Belonging: Part One

Belonging and Identity: Post Number Eight of The Movement We Need

Belonging is a core human need, and a major reason why people join groups and espouse idealogies. How do we create a sense of belonging in our groups and movements, without ‘othering’ those who don’t belong?

(This series of writings is an experiment—I’m writing a book and releasing it a chapter at a time on Substack, accompanied with podcasts available on Substack, Apple, Spotify, etc. This is the first part of the section on Belonging, and the eight post in the series.)

• I'm in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd goes
  I'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows
  Anytime of the year, don't you hear? Dressing fine, making time
  We breeze up and down the street, we get respect from the people we meet
  
  They make way day or night, they know the in crowd is out of sight
  I'm in with the in crowd, I know every latest dance
  When you're in with the in crowd, it's so easy to find romance
  Any time of the year, don't you hear? If it's square, we ain't there
  
  We make every minute count, our share is always the biggest come out
  Other guys imitate us, but the original is still the greatest, in crowd!
  Any time of the year, don't you hear? Spendin' cash, talkin' trash
  I'll show you a real good time, come on with me, leave your troubles behind
  
  I don't care where you've been, you ain't been nowhere til you've been in
  WIth the in crowd, with the in crowd, in crowd!

• Dobie Gray 1964

“I'm In With The In Crowd” was a popular song when I was in Junior High School. As a young teenager, much of my mental space was taken up with questions of what crowd, if any, I belonged to. My High School was as stratified as any Victorian English country manor. The Socialites came from wealthy families, as in that era rich people who lived in good neighborhoods still sent their kids to public school. They claimed the upper patio. The surfers, blond, tanned and athletic, hung out on the sports fields. The Greasers, with slicked back hair, slunk around the lower patio looking like James Dean wannabes. They were white and what I now recognize as working-class. The few LatinX students in our virtually all-white school were mostly in English as a Second Language programs and they ate by themselves on the lower lawn. Those of us who were politically-minded and somewhat eccentric at first congregated on the Liberal Lawn by the Administration Building, but later moved behind the music bungalows where there was enough privacy to allow us surreptitiously to smoke a joint in between classes.

Everybody knew where they belonged.

Belonging is one of our core human needs. We are social animals, who endure a long period of childhood development during which we are dependent on the care of others. We cannot survive without the structures of a social group around us.

Trump's recent reelection left many of us absolutely staggered: how can people possibly vote for him, a bankrupt felon who attempted to stage a coup against our country, promoting cruel, racist, misogynist policies and an economic agenda that every reputable expert warns may ruin the economy? How, especially, can evangelical Christians who put their faith at the center of their lives and politics support a man who cheats on his wife while she nurses their newborn, consorts with porn stars and is adjugated to be a rapist? I won't pretend that I know the full answer, but the simplest reason is this: people vote for Trump not because of his policies or character, but because they feel they belong to a community for whom MAGA is part of their identity. What the MAGA movement does well, and what the left currently does poorly, is to create an environment in which people feel a deep sense of belonging. Arlie Hochschild, in her book Strangers In Their Own Land, describes the atmosphere at a Trump rally: “Trump is an emotions candidate more than any other presidential candidate in decades. Trump focuses on eliciting and praising emotional responses from his fans, rather than on detailed policy prescriptions. His speeches evoking dominance, bravado, clarity, national pride and personal uplift inspire an emotional transformation. Then he points to that transformation. ‘We have passion,’ he told the Louisiana gathering. “We're not silent anymore. We're the loud, noisy majority!’… His supporters have been in mourning for a lost way of life. Many have become discouraged, others depressed. They yearn to feel pride, but instead have felt shame. Their land no longer feels their own. Joined together with others like themselves, they now feel hopeful, joyous, elated… They are no longer strangers in their own land.”(2)

Or as David French says, “They (Trump supporters) see a country that's changing around them, and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at the Trump rally, surrounded by others--overwhelmingly white, many evangelical--who feel the same way they do. (3)

In contrast, the mood among progressives is more like that reflected in this Facebook post by Jackrabbot, an old friend who has been a political ally since we met at the Diablo Canyon blockade in 1981:

“I'm happy to have finally shed the burden of my membership in what has passed as the American Left. It is a bit disorienting, as it has been elemental to my identity, but it is also a relief to be free of the woke scolds and the social pressure to conform - unquestioningly - to a self-destructive agenda of diminishment and delusion.” (4)

Molly Crabapple describes the political culture of the Left as “a censorious prissy culture, obsessed with academic terminology, easily parodied and repulsive to many, perhaps most.” (5)

I've identified as a leftist since those days on the Liberal Lawn back in 1966. Jackrabbit expresses what I hear from many of my old friends and allies: that we often no longer feel a part of movements we’ve connected to and belonged to all of our adult lives. This is a very bad sign, if we want to build a movement broad enough and deep enough to actually achieve our goals. When people who have deeply invested in a movement no longer feel embraced by it, how can we expect to draw in new people and expand our reach?

