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You don't have to know exactly what your community's social identity will be today. You just need to plant the seeds of community, and over time a distinct social identity will form. That said, you should absolutely have a strong theory of who your community is built for from day one, and have a vision for the social identity you'd like to create. On the highest level, there are three questions that will help you define the social identity of your community: People: Who are we? Purpose: What do we believe? Participation: What do we do?
The Business of Belonging
David Spinks
There may have been something approaching a “whimsical cast” to these summer proceedings—so John Adams characterized them. Congress could not seem to make up its mind. It prepared for war while it begged for peace; it proclaimed its determination to protect American liberties while it petitioned for reconciliation; it expressed respect for the king while it promised death to his armies.7 Yet there was nothing whimsical in the tendency of action in these hot weeks. Men died at Bunker Hill, and each time an American died so did some part of moderation. Death and suffering had more than a local effect in New England. The news of the fighting spread, and soldiers from the middle and southern colonies began to march toward Boston. As they left home so also did the spirit of compromise. Blundering British officials also helped destroy whatever support moderation possessed. Few in the ministry seem to have kept their balance once the war began. North’s impulses remained peaceful, though hardly strong enough to soothe an angry king. Dartmouth might have helped North contain the ugly desires for war, but Dartmouth was not widely trusted and left office in the autumn. His successor, Lord George Germain, was genuinely tough and fed the vulgar desire to put the Americans in their place.8 News of the battles at Lexington and Concord had made compromise all the more unlikely, and Bunker Hill had hardened resolves. Late in August the king expressed much of the public, and private, outrage at American behavior by proclaiming that the colonies were in “an open and avowed rebellion.” Two months later in an accounting to Parliament he explained that a “desperate conspiracy” existed in America to make a rebellious war which is “manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire.”9 Many in Parliament had doubtless come to the same conclusion when fighting began in America. They now followed the lead of the ministry and just before the year ended passed, on December 22, 1775, the American Prohibitory Act, which ordered all trade with the colonies stopped. This statute made American ships and their cargoes fair game for the Royal Navy; all ships trading with the colonies were to be “forfeited to his Majesty, as if the same were the ships and the effects of open enemies, and shall be so adjudged, deemed, and taken in all courts of admiralty, and in all other courts whatsoever.”10 Had the king, his ministry, and the Parliament attempted to persuade the Americans to separate themselves from the empire they could not have chosen much more effective means than those of April onward. The British army had marched and killed on two dreadful occasions; the petition of the Congress had been considered unworthy of answer; the Americans had been described as traitors and rebels who must be subdued by force. At first sight, shutting off American commerce may not seem such a portentous act. Yet Americans considered it to be, and rightly so, for it…
The Glorious Cause
Robert Middlekauff
After years of hearing my father rant at my flaws, one loss has caused me to take up his rant. I’ve internalized my father—his impatience, his perfectionism, his rage—until his voice doesn’t just feel like my own, it is my own. I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.
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