A Gen-Xer to the core, I grew up with (pre-Elmo) Sesame Street; a televised fictional inner city neighbourhood where a diverse crew of adults, children and puppets worked, sang, learned, and played together, with millions of viewers of all ages (my mom adored the smoking jacket-clad Alistair Cookie hosting Monsterpiece Theatre’s production of “Me, Claudius”).
In between “one of these things is not like the other” and songs about the alphabet, we also learned about “the people in your neighbourhood”—doctors, lawyers, firefighters, teachers, postal workers—some of whom lived on or frequently visited “the Street.” You could sit on your front stoop to talk to passing neighbours, or walk to Mr. Hooper’s grocery store, visit Luis’ Fix-it shop, and learn about music from Bob or nursing from Susan.
Throughout its existence, Sesame Street prioritized and was rooted in community—what it looked like, how it worked, and the people who kept it running smoothly. It continued to break new ground on representation for race, gender, and inclusion for kids (and families) around the world. It also brilliantly satirized those who behaved in decidedly un-community-like ways (ahem: Donald Grump)—so perhaps it’s not a mystery why the show drew the ire of the Trump administration.
The authoritarian pushback against real or idealized community isn’t recent or limited to Trump—witness the furious right-wing conspiracy-based campaign against the “15 minute city” initiative where “you should be able to access essential services within a 15 minute radius from your home” was torqued to mean “you are not allowed to travel more than 15 minutes from where you live.”
No one should doubt the significance of what Sesame Street—the original 15 minute city—represented, and the challenge to authority that representation posed.
Recent events in Minneapolis underscore exactly why communities are under attack, and why they’re the epicentres of resistance. It’s because they hold the greatest opportunities for authentic connection, and are, therefore, the most immediate threat to authoritarianism.
It’s also why we need to protect the people and infrastructure they require to function effectively and compassionately, and we need the funding required to make that happen.
More than three decades of relentless neoliberalism and an increasingly regressive tax system has gutted that infrastructure here in Canada—and recent federal and provincial policy priorities suggest that won’t change any time soon.
The effects of this deliberate neglect are all around us—underfunded public schools, untenable strain on our hospitals and health care system, and the ongoing deprioritizing of public transportation.
Affordable housing is insufficient, and rents far outpace wages. Public spaces are often left in a state of disrepair. Local media coverage is in steep and accelerating decline, and the mandate of and funding for our public broadcaster continues to be whittled away. Headway has finally been made on child care affordability but spaces are still lacking.
Cutbacks to our public postal service will close post offices, reduce delivery standards and eliminate home delivery. Public libraries are raising the alarm about how the predicted increase in the costs of postage will prove so cost-prohibitive for inter-library loans that some may have to shutter too.
The playbook is straightforward: defund public schools to the breaking point and offer a handout for parents who are in position to choose private options. Cut health care to the bone and then suggest a two-tiered option will “reduce pressure” on the system. Close supervised injection sites and criminalize addiction and homelessness. Sell off, privatize or limit access to public spaces. Cut back on the communication and transportation infrastructure that facilitates connection between neighbours and communities. “Encourage” competition with “innovative” private options while limiting what the public system is in a position to provide. Replace human engagement and interaction with the people who staff the systems on which we rely with AI. And then cancel even limited attempts to make the tax system—which generates the revenue that allows us to look after each other—modestly more progressive, ensuring that the scarcity narrative becomes a permanent reality.
This is not how you encourage or ensure that communities thrive, and that inhabitants connect with all the people in their neighbourhood—or in other neighbourhoods. And against the backdrop of record-breaking rates of CEO pay underscoring growing inequality, it’s a recipe for disillusionment, angry individualism and isolation.
It’s how neoliberalism sets the table for authoritarianism. And it’s why, no matter how eloquent it sounds or how well-cut its suit, we need to expose and reject it—as well as the “common sense,” “doing more with less” and “empowering the individual” narratives that translate it into election slogans.
It’s no wonder that the backbone and infrastructure of our communities are under attack: community engagement and cohesion is radically revolutionary. Communities are where we can see, in real time, how much our society prioritizes how we get to know, and how we look after, each other. They’re where connections are built, where compassion is fostered, and where resistance to authoritarianism begins.
A divided and isolated population cannot easily empathize with neighbours they know, let alone ones they’re distanced from because their kids no longer go to the same community school. Or because of a work commute that’s several hours and three bus transfers. Or because rents require parents to work multiple shifts while juggling child care due to insufficient spaces.
We, in real time, are bearing witness to the need for community as a support network. In the midst of horrific police violence and what is effectively a military siege, Minnesotans are coming together to protect and support each other, even—tragically—at the cost of their own lives. This is community organizing at its most fundamental.
In a ‘post-Carney’s Davos speech’ world, we must remember: neoliberalism is not just the devil we know—it’s an on-ramp to the devil we like to tell ourselves is confined to the U.S.
Defending our communities, the infrastructure that grounds them, and the people who staff and deliver the services on which we depend, before it’s entirely eroded by the relentless drip of neoliberalism, is how we inoculate ourselves from the rising tide of authoritarianism.
That’s the word on the Street.
