if you're looking for the magical toolkit that will help you solve the disconnect between your work and "the community", spoiler alert you're never gonna find it why are we so resistant to the understanding, the old as time understanding, that to engage people, you have to engage them? that to involve people you have to involve them?

When you erase people to an abstract, feel-good common denominator like say "the public", you don't have to care for their differences, for the complexities of identity & power & history that have made difference oh so very important how we consider governance, access, and reform "The public", "communities", "citizens" - these units have the potential for real meaning, but far too often non-profits, foundations, and political machinery benefit by stripping them of all meaning, by exalting the whole, negating the parts