Hiawatha organizers launch Working Families Potluck to rebuild community in Cedar Rapids, Cedar Valley areas

HIAWATHA — As organizers of the Cedar Valley Working Families potluck discussed their vision for a blossoming new social group, the room’s attention turned to a house of cards collapsing on the table next to them.

One of the group’s first exercises at its inaugural January meeting — building playing card towers as players built community — had concluded.

“The goal was not to win, but to enjoy ourselves,” Linda Langston, whose table happened to be one of the losing groups, cheerfully reminded the room.

Before the game had even begun, about 30 attendees at the Hiawatha Community Center were “breaking bread” in a new way at an event yet to receive its official name. There, a simple potluck emulated a classic type of Midwestern gathering that’s second nature to many Iowans.

But with the decades-long decline of previously popular third spaces like churches, service organizations and clubs, many find themselves out of practice in exercising the social muscles that build community.

And as mounting political polarization has turned neighbors, friends and family against each other, community is something many are reaching for in uncertain times.

Finding third places away from home, work

“It feels like we’re all hurting,” said organizer Bryan “Laine” Willis, to nods around the table. “(Community building) has to start somewhere.”

For organizer Evan Langston, the place his family found community while growing up was church.

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“Where were you at 1 p.m. on a Sunday? Everyone was in the basement of some church after a sermon, drinking coffee and tea, eating cookies and talking,” he said.

But today, the church’s standing as a place not just for worship, but for community organizing, has been diminished. Since 2007, the number of Americans who identify as Christians has declined by double digits, while the number of adults who aren’t affiliated with any religion has grown to 29 percent, according to the Pew Research Center’s long-term Religious Landscape Study.

Adults under 24 are about half as likely as adults over 74 to attend religious services. A growing portion of younger generations identify as LGBTQ, too — a group unwelcome by the theology of some churches.

Throughout group organizer Zach Reisetter’s childhood, community was found by going to his father’s union halls. But union membership has crumbled by 50 percent since 1983, over decades of industrial decline and laws weakening collective bargaining rights.

Technology has tried the bridge the gap, especially after the pandemic. Entire industries, like dating apps, are built on the fact that it’s hard to meet new people in everyday life.

Often, the connections aren’t as satisfying.

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“It makes you feel like you’re getting involved in an community of people, when you’re not actually,” Willis said. “It’s very fleeting.”

But a few common activities in churches and union halls remain mechanisms that still hold power, no matter the setting: sharing food, playing games and making small talk that leads to big talks.

“It feels like there’s a lot of desire for people to connect with something like this,” Reisetter said. “I’ve met so many contemporaries my age and my parents age who don’t have friends.”

A vision for community

Langston, Willis and Reisetter, a group of friends in their 30s, have a vision for building community among individuals that is greater than the sum of its parts — a movement more than a gathering.

With monthly meals, they plan to develop other small groups that foster common interests and hobbies. Over two months, the informal group has become more formal with a website and Facebook group.

By the third potluck on March 21, the group had formed its name, with a new emphasis on solidarity among working families. Soon, they hope to become a nonprofit as a vehicle to accept small donations that can sustain the mission.

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Surveys have been deployed to gauge the demographics of the group and what they hope to get out of community building.

The group aims to stay small with a low-maintenance formula that anyone can apply to the other social circles in their lives. Small groups, they believe, are better equipped to address community concerns.

“Everyone’s hand is in the middle on this,” Willis said.

The bigger, “lowercase P” picture

Phrases like “working class” come with a lot of political baggage that the group hopes to recalibrate in a new context.

“Part of what we’ve realized, specifically because of the election, is that there’s a whole lot of language coded in a way that makes certain things impossible,” Langston said. “We’re trying to use the words ‘working class power and solidarity’ because there are certain (other) words that have years and years of propaganda associated with them.”

This group isn’t about a political spectrum of left to right — it’s about rebuilding grassroots power from the bottom up.

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Far from America’s political machine, their idea of community is a group Eastern Iowans can lean on for help, no matter what the political machine in Washington, D.C. is doing.

“Affecting issues in your community is politics, but there’s so much of our political landscape that has been coded toward ‘big P’ politics,” Evan said. “We want this to be ‘little P’ political, not big P political.”

Knowing how to make a difference can be hard in a country where 155 million people voted last year, he said. But in a room of 30 people, it’s pretty easy for one person to count.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.