As I've said before, the right-wing media have long exaggerated and weaponized the flaws of the left, but nonetheless there are kernels of truth that we need to look at, as well as critiques of cancel culture from the Left. If we are to create a truly welcoming movement, we need a deeper understanding of what creates a sense of belonging, how that can be ruptured, what we can do to repair and expand it. These issues are very much connected to my discussion of safety in earlier posts. We can't feel we belong to a movement if we don't feel safe inside it, and we can't feel safe if we fear that we can be condemned without trial and ejected for any one misstep.

Defining Belonging:

What does it mean to belong? Think of some places or situations where you feel you belong is it your home? Your family? Your group of friends, colleagues, coconspirators? How do you know you belong?

True belonging is composed of a number of aspects. We can be included in a group, just as we can be invited to a friend's home for a holiday dinner. We might feel welcomed, enjoy the meal, maybe even help with cleanup and the dishes, but nonetheless we remain a guest. When we truly belong, we feel at home. What does that mean? When we feel at home, we can be ourselves, relaxed, without the need to put on any pretense or display. We can wear our old clothes, we can do the dishes if we want to or leave them if we don't feel like it. We can make choices about how clean we keep the house, how we decorate it, who we admit in and who we keep out. We can surround ourselves with our books, pictures, our favorite foods or sports equipment: things that reaffirm our interests and our identity,.

When we belong to a group, an organization or a movement, we need to feel that we can show up in the fullness of who we are, that we are accepted in all our complexity, and have a place that’s secure, not precarious. Belonging means we have a voice in shaping the group’s goals, views and practices, and that we feel close to, supported by, and accountable to others in the group.

john a.powell and Steven Menendian, of the Belonging Without Othering Institute at UC Berkeley,(4) define belonging as having four components: inclusion, connection, visibility, and agency. These four conform very closely to some of the basic needs that I have identified in this series: safety, belonging, value, agency, and meaning.

Many progressive organizations have focused on inclusion: bringing in representatives of marginalized groups that have historically been kept out. This is a vital and necessary first step in creating a larger sense of belonging, but it is only a first step. Clearly, we can't belong somewhere if we're not there physically, or more commonly today, at least virtually. We can't belong to the University for example, if we aren't a student or a member of the staff, faculty, or alumni. That's why efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion are vitally important, and why they have been under attack by right-wing forces who prefer to keep institutions of high status and value for people like themselves.

But vital as these efforts are, they're not the same as generating a true sense of welcome and belonging. It's one thing to be invited to the party and stand there shy and alone, nursing a drink, without knowing anyone. It's quite another thing if someone reaches out to you and introduces themselves, asks about your interests and steers you into a conversation group with others who might share something in common. But when you belong, you have friends in the group who are happy to see you, acquaintances with whom you might share interests or projects, and you feel confident to reach out to newcomers and invite them in. And still another level of belonging when you are involved in planning the gathering, forming the invitation list and deciding what the menu will be.

If I am the only woman in a room full of men, I may be included but not necessarily feel like I actually belong there. Maybe I wandered in by accident or got invited under false pretenses? True inclusion means admitting not just one or two tokens, but a critical mass that can impact group culture. At Earth Activist Training, we where we teach regenerative design, land management and permaculture, we grew concerned years ago that the movement we felt part of was primarily white in North America. We increased inclusion in our own courses by offering Diversity Scholarships for indigenous students and people of color, and fundraise to offer a number for each course so that students of color can feel supported and represented by seeing others who look like themselves. We also strive to include instructors and presenters of color.

But to create a sense of belonging, a group or organization must go further than mere inclusion. People must also be visible: that is, seen and valued, not just as token representatives of a particular identity, but as full human beings in all the complexity of their varied interests, gifts and idiosyncrasies.

