The potluck manifesto

Less shouty than most manifestos, but maybe you feel this too

There is nothing remarkable about any of this.

Tonight, I will trudge through the snow to set up tables in a Meetinghouse basement. Tomorrow, I will make a large pot of soup and perhaps also some cookies. I will then spend the weekend helping a group of teenagers serve hundreds of visitors at our Quaker Meeting’s annual holiday gift shop. I will do so, alongside dozens of people who love one another but also sometimes get on each other’s nerves, because that’s the best definition of community I’ve found so far. Sometimes you make your assigned soup, even if that particular Black Bean Beluga Lentil recipe isn’t your favorite. Other people love it. Neighbors of yours, most of whom you still haven’t met. They look forward to that soup every year. And they look forward to the teens serving them. If you do our job well, your community will raise a decent amount of money for two worthy organizations. Even if you don’t, you will have tried, together.

I’ve been thinking, this week, about the sacred ordinariness of acts like this, about how millions are out there doing something similar, both in this moment and always. Pouring various ingredients into casserole dishes and covering them in foil. Wiping toddlers’ noses. Playing spades at the senior center. Raking leaves and painting porches and asking neighbors for eggs and doing a billion things that we’ve increasingly been told are either Sisyphean (because the world is too broken) or unnecessary (because why wouldn’t we just click a button?).

I know many of you are doing these things, and that it feels both helpful and immensely not enough.

I agree it’s not enough, at least not yet, but also that it’s the building block of something far more than enough.

If you follow my writing, you know that this is usually what I am on about, in both essay and hat form. Potlucks, both literally and metaphorically. Public gatherings. Collective acts that require some degree of vulnerability and risk. Happy hours and pie breakfasts that leave attendees believing, however subtly, something different about their collective power. That’s my deal these days, so much that when the New York Times prints a glossy paean to potlucks, dozens of friends reach out and say, in essence, “LOOK! YOUR THING!”

Most weeks, I assume it’s self evident why I can’t shut up about these tiny acts of solidarity and collective becoming. That assumption may be right, there’s also a value, at least this once, in laying out precisely why I’m so committed to this particular lane.

Below are some beliefs of mine. Strongly held, but gently. If you believe in them too, congratulations. I think we might be part of a movement together.

I believe that…

• …it is an exceedingly odd (and frightening) time to be alive, for so many reasons, but especially because we are increasingly offered non-human solutions to human problems. Are you lonely? There is a chatbot for that. Are you feeling heartbroken and powerless in the face of genocide, or climate change, or fascism? Get thee to a social media site. Do you need to write, or create music, or make art? Somewhere in the middle of the country, a cavernous data center is being erected so that you never have to suffer the alleged indignity of creativity again. Are you hungry? Tap a few buttons on an app, and a fast food worker you’ve never met will make you a burrito, which will then be picked up by a delivery driver you’ll also never meet, who will drop your food on your doorstep. “Contactless,” they call it. Remember contact? What a bother.

• …just as it’s true that “how you spend your days becomes how you spend your life,” all social movements (even the forgettable ones) are defined less by their rhetoric than what they actually request of their participants. If all that our “movements” ask us to do is give money every time a candidate texts, or attend a protest every six months, or to express a correct set of opinions loudly, that will become the sum total of politics, to us. One click. A single vote. A home team that we root for every time the cable news men start pointing at maps.

• …one way or another, America’s MAGA era will come to an end, perhaps quite soon, perhaps not for a while. But when it does end, what a tragedy if we fail to replace it with its exact opposite, in both form and function. If MAGA was, to its believers, about an avenging angel punishing an army of enemies on their behalf, if it was all idolatry and spite, if it snuffed out so many of our neighbors’ better angels, then the polar opposite must be something far more profound than “the Democratic Party winning in the midterms.”

• … it isn’t an accident that many of the most transcendent social movements in American history (the Underground Railroad, Settlement Houses, the Flint Sit-Down strike, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, just to name a few) required, for their success, the rapid deployment of hospitality infrastructure (a literal warm bed for the night, an actual physical home, a factory transformed into living quarters, an alternative transportation network). The work, when it truly shook the world, was never just about firing up a crowd.

• …I bet, if you think back to the moments you felt the most hope in the past decade, it wasn’t because of an “epic social media clapback” or a barnburner of a stump speech. It was because somebody, perhaps close to you or perhaps a thousand miles away, was a builder. It was because, somewhere after the dream but before the celebration party, there were a hundred interminable meetings that felt like they’d never go anywhere.

• …potlucks, either of the literal or figurative sort, won’t necessarily change the world. It is possible, I suppose, to gather with the same group of people over and over again and to merely create a pleasant little echo chamber. Some tables, I’m sure, never grow larger. Some doors, I’m sure, remain relatively closed.

• …there is a massive difference, though, between that which is possible and that which is inevitable. And as cool as nihilism sounds in theory, what a terrible attitude to govern your life. Maybe it’s true that your pickleball league or book club or Sunday dinner will only ever be an insular gathering of demographically similar true believers. But you never know what your tiny crew might be capable of creating if you never try in the first place.

• …we have all been pummeled with myths about what does and doesn’t constitute serious political work. The bloviators matter, we’re told. The casserole makers don’t. This, too, is by design. But that doesn’t mean we have to buy it.

