Before coming to Albuquerque, I was a paid community organizer with the IAF (Industrial Areas Foundation)— which has a misleadingly boring name for an organization that is miraculously stitching back together the tatters of our democratic culture in cities across the U.S. They train everyday people to work together to design and win campaigns for new laws and massive sums of public money for non-glamourous but vital issues that affect all of us: drainage, sidewalks, job training, schools, zoning policy. I’ve spent the past decade training tenants to fight slumlords, immigrants to win more respectful treatment from police, parents to transform their school districts. We wrote laws, designed programs, and scared the pants off local politicians when they misbehaved (not literally).

It was powerful, more than just “weighing in” or protesting, or getting out the vote. The most impactful moment for me was probably after George Floyd was murdered. Generations of activists had tried and failed for decades to get our city (Vallejo, CA) to hold police accountable. But our team of community leaders did it. For months after all the street protestors had gone home, this team literally researched, designed, and wrote the ordinance creating the first office of police accountability in that city. They organized public assemblies and won the votes to pass it. It was their words, their ideas. Not someone else’s. And I had the amazing good luck to lead them in that effort.

I loved organizing with the IAF. It felt powerful, vital, connected. But as a single woman in my 40’s, I was torn. I felt hungry to put down roots. I wanted to fight for my own community, not someone else’s. I wanted to settle somewhere, build a network of relationships, maybe adopt a kid. And I knew I couldn’t do that all alone. So I made a gut-punch decision to leave organizing and to move here to Albuquerque to become part of Cohousing ABQ.

Finding Community on a Personal Level

I sought out Cohousing for the same reason I sought out organizing— because I believe people are designed to live and act together. It’s not a coincidence that I first read about Cohousing and the Industrial Areas Foundation in the very same book: Better Together: Restoring the American Community, by a sociologist named Robert Putnam.

It’s a sequel to Putnam’s more famous other book, Bowling Alone, which details the decline of participation in American institutions. When the French political theorist Alexis De Tocqueville visited the U.S. in the early 1800’s, he noted that the strength of our democracy was in the tight weave of our social fabric, the way people participated energetically in a thriving ecosystem of “voluntary associations” in their communities. But two centuries later, Putnam pointed out, this ecosystem was thin and haggard, barely hanging on. Americans were even bowling alone. Along with bowling leagues, fewer and fewer of us participated in faith groups, civic clubs, and neighborhood groups.

I wanted to know: could I help reweave that fraying fabric? IAF-style organizing was one way. Cohousing was another. At least, I hoped it could be. But I didn’t know for sure.

The day I arrived in Albuquerque, with all of my earthly possessions pressing against the windows of my sky-blue, battered Toyota Prius, I was full of doubts. I had given up the most meaningful thing in my life for a community that I suddenly realized was largely a fantasy. I didn’t really know these people. Pulling into the driveway of Laura, the cohousing member who kindly offered to let me stay in her spare room for my first three months in Albuquerque, I felt suddenly shaky. Would it be worth it? What would I do here? I stood in her kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, thirsty from the 12-hour drive from San Antonio. The prospect of carrying my boxes in from the car felt overwhelming, as if each one was loaded with my entire future.

Suddenly, I heard strange sounds. Shouting? I looked out the front window. Appearing from behind a pine tree next to the driveway was a small parade. Kids and grown-ups alike in party hats, blowing into kazoos. One cohouser, Alexej, carried a bottle of champagne with sparkly streamers attached. Kids carried drawings that said “Welcome Lizzy!” Turns out my friend Patti had organized a surprise welcome party to help me unload the car. One by one, my boxes and bins disappeared into the house, down into Laura’s basement, like we were some colony of army ants carrying off the crumbs of a delicious lunch. It all took about five minutes.

Better together? Absolutely. Robert Putnam and Alexis de Tocqueville would be proud.

It would be a lie to say that this moment assuaged all my doubts on the spot. But it made me feel a hell of a lot better. Cohousing is about these moments. And there have been several more since I got here. Camping trips, potluck dinners, tree-planting parties. There was even another moving party when I left Laura’s house to move into a sweet Victorian near downtown with Natasha and her 9-year-old son (now my favorite pillow-fight opponent). When he gets home from school, I emerge from my sweaty voiceover closet, and listen to him tell about entire imaginary worlds he’s building out of Legos. It’s paradise.

But what about democracy? What about that bigger picture? We’re living through an acute moment of anxiety about our country’s political future. I can’t ignore this, no matter how much I enjoy the camping trips, hot springs retreats, potluck dinners, and Lego villages. Luckily, it seems I don’t have to.

Coloradans for the Common Good, an IAF sister organization in Denver

How Cohousers can Support their Broader Community

Last week, Nick, Jenna, and Lauren joined me as I helped to lead a meeting of institutions from across Albuquerque who are interested in rebuilding an IAF organization here, to strengthen the fabric of our local democracy. We sat together with parents from a local school, workers, non-profit leaders, refugees. Elders and kids. Faith and secular. We read the Declaration of Independence out loud. Turns out, the people who founded this country were a lot like cohousers. They didn’t agree on everything, but they knew they’d be better together— and they were willing to take risks to build a brand-new thing, against the odds.

I think cohousing could have a natural role to play in an organization like this— because this style of organizing is about more than issues and elections; it’s about rebuilding that ecosystem of “voluntary associations” that democracy depends on. It’s about relationships. And we cohousers know all about that. We know how to argue and debate until we arrive at a good decision. We know how to compromise. We know how to take care of one another. And we know how to build a brand-new thing, against the odds.