Belonging also means connection. When we belong to a group, an organization, a family or subculture we have others to whom we feel close, warm, and affectionate. We feel supported by others, and also accountable to offer support and mutual aid in turn.

When we belong, we are valued by a group and we also have agency. We have the ability to impact the group’s direction, decisions, and actions. We don't control the group, but we do get a fair hearing for our ideas and priorities. We can make a contribution, take on responsibilities and earn respect and influence. Agency also implies accountability. When we take on a task or a project, we are accountable for fulfilling it or at least passing it on responsibly.

I have an upcoming section on being seen and valued, and another on agency. So in this this section I'm going to focus primarily on ways that groups, movements and organizations can create a deeper sense of connection to strengthen our sense of belonging.

Belonging and Identity:

Let's begin by looking at how we construct identity, because identity is core to a sense of belonging. To know where we belong, we must know who we are. In High School, it was easy. I didn't have the right clothes to be a “Sosh”, I wasn't athletic enough to be a surfer, my interests were too intellectual to be a greaser, and I clearly wasn't LatinX. I felt lucky to find a peer group that shared my interest in radical politics, colorful dress, and, shall we say, altered states of consciousness.

How we know who we are and where we belong in the world is far more complex than it was for our grandparents or our ancestors. My Orthodox Jewish grandparents had no conflict about their identity. They had emigrated in the early part of the 20th century to the United States to avoid the persecution of Jews in their home country, now Ukraine. Their identity infused every aspect of their lives, from what they ate to the language they spoke--Yiddish was their native tongue--to their religious practices and what they wore. For my parents, born in the US, identity was more nuanced. They identified as Americans, not as immigrants. While they never doubted that they were Jews, but they rebelled against many of the strict customs and laws. They did not keep kosher, lit Sabbath candles only intermittently, and went to Temple only on the High Holidays. They spoke Yiddish, but not as a daily language, more as the punch line for dirty jokes they didn’t want the kids to understand. Nonetheless, my mother joined a Temple and sent me to Hebrew School because, as a psychotherapist--a core part of her identity--she believed it was important for me to have an identity. My father identified as a Communist in the ‘30s, though he later recanted over disillusionment with Stalin, but he died when I was five, so I didn’t get to know first-hand the nuances of how he identified. My own identity, as a Jewish Pagan Goddess- worshipper activist progressive bisexual feminist writer permaculturalist supporter of justice for Palestine and many other facets is even more complex yet.

Greg Castro, of the California Ohlone people, speaking in a conference I attended made a remark that illuminated the question for me. “If you were a California Indian,” he said, “your identity is your place.”(7) Indeed, if you were an indigenous person throughout most of human history, not only your identity but the food you ate, the clothes you wore, your way of life, your culture, rituals, language, heritage, the stories you heard and the songs you sang would be rooted in a specific place. The very cells in your body would be composed of nutrients that had all come from that land.

For most of us today, our identity might be in part our place. New Yorkers have an attitude about being New Yorkers! But we also carry multiple levels of identity. Our gender, race, religion, or ethnic background, our class background, even the sports team we're fans of or whether we're a Mac or a PC user may all be parts of our identity. Some aspects may be given at birth, for example our skin color or ancestral heritage. Others may be chosen. Identity includes our roles in our families, which again, may be given: we may be an eldest child or a youngest, for example. Others we may choose later in life, such as becoming a spouse or a parent. Most of us identify with the work that we do: we may be a teacher, a doctor, a writer, a farmer or a mechanic. We may also identify with other communities of choice, whether that's players of World of Warcraft, a religion we take on or a political identity. Until recently, biological sex determined our gender, but in recent times that too has become a realm of choice.

Identity is nuanced, and often fraught with tension. Our politics has become identity-centered, both on the left and on the right. The result has been more awareness of the intersections of race, class and varied levels of privilege, but at the cost of deep polarization and fragmentation.

One of the dehumanizing aspects of prejudice of all sorts is our tendency to compress people into one single identity. Unfortunately, we often do this in our attempts to undo those very isms. We are so concerned to end racism that the Black identity of one of our friends may overwhelm our ability to see the full complexity of who they are.