• …we are not all equally bad at community and care work. There are real differences in our cultural lineage, our gender socialization, our class backgrounds, and the way that kinship and care has or hasn’t been instilled in us up to this point. Some of you are better at this than others. But all of us share this same fractured, tenuous moment.

• …speaking just for myself (though I suspect I’m not alone) it feels like I’m learning how to do all this anew— sticking together, offering and receiving care, carrying on even when other people ignore the dickens out of me, putting another offer out there even when I’m embarrassed, shouting “community!” for the ninetieth time, even on the days when I have my doubts. I, for one, am walking on shaky deer legs.

• …every time I try again, I learn a little bit more— about other people, and why I do in fact love them; about myself, and why I’m worthy of community even when I muck it up; about what we all deserve and what we can all give.

• …every time I try again, I hear somebody else’s story about how they too are trying. Sometimes down the street from me, often across the world. I told you all, up above, that we might be part of a movement. That sounds grandiose, but I mean it. We’re out here. In motion, in a new way. Connecting with each other. It’s tiny, but there’s something there.

• …the most malevolent forces in the world (those that worship money, power, or the intersection between the two), would love for us to choose fear and cynicism rather than risk loving and building and showing up again even when the last meeting annoyed the hell out of us. What a thrill, to tell them no.

• …what I love most about potlucks, specifically, is that there are no charity cases and benefactors. There are a group of people in various stages of giving and needing and all of them are hungry and all of them get a plate and some weeks you might bring nothing and some weeks you might bring the most incredible mac and cheese anybody’s ever tasted but nobody’s actually checking and there are no blue ribbons but everybody goes home full.

• …today, there is Quaker soup to be made and served. When that’s done, there’s a note in my inbox from parents at my kids’ school. They too are feeding each other, quite beautifully, actually, and urgently. I haven’t done much to help out. I feel a fair bit of guilt and shame, there. But that doesn’t mean I can’t start tomorrow.

• …they say that the heart is a muscle the size of a fist, and I agree, but if that’s the case then it’s also roughly the size of two peoples’ hands clasped together.

End notes:

1. If you are in the Milwaukee area, you should, in fact, stop by our gift shop this weekend (and also eat soup with me and the teens in our basement). Details here. It’s a lovely tradition.

2. Remember how I said, up above, that the more I share stories of trying, the more I hear from others doing the same. Here’s a tiny taste: This week alone, I learned about neighbors in Vermont who’ve put together a brilliant Resilience Toolkit for helping communities navigate disaster together. I’ve heard about a bunch of cool people in Chattanooga, Tennessee who fix bikes together and then give them away. And I heard that a lovely pal/artist loft organizer I met through Barnraisers, Mary in Brooklyn, is offering a workshop next week on taxes for independent workers (with a suggested donation to a Bronx-based diaper/food/formula sharing group). Am I recommending all these efforts? Yes. But also, what a cool web that I (and I hope you all) get to experience.

3. Also: shout out to White Pages reader (not the most impressive part of her bio, but it’s fun for me),

   Rep. Aftyn Behn
   who, as you likely heard, showed the country this week what it looks like when an organizer runs for office. Thanks for giving so many folks far and wide a reminder that hope doesn’t just come in the official victories, it comes in what you build.

4. No new Barnraisers trainings in December (but oh goodness, stay tuned for some exciting news in 2026), but here’s something even cooler. One of the wisest people I know,

   Kelly Harris Perin
   , invited me to join her for a conversation about building community in the workplace. Next Wednesday, 1:00 PM Eastern Time (on Zoom). Registration here!

5. You all, we’ve got a terrific new

   This Week in Breeders
   episode out today. It’s our holiday special.
   Sarah Wheeler
   and I had fun, and you will too, I think.

6. Finally, please forgive me, because I know what your inboxes have been like this week, but the one downside of doing this as a career (otherwise, it’s the best, truly) is that it only works if I ask for your support. Yes, I do believe that the work of The White Pages and Barnraisers is valuable, and I truly wouldn’t be able to offer the free essays, coaching and trainings without your help. But also, I know that money is tight and there are a lot of worthy places to spread it around, so here’s my holiday offer.

   1. I’ve got some neat merch, both old and new (do you like that potlucks design up above? it’s on a shirt now, see below). I’m happy to send something, either to you or a loved one as a gift.

   2. If you’re interested, here’s all you have to do:

      1. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, now’s your chance!

      2. Alternately, if you’re already a paid subscriber (or if you aren’t, but want somebody else in your life to get all the White Pages bonuses), choose a gift subscription for a friend or family member.

      3. If you’re feeling really generous, choose a founding subscription (the “pledge drive” level, which during this holiday season entitles you to two pieces of merch).

      4. After you do so, email me ( garrett at barnraisersproject.org) with a “merch please” request, noting if you chose a new or upgraded subscription for yourself or a gift subscription for a pal. I’ll then send you a form to request a hat, tote, or two different shirt designs, with an option to either send to yourself or your friend/relative [note that the newest potlucks shirt may not arrive in time for Christmas/Hanukkah, but the others will].

      5. As you all know, I frequently do raffles and giveaways for existing paid subscribers: more of those coming soon, I promise. For now, given volume, this is just for new/upgraded/gift subscriptions. Thanks for understanding.

      6. Why so much merch these days? It’s been fun to make, I like having a tangible thank you to give out, and I think it helps spread the word.

         Want to see the new shirts? Here they are!