What Keeps You Together

I’m writing this knowing that most groups will dissolve. The research is clear about that. Groups that form around a shared urgency tend to dissipate when the urgency fades — or when the urgency becomes the new normal, which is worse, because people stop noticing it. Kaniasty and Norris documented the pattern across multiple studies of disaster survivors: social support surges during crisis and then deteriorates, even when need persists. The energy that brings people together doesn’t automatically sustain them.

The question isn’t whether your motivation will dip. It will. The question is whether you’ve built something that survives the dip.

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Occupy Wall Street mobilized thousands and reshaped the political vocabulary of a generation. It couldn’t sustain itself. Not because the cause wasn’t urgent — because the identity was the occupation. When the occupation ended, the identity ended. There was nothing underneath.

Occupy Sandy, born from the same network a year later, thrived during Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath because disaster response gave it concrete, immediate purpose. But it too struggled once the immediate crisis passed. The same structural problem: the group’s reason for existing was the event. When the event ended, the group had to answer a question it had never asked: who are we when this is over?

Red Hook Initiative in Brooklyn answered that question. Their mesh WiFi network actually started before Sandy — a small community wireless project launched in fall 2011 with the Open Technology Institute to connect residents around Red Hook Initiative’s community center. When the hurricane hit in October 2012 and commercial infrastructure went down, the mesh network kept working. Red Hook Initiative became a hub — residents charging devices, accessing the internet, coordinating recovery. The network proved its value in crisis, but it survived because it evolved. From emergency communication to digital equity to community education. The Digital Stewards program trained local youth as network technologists — paid roles that gave the organization institutional life beyond volunteerism. The mission grew with the community’s needs instead of dying with the crisis that catalyzed its expansion.

The pattern is consistent. Groups that tie their identity to a single urgency have an expiration date. Groups that root their identity in place, in relationship, in an evolving understanding of what their community needs — those persist.

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At your next meeting, have a conversation you might be avoiding. Thirty minutes. Three questions:

What brought us together?

What keeps us together if that original urgency fades?

What are we building that matters regardless of what happens next?

These aren’t rhetorical. Write the answers down. They’re your anchor — the thing you return to when someone asks “why are we still doing this?” and the honest answer is that you’re not sure.

Then talk about why each person actually comes to meetings. Not why they should. Why they do. Maybe it’s the cause. Maybe it’s the friendships. Maybe it’s the learning, or the sense of doing something concrete in a world that mostly offers scrolling. All of those are valid. Clary and Snyder’s research on volunteer motivation — tested across multiple settings and populations — shows that groups serving multiple motivations are more resilient than groups serving one. If the only reason to show up is the cause, then a bad news week can empty the room. If people also come because they like each other, because they’re learning, because Tuesday evening is the part of the week that feels like it matters, the group has multiple roots.

Name them honestly. Write them down.

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You’re not the only group. The research confirms something Theda Skocpol documented across two centuries of American civic life: groups embedded in networks — connected to other local groups, to regional organizations, to community institutions — persisted far better than groups that operated in isolation. The Industrial Areas Foundation, which has organized communities since 1940, doesn’t organize individuals. It organizes institutions — churches, unions, schools, neighborhood associations — into coalitions. Each level provides something the others can’t. Local groups provide energy and specificity. The network provides perspective and durability.

If you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ve seen what this looks like under extreme conditions. The Mayday network doesn’t have a headquarters, a membership roster, or a chain of command. Its cells operate independently — most don’t know who the other cells are, where they meet, or how they work. What connects them isn’t a shared structure but a shared purpose and the ability to recognize each other through practice. June doesn’t find Mayday by looking it up. She finds it by doing things that Mayday operatives recognize — small acts of defiance, willingness to take risk, demonstrated trustworthiness over time. The network grows not through recruitment but through recognition. That’s fiction, but the principle is real: decentralized networks survive precisely because no single point of failure can bring them down. A registry can be seized. A headquarters can be raided. But a network of autonomous groups connected by shared practice and mutual recognition — that’s harder to map and harder to break.

Your group of five is a local group. There are others in your community — a neighborhood association, a mutual aid network, a PTA, a faith community, a veterans’ group, a civic organization that’s been around longer than any of you have lived there. They’re not doing what you’re doing. That’s fine. The connection isn’t about merging or recruiting. It’s about knowing they exist.

Between meetings, make contact with one. Attend one of their meetings or events. Introduce yourselves simply — you’re a small group of neighbors interested in local issues. Share that your group exists and that you’d like to know what they’re working on. Hold back specifics about your security practices, your internal dynamics, your operating document. Those are inner-circle information, and this is a first conversation.

When you report back to your group, discuss: What did you learn? What are they working on? Is there overlap with what you care about? Do you trust them? Would you want to work with them on something specific?

This is the beginning of something larger. Not yet — you’re not ready for coordinated multi-group action, and neither is anyone else. But knowing that other groups exist, and that they know you exist, changes the landscape. You’re not alone in your neighborhood. You weren’t before, either — but now you know it.

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Field journal: What came up in the identity conversation that surprised you? What motivations did people name? Who did you connect with outside the group, and what did you learn?

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