The comedy team Key and Peele have a skit which beautifully illustrates this. The duo are seated at a bar, engrossed in a discussion of Game of Thrones. But they are constantly interrupted by well-meaning but intrusive white people anxiously (and sometimes drunkenly) apologizing for all the ills of racism. Finally the bartender sets drinks down in front of them and says, “I’m really uncomfortable around Black people.” “Thank you!” they chorus. (8)

We all want important aspects of ourselves to be seen. And yet none of us want to be seen only as one aspect, the Black person or the working class person.

Wanda Stewart, activist educator and permaculturalist who directs a key youth organization in the Bay Area, was both bemused and distressed when a full-page article in a local publication lauding her achievements expressed admiration for her ability to rise out of poverty. “That's not me!” she protested. ”I went to a private school!” (9) The stereotype of the poor black person overcoming adversity is, perhaps, a more benign trope than many of the other stereotypes about Black people. Yet it can also be an instrument of erasure. The very people who presumably wanted to honor Wanda did not actually see her. Was she truly being lauded, or used?

We might think of our identity as a cluster rather than a single pure thing, a raspberry rather than a strawberry. Aspects of our identity may change throughout our lives, and yet we remain who we are, just as the cells in our body die and are replaced, yet our body remains a single functioning organism. To feel that we belong, we need the whole raspberry to be seen, not just one facet.

My favorite way to open a group is to begin with a discussion of our multiple identities. I might ask people to pair up or create small groups and give everyone a chance to share something of the many ways we identify ourselves. Then we introduce ourselves or sometimes one another to the whole group. “It's my intention,” I say, “That this be a place where we can each show up in the fullness and the complexity of who we are, and be seen and valued. Is that an intention we all can share?” When I get the group's agreement, it creates a shared sense of value and safety.

Group Identity:

Just as an individual needs an identity, a group or a movement needs an identity if people are going to be able to feel like they belong. Groups establish their identities in many ways: through actions, through their meetings and governance structure, in the materials they produce and their choice of venues for meetings.

But constructing a group identity is also fraught with pitfalls and paradoxes. Because, of course, the easiest way to define who you are is by defining who you are not: We love to draw a circle around a particular identity and say, “We who share this identity belong and those outside of the circle don't belong.” As Hochschild says about the Trump rally, “One way of reinforcing this high of a united brother and sisterhood of believers is to revile and expel members of outgroups.” (10)

But that very process of othering is the basis upon which systems of discrimination are built. We who want to create a world of greater social justice must find a way to create belonging without othering.

Jonathan Smucker in his book Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals warns of what he calls “the political identity paradox. This paradox suggests that while political groups require a strong internal identity to foster the commitment needed for effective political struggle, this same cohesion tends to isolate the group. And isolated groups are hard pressed to achieve political goals.” (11)

Yet movements for justice and liberation have often drawn a great deal of their strength by defining and centering a particular identity. From the Black Power movement to the Women's Movement to Gay Pride Parades, finding pride and strength in an identity that has been denigrated and discriminated against is one way we have attempted to heal some of the wounds of prejudice, bolster self-esteem, and undo some of the negative effects of racism, sexism, heterosexism, etcetera. Indeed, when our cultural identity has been so shaped by structures of oppression, by patriarchy, white supremacy and all their associated isms, finding some spaces of separation in which to explore what it really means to be a woman, a person of color, a queer or transgender person can be enormously liberating. In such spaces we feel safer, because we don't have to contend with the assumptions and the unspoken power plays of a dominant group. They allow us to share our deepest experiences and speak what formerly cannot be spoken.

But the practice of separatism can also be problematic, because it inevitably splits us into multiple islands of different special interests and concerns. Powell calls this process breaking.

So, for example, the Second Wave Feminist Movement developed a separatist wing that excluded men. Many saw men, per se, as the problem, which obscured a focus on the structure of patriarchy, a system that assigns power according to gender, with negative impacts on women and gender-diverse folks, and in unique ways, on men as well. Women’s spaces could offer safety and empowerment, especially for women who had been victimized by male violence. But they could also become insular and less effective at challenging the overarching values of the larger society. They limit participation, and tend to keep their members marginalized.

Margins can be places of great dynamism and creativity. In nature, ecotones, where one system meets another, are often havens of biodiversity, enriched with varied forms of life because of the varied niches they provide. The edge where the forest meets the Meadow is where the deer live, so they can graze out in the open and retreat under the trees for shelter. The open grasslands do not offer much shelter; the deep forest does not offer much food.

