The Community

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. —Martin Luther King Jr.

Old habits are said to die hard, and the same is apparently true for traumas.

After witnessing four years of a presidential administration that heightened racial tensions, created a policy to separate children from their parents, and banned Muslims from traveling to the country, all while amassing a cult following that led to hundreds of white men storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, under the guise of having been disenfranchised, I saw too many parallels to the world of York.

Today, four decades after leaving the Community, I have since learned that the need to find the good in something is universal, even when what is found has devastatingly harmful effects.

Life on the outside didn’t exist until people on the outside reminded us of everything we’d left behind that we remembered.

I wondered how many families who didn’t make the news crashed and crumbled because they looked for love or identity in the wrong places. Because they felt so emasculated and dejected by society that the only way to freedom was to voluntarily isolate.

“My lack of understanding shouldn’t get in the way of me experiencing love.”