How can community and unity benefit all of us? 

Many sessions I attended at SXSW — whether about gun safety, the future of sustainability, creating wealth, or even implementing Artificial Intelligence to aid in building the future of our cities — all circled back to community and the unification of the people within those areas.

“What do you mean, Braxton?” Hang on, because I found myself asking that same question.

The truth is, it all starts with the citizens and the people who seek to thrive in that community. Maintaining the foundations of any structure, organization, entity, or community means everything, because how can you possibly build on an unstructured foundation?

How do you expect anything to have longevity if you don’t have anything to build upon? How can we possibly plan for tomorrow if our focus isn’t on the youth and the people who will lead us in the coming future?

You can’t move forward, build better cities, and have safer places to live if we are not hearing and understanding the needs of those who make up that community — the foundation. We can’t build more sustainably and become a technically-advanced place if we don’t know where to implement these innovations.

And how can we help those if we don’t know the needs of the people within the community — why invest in technology when we don’t know what role it would play? How can we provide resources to those in our community if we don’t know what resources the people need? How can we possibly help one another? 

You ever walk into your local cafe and they call out your name, or maybe they even know your favorite drink? It feels good right? That feeling is a sense of belonging — in fact, 74% of Americans report a sense of non-belonging in their local communities. That’s crazy if you think about it!

What’s possible when the people come together? What happens when we combine our “heads, hearts, and hands to come up with solutions,” as said by Deborah Tien, founder of Common Agency. We as neighbors can share ideas and thoughts to create a world in our image.

Creating a sense of community, knowing who’s who, makes the world better around us. It creates a sense of neighborhood and community — you want to know who lives next to you, who patrols your neighborhood, and be familiar with public officials who meet regularly to make the area you live in better. Knowing who the young people are that walk and ride bikes among us, to introducing our own children to the elders as our parents once did.

Making a world that we all benefit from and care about is impossible if we all don’t have a sense of community and the likeness of neighborhood and do it as one.

Crime in our community & how we can make a difference

I listened to an incredible story from an amazing woman,  Lisa B. Daniels, founder and executive director of Darren B. Easterling Center for Restorative Practices. Hearing her talk about her son being a victim of gun violence and the work she has done showed me that we can’t stop violence and crime within an area if we can’t identify the root of where these issues come from.

“Just lock them up.” I heard you. I attended a session this week and they talked about how America incarcerates more people than any country in the world and yet we’re still ranked the most unsafe. How is that? Because when 95% of incarcerated individuals return home with no proper correction, what was solved? To me, this sounds like a system that no longer works. So what do we do?

Figuring out why an individual is doing the crime that they have done is one way to get to the root of the problem. If there’s a leak, we figure out where the leak is coming from so it doesn’t cause more damage, right? We can’t fix anything if we don’t address and identify what needs fixed, and if we neglect these signs it only leads to bigger issues later on.

Have you ever dropped your car off to get an oil change, and the mechanic finds 14 more things wrong with your car? You’d love the ignore these issues but you know you’ll pay the price of things in the end. If we treat our community the same way, we’ll regret it. If we ignore the problems that people deal with, it’s going to affect everyone.

You may not be a victim of a violent crime, but what does that do to your community members, your parks, the children, the health and well-being of the area you live in? If we keep ignoring the problems, and if you don’t do something about that check-engine light, we may risk a lot more.

If we can identify what people need, we can provide resources. If a child is hungry we can come together and provide food; we can provide warmth if unhoused people are cold; if our community is hurting we can provide healing; and that can only happen if we all do our fair share and be active and in the area we call home. Let’s all be proactive in the areas that our families have built and the place where the future of our namesake will thrive. 

What and how can we plan to build a better, safer, and more sustainable community if we don’t even know the people within these areas (who we are making the world better for)?

Building and creating as people

I’ve attended panels and sessions where I’ve been a bit out of my comfort zone, for good reason, but that’s what you do when you’re here at SXSW.

I’ve been educated by some of the wealthiest and smartest people around: Top executives at NASA, venture capitalists, Artificial Intelligence startups groups, and first-generation millionaires. None of these people got to where they are and have accomplished the things they have accomplished on such a large scale without building a group of solid individuals around them.

“What do you mean? And what can I do?” Sit tight, I gotcha.

I sat in on a featured session, “Your First Million: Why You Don’t Have To Be Born into a Legacy of Wealth to Leave One Behind” — like, how could I not attend something like that.

Arlan Hamilton, founder of Backstage Capital, said something that stuck with me: Everyone has a great ideas, we all have things were passionate about, but we’re stronger together. People of great success really do collaborate and that’s how they maintain their success.

And you can start your own collaborative group of people, your own think-tanks. You can go to dinner, co-working places, anywhere, and have a monthly meet up and collaborate. Talk about whats holding you back and one thing thats working.

We all want success, and we all have the power to create our legacy. Schedule dinner with someone or a few people and have a conversation and talk about the lives you wish to live in the future, and push forward towards that!