Edges are important in human society as well. The margins can be places where new ideas develop and challenges to the established order originate. But if those challenges are to succeed in transforming society, they cannot forever remain marginalized. They must move into the center, and for that they need a broad base of power. If we are part of groups or movements attempting to create such a base, we need to define an identity that can be open, porous and broadly inclusive. It must be an identity that people can choose, not one fixed by birth or some other fixed category.

The counter to breaking, powell suggests, is bridging: reaching across the divide of difference to create greater connection and forge alliances. The movement we need is one that can be broad-based and link these different groups together to wield power to safeguard all of our rights. No one identity group alone has the power to do that. So to build that broader movement, we must become better at bridging, willing to draw a bigger circle and create a larger ‘we’.

“We need identities that can speak to and build collective belonging—purpose, meaning groundedness--in something greater than ourselves, and which bind us to other people especially members of different social groups.” (12)

The Civil Rights Movement of the early ‘60s held ideals of integration and inclusion, and encouraged white people to join. Many participated in Freedom Rides, suffered attacks of racist violence, imprisonment, even lost their lives. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the beloved community provided an overarching identity that was visionary and open to anyone who chose to join the struggle.

Smucker suggests that the meme originating in Occupy Wall Street: “We are the 99%”, created such a broad identity. True, it may have alienated the one per cent of extremely wealthy billionaires, but it opened participation to an extremely broad base of society.

Two decades ago, when I was doing solidarity work in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, I participated in an encampment to contest the wall the Israeli military was building to separate Israel proper from the Palestinian Territories, a wall which divided many Palestinian communities and annexed much Palestinian land without compensation. The Peace Camp was a beautiful example of co-operation between Palestinian activists and mostly young Israeli activists, who camped together, ate together, planned actions together and shared culturally. One of the Israelis said to me, “Here we are not Israeli or Palestinian. We are people together struggling for justice.”(13)

A group or movement that aims to transform society as a whole might consider adopting a similar broad-based identity. If we are people together struggling for justice, and we are open to anyone who is willing to join the struggle. That is a choice anyone can make, so it offers agency. It's not bound or limited by the circumstances of one's birth, upbringing, or other categories. It casts a very broad net that can hold many differences.

Of course, we don’t want to erase our varied identities or jettison all groups that mobilize around specific, targeted groups or particular interests. Such groups can marshall focused power, and provide safe havens for those who have suffered trauma at the hands of dominant groups. But we might think of the movement as a whole as an ecosystem. An ecosystem has many parts that are different: trees, flowers, ferns, fungi, birds, animals, humans, microorganisms and more. Each fills its own niche, yet together they make up a whole.

What if we were to see our movements as a larger ecosystem of people together struggling for justice? Then our individual, more narrowly based groups might fulfill certain niches. A gender justice group might protect trans rights or work to restore reproductive rights for all. A Black Lives Matter group might demand an end to police violence in the Black community. An environmental justice group might fill the niche of protecting old growth forests or stopping corporate pollution. They might combine to contest a polluting power plant in the inner city. They can retain their distinct goals and priorities, yet all could see themselves as part of one overarching whole.

How does the group form an identity? I've addressed this in more detail in The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups. (14) In brief, a group might begin by articulating the vision of the world that they want to create, and then extracting the values that vision represents, for example, equity, environmental balance, individual freedom, connection, compassion, etcetera. The group can then determine its particular mission. What aspect of that vision does your group focus on? What particular wrongs do you wish to address? What specific benefits do you wish to create? The group may also develop a mission statement or a list of core values which then can become a document that articulates the group’s identity and purpose.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/dobie-gray/the-in-crowd Lyrics licensed and provided by Lyricfind.

2. Arlie Hochschild. Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right. New York, New Press, 2016

3. David French, “The Rage and Joy of MAGA America.” New York Times July 6th 2023 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/opinion/maga-america-trump.html

4. Jackrabbit Pollack Facebook Post December 3, 2024

5. Molly Crabapple “God Bless America: Strippers, Hi Jolly, Trump and Harris”

Ink Vault Nov 15 2024 4:25 am

6. Belonging Without Othering Institute https://belonging.berkeley.edu/belonging-without-othering

7. Greg Castro, personal communication

8. Key and Peele. “Awkward Apologies From White People.”

9. Wanda Stewart. Personal communication.

10. Hochschild. Ibid

11. Jonathan Smucker. Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals P,109

12. john a. powell and Stephen Menendian. Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2024 p.208

13. personal communication

14. Starhawk. The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2011.