Hey friends. Today I want to write about something that’s been on my mind for a while. I feel like it’s pretty evident that we, collectively, are enduring a crisis of community. I myself been searching for an elusive sense of belonging for some time.

Several times over the past few years, I’ve joined a self-described “community” hoping to find what I was looking for. And several times, I’ve been disappointed by what I consider a failure of the community’s leadership to responsibly navigate conflicts.

Here is what I’ve seen. Inevitably, as a community grows, its members come into conflict with one another. Someone is made to feel uncomfortable by another, or is offended by something another has said. A boundary is crossed, or someone’s trust violated.

And in each case, I’ve seen the same response from leadership: expulsion of one of the members. Sometimes a cursory effort is made to resolve the issue. But once it seems too difficult, too uncomfortable or too time-consuming an effort, one of the members is banned without hope for appeal.

Don’t get me wrong — sometimes this is the right move. Every case has its own degree of severity, and every person their own history of abuse. In the more severe cases, immediate expulsion might be a good call to protect other community members.

But in the cases I’ve seen, the reason has been as trivial as a verbal dispute or an unfriendly tone of voice. And I’ve seen these judgements favor those in positions of power and stability, those close to the community’s leaders or better equipped to convince them of their own righteousness.

We should also consider the ramifications of these expulsions. In the best case, they drive the individual into isolation, and into a private setting where they can not be held accountable for their actions. In the worst case, they drive an individual in need of support away from their only source of it. The consequences can be deadly.

Why does this happen? I think it’s simple. As individuals we’re losing the ability to tolerate discomfort, to make space for disagreement, and to accept our neighbors even when we don’t like them. The leaders of our communities often step into that role without this crucial tolerance, and without a commitment to building it. However, in doing so they side-step accountability.

There’s another piece of this that’s more insidious. Many of the communities I’m alluding to have been, in one sense or another, for-profit. When leadership of a community is concerned with making bank, members are seen as replaceable; after all, the ticket sales lost from one member’s expulsion can be earned back through marketing and self-promotion, with considerably less effort than it would take to resolve the dispute.

What these leaders fail to recognize is that a community is like a Jenga tower. Every piece taken out upsets the structural integrity of the whole, even if you add a new piece on top. It feels to me like these “communities” operate like a Ship of Theseus, happy to recycle their membership so long as money keeps coming through the door. This sort of outlook doesn’t support the lasting bonds and mutualistic support that we actually need from a community.

It’s hard to escape the for-profit model. Communities need spaces in which to gather, and space costs money, especially in New York City. There are some community organizations, such as Woodbine operating out of Ridgewood, that deliberately eschew profit-seeking. These are where I’d like to focus most of my attention in the future. But even under a profit model, a community can be accountable so long as its leadership is willing to step up to bat.