Group implies exclusion to me, as does membership. However, the words community and belonging rely more on inclusion.
Though this week I did a lot of work in the garden as well as selling plants in the nursery and research with the Nicaragua project, my mind was elsewhere. We had protests in both the larger city of Santa Rosa (about 30 minutes away) and in the little town where I live called Occidental. It seemed too important not to go, though at 22, I was probably in the older age bracket of the protest, which was sort of unbelievable.
I think this political moment ties deeply into this prompt as we all grapple with what our community means to us and how far we are willing to expand it, particularly with the virus. Does my majority white town see the Black Lives Matter movement as a group separated from us or as a larger part of our community? Are we willing to expand our bubble (once unspoken, now very much accentuated)? Of course going to protests is well and good, but what more does one do, is one expected to do, when others in one’s community are treated unjustly.