Over the last few weeks, I’ve had good opportunities to be “in community.” One of those opportunities happened at The Cutting Room, where School of Rock NYC had their midseason show. School of Rock is a nationwide program that teaches students music through modern compositions with attention to student agency. My son’s been attending a weekly tutoring and band session for the last year and a half. They perform at well-known spaces in the city for their midseason and end-of-season shows. He’s part of a Prince/MJ band and the students’ transformation into full-fledged rock stars is a sight to behold.

The families in the audience party along to their children’s melodies. For a minute, we didn’t worry about news of impending doom, just the kids and the SoR community.

Building community feels harder to accomplish these days. It’s more than just listening to one another. It’s the multiple forces vying for people’s ears and eyes and which messages land. The United States reached an apex during the 2020 uprisings because ideas of eliminating institutional harm towards a shared humanity replaced the status quo. Now, and in retaliation, we’re inundated with anti-heroes not only repeating nonsense about people they despite, but parading unapologetic dispositions in the worst ways.

The repetition is working well for too many of our neighbors. Educators at the school level have tried to sound the alarms, but those calls have fallen on ignorant ears.

We can discuss the role of social media, but the videos and memes fill holes in logics that society hasn’t filled. Our students watch videos that engage them in ways that the rest of us don’t. International reporters and testimonials explain ongoing inhumanity here and abroad to some. Evangelists also explain alpha and beta men and the connections between Christ and the incoming president. Conspiracy theories of varying degrees abound. Students turn to their phones because their in-person community isn’t pouring back into them. We watch adults struggle with facts and beliefs even more so. Some pundits have repeated lies that teachers specialize in gender affirming care, the latest attack on public education. Behind the scenes, some powerful people have sought to concretize this caste system. Few have sought to stop the calamity.

So many variables contribute to the isolation and polarization conversation. But it isn’t just people isolating and polarizing themselves. It’s people in power doing the isolating and polarizing.

But as an educator, I believe providing spaces for people to feel whole creates permission to feel like they belong. Right now, we’re getting signals that belonging to a larger, empathetic community doesn’t matter. People are writing inclusive histories further out of our textbooks. People are passing laws to further marginalize folks based on who they love, how they were born, and what part of their being they’d like to control. We’re already seeing large corporations, philanthropists, and politicians scale back some of the commitments they made only four years ago towards a shared humanity.

But I’m a believer that giving in to the whims of people trying to shove already marginalized people doesn’t help us get any closer to a loving community. This is a good time to look around to build and aspire to a community outside of our comforts. Forcing folks to silence crucial parts of themselves keeps us further away as well. There’s a difference between community and audience, too. An audience is one-directional and there’s room for that. But we need community to help more of us step up to the moment.

Luckily, I have a few communities I’m a part of that consistently step up and out (including one I helped to build ten years ago when I had none like it). For a couple hours on a Sunday, I took a breath and postponed my disbelief in America’s collective behavior. I witnessed kids as young as six years old play chords and sing hits from the 60s and 90s. I saw teens play heavy metal and change their whole personas as the strings shook the floors. My son talked/sung through Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” as the audience swayed back and forth to the synths on the keyboard. We looked around the bar and saw the diversity of New York City enjoy the rhythms that the future might bring. By the time Ale and co. played “Let’s Go Crazy” to conclude the show, I almost grabbed a guitar and tossed it myself.

But that reality came back after we exited the show. The rest of the world didn’t see that show, hear the kids perform, or dance to the drums with us. Nor should I expect them to. But I, and so many others, are working towards a world where our different gifts can come together in authentic unison. We get to be ourselves and together with others in our expressions.

As human beings, all of us crave that level of community, but we can’t get it if we don’t even recognize the same notes. Let’s get to work.