedness by community members.

Community capacity to recognize and address trauma will build stronger communities. It may also address fear and our ability to address inequality and justice.

…is community capacity-building a foundational competency that can mitigate the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and flooding or future acts of social injustice?

So why don’t more organizations speak openly about trauma? I think it has such a systemic presence that no group, assuming they acknowledge it at all, sees how they can address it.

Prioritize Novel Community Collaboration

We can debate the causes of inflation and a turn towards austerity-based policies by both parties. But the situation on the ground is that housing, food and job insecurity (or the loss of all three) affects Americans everywhere. Tim Garvin, director of the United Way of Central Massachusetts, recently wrote about the situation in Worcester and the need to remember lessons in community collaboration learned during COVID. The community formed a working group called Worcester Together in March, 2020, and it continues to collaborate:

Worcester Together continues to meet, 1,148 days and counting. It has evolved into a place where observations, news and data are shared, all focused on working together for the good of the community.

Look, I’m no expert on trauma-informed practices. But I do know that offering people resources, support and training to meet their needs best done through community, not individual, practices. And a resilient community, one whose members can rely on and trust one another, is not just able to weather crisis but is also more likely to engage in and support democratic processes.

The rush to community-level innovation we saw in 2020-21 was driven by radical uncertainty. Suddenly, everyone was working remotely. Suddenly, everyone sought ways to provide food and housing assistance. Scott Warren, former CEO of Generation Citizen, wrote about creative collaboration and groups sharing resources for the first time.

But crises wane even if the underlying structures are weakened. Typically, there is little incentive for organizations (or their funders) to invest in or test new collaborations and community building.

I recently spoke to a colleague who spent 18 months piloting sustainable engagement with rural and small community residents who have a social media presence. The goal is to support climate-positive conversation in places that typically only hear and see climate stories from right-leaning TV, radio and social media sources. It’s sensible, not radical, work. But it takes time and isn’t a project that fits neatly into the boxes and sectors into which funders and organizations operate.

Perhaps we’re seeing a shift towards trauma-informed community capacity building. There are efforts to measure community stress and address trauma in educational settings.

But I wonder how (even if) we can prioritize new models of collaboration across disciplines and issues. Can donors, funders and organizations share learning, skills and resources to build community capacity, resilience and relationships to address trauma and instill trust, hope and love instead of fear? If so it may be one way to protect not just our communities but democracy itself.

Reading

There’s more to Reddit than training large language models. Check out how The Marshall Project is using it to reach and talk with audiences often left out of the criminal justice conversation. [Francesco Zaffarano / Reuters Institute]

Tech designed to make organizations and their work more efficient is sometimes just adding more complexity, cost and confusion. In the humanitarian sector’s search for efficiency, are we falling short? [Laura Guzman / The Engine Room]

Marnie Webb, one of the smartest people working in public good technology, looks at the difficulty of funding tech without the usual “monetization” tools (selling data and user fees, for example). Can we, Marnie asks, build a financial infrastructure that values the time and effort of people who make public good technology?

Ever noticed that every email and donation page looks the same? Read The age of average by Alex Murrell.

We need to talk about suicide among nonprofit professionals and social justice activists. Indeed. Thanks for writing this, Vu Le.

Lots of links on dealing with AI and campaigning, content and storytelling. So they get their own section. How wonderful is that?

Don’t doubt that AI will in time play a big, perhaps central, role in delivering all our content. One local journalism startup, Local News Now, has been testing AI’s ability to create news stories through its ARLnow.com site. In Nieman Lab, Sophie Culpepper describes what Scot Brodbeck at ARLnow.com has been learning as he and his team have been using AI to create newsletter content, summarize article content in print (and in two-minute AI-generated audio summaries), write haikus and more. [Sophie Culpepper / Nieman Lab]

JournalismAI is a human curated compilation of stories and resources. Worth checking out if you’re interested or working in AI and content.

AI curious? Sign up for the free JournalismAI Discovery course.

We need a consumer-first approach to AI. I’d swap people or community for the dreaded word consumer but the points are still useful. [Marta Tellado / Gizmodo]

AI for content marketing [Erin Rodrigue / Hubspot] includes a converstation with Samyutha Reddy, Head of Enterprise Marketing at Jasper, about how generative AI fits into content marketing. Things AI is good at:

  • Content ideation
  • Content research
  • Scaling campaigns. For example, translate a video script into content for other formats

Things to avoid:

  • Don’t remove content creators from the process
  • Incorporate AIinto existing processes, don’t recreate existing processes
  • Don’t raise content demands too fast

Anyone who gives a damn about social good, labor, or inequality might want to consider the means of production in AI:

Jobs

Communications Manager : Movement Law Lab [Remote in the U.S.]

Digital Marketing Manager : Caring Across Generations [Remote]

Managing Director, Communications (and other roles) : Climate Power [Remote]

Content Producer, Communications : Futures Without Violence [Washington, DC or San Francisco]

Deputy Communications Director : States United Democracy Center [Remote / Washington, DC / Boston]

Communications Director : Jobs to Move America [Hybrid multiple locations / Remote]

Director of Communications : Institute for Medicines, Access and Knowledge [Remote in the US / Washington, DC or New York City preferred]

Director of Strategy and Partnerships : EQAT, Earth Quaker Action Team [Philadelphia]

Email Director : Authentic [Remote]

Associate Director of Digital Storytelling : Define American [Remote]

Senior Manager, Digital Strategy : National Endowment for Democracy [Washington, DC]

One last note

In March of 2006 (maybe 2007?) I somehow ended up at lunch on a mexican restaurant patio in Austin, Texas, with Heather Armstrong and 15 or 20 other bloggers and web folks. All were big influences and inspirations. Especially Heather whose blog, dooce.com, was revolutionary in so many ways. Mostly, for me, it was the singular voice. There was a band aid being ripped off pacing.

But also because Heather and her partner had a daughter the same age as ours. With almost the same name.

That was 17 years ago (oof). A lot has happened. The complicated trajectory of Heather’s life and work is documented online if you want to look it up. Imagine being so documented.

It was heartbreaking to hear of Heather’s suicide this week. The final post on dooce, from early April, is full of pain and joy. That voice. She had been an inspiration to countless people, myself included. But that’s little comfort to someone who is struggling.

Understand suicide.

Need help? Dial 988.

Photo by 1983 (steal my _ _ art) on Unsplash.

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