As cheerleaders for community building, we've structured Butter Bakery to do the daily work of relationship building. It's integrated into the design, the mission, the operation.  It's who we are at our very core: building sustainable communities through great food.  And yet, when I started on the path of trying to actively live out 100 Days of Community through Kingfield Neighborhood Association's efforts to mark a year of the Covid 19 pandemic and the beginning of the Derek Chauvin trial, I wondered if I could really come up with 100 ways to be a community builder or sustain "community building" as a personal daily practice.

The 100 Days project was begun as a way to get neighbors connected, have conversations about safety, and come together as a neighborhood for antiracist learning and action for safety beyond policing.  Thirty-six days into this, I have felt immersed in community and I am being challenged and enriched by the experience.

I have appreciated being a host for events, a facilitator of conversations, a learner, a listener, and at times an awkward novice. Putting on community building as a lens has become a discipline each day, looking for ways my staff, customers, vendors, friends, neighbors and family each play a role to expand my understanding of what it means to feel safe and secure in a community large or small.  Some of the days I have felt like a witness, some like a participant and some days I've just needed to let go and observe and learn.

I'll host another book conversation this month, drawing on my work as a seventh-grade language arts teacher to bring books to life within the conversations of a group.  Having been a voracious but solitary reader growing up, I became an avid member of a book club that has been meeting for over 30 years.  The perspectives and insights gained in conversation have convinced me that reading with others is the way to go. It brings me great joy to share in conversations like these.

Perhaps it's the accountability of posting daily activities that has pushed me to get out of my comfort zone already.  Where, in the past, I might have (as an introvert) avoided introducing myself to new neighbors and just been satisfied with a wave or smile, I have taken the step to make the introduction.  It is motivating to tell myself that even this simple act can create a safer neighborhood and a more welcoming community.  And certainly, in the past, I've avoided bringing up race in conversations to allow myself more comfort, where now, with the 100 Days reminders around me, I can accept some discomfort in myself and others.

There was a time (way back in college) when I marched, organized, debated and protested for many causes, and thought of myself as a radical activist. Well, at least considering those I was surrounded by at St. Olaf.   But lately, feeling more like one of the elders, I hadn't been thinking of myself that way, despite my work at city hall and with state and national legislators.  So, it is with great joy that I am seeing that even simple acts of community building can be radical, and that imagining safety for my neighbors in ways that go beyond policing is indeed the radical activism of our time.  And with even greater joy, I'm finding that as I walk this path through these 100 Days that this radical welcoming is becoming a deeper part of my own core purpose. 

I hope that our Green Paths will cross and that I will have the opportunity to walk alongside you, for the conversation does make this walk so much lovelier!