Beloved Communities Network Launches Kickstarter for Ten Thousand Beloved Communities

Kristen Zimmerman of Root. Rise. Pollinate! (left) and Leila McCabe of Beloved Communities Network (BCN)

In the earliest and most precarious days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Leila McCabe of Beloved Communities Network (BCN) and Kristen Zimmerman of Root. Rise. Pollinate! hosted a series of powerful conversations with ecosystem buddies including Aisha Shillingford of Intelligent Mischief and Mimi Ho, then executive director of Movement Strategy Center (MSC). The focus of their Zoom calls, Zimmerman says, was the fact that, facing isolation and struggle, people “needed to be connected to community and needed to prioritize community.” 

The result of these rich and transformative conversations among friends is now a forthcoming graphic novel, Ten Thousand Beloved Communities. Zimmerman had just completed a program on creating graphic novels around this time, and along with McCabe, she believed the format would offer a beautiful way of inspiring others to commit to community.

Those early conversations centered on what McCabe calls “the arc of this long vision,” or the hundred year vision, along with the sort of portals and touchpoints needed to apply it. Zimmerman shares some of those prompts: “how do we deal with harm when it happens? What are alternatives to the justice system we have now? How do we feed people?”

“The world I imagine my son growing up in has to start with this strong foundation. I want him to have a daily community of practice with beloved community, because that is what will shift us all into the “big B” Beloved Community with big ideals and visions.”

It also coincided with McCabe’s early days as a core staff member at Movement Strategy Center (MSC). She was drawn to MSC a few years before, consulting on some of the Transitions Initiative work, which sparked her imagination. And, as a new mom, her idea of what Beloved Community “actually looked and felt like in practice shifted.” She calls out the sorts of things we can take for granted like “the importance of how we live and show up for each other day to day,” along with “smaller daily interactions” — phone calls, check-ins, help with meals or chores that helped her “feel held.” 

McCabe continues: “the world I imagine my son growing up in has to start with this strong foundation. I want him to have a daily community of practice with beloved community, because that is what will shift us all into the “big B” Beloved Community with big ideals and visions.”

That concept of Beloved Community is rooted in the legacy of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Grace Lee Boggs, and others, and is carried forward through many people investing in the idea that we can live in a world of economic and social justice.

These concepts — that Beloved Community started from the ground up and was much more than a big, overarching vision — didn’t just inspire Ten Thousand Beloved Communities — they also informed her launch of BCN. 

The organization, a Movement Strategy Network (MSN) partner, is a continuation of the years of work and wisdom that went into MSC’s Transitions Initiative, which focuses on the journey of transitioning to a world of love, interdependence, and resilience. McCabe calls the graphic novel “really important for BCN as it is sharing, publicly, the purpose of BCN — our place in this story and how we see Beloved Community. In some ways it feels like this is the launch of BCN.” Truly, it is one of BCN’s first large undertakings, and it acts as a springboard for readers looking to deepen relationships to people and places while becoming catalysts in radically accelerating the practice of Beloved Community through a lens of indigeneity. 

 “The beautiful thing about this project is it is very alive in the sense that it keeps growing and showing us new ways it can be useful.” 

Ten Thousand Beloved Communities’ 160 full-color pages define the story and lineage of Beloved Community, and feature stories of Beloved Community in action along with practices to help readers integrate Beloved Community and the wisdom of the Transitions Initiatives into their daily lives. In all, the book includes writings by 25 artists, cultural workers, movement leaders, and spiritual practitioners, along with a foreword by adrienne maree brown and Zimmerman’s illustrations. 

Zimmerman sees Ten Thousand Beloved Communities as a jumping off point. It already contains people centered stories about particular places and happenings plus quotes and facts about artists and political figures. She envisions postcards and other companion pieces in addition to multiple teaching and learning opportunities, and — hopefully — a proper publishing run with a values-aligned, independent publisher.

McCabe wants to see the book inspire people to embrace Beloved Community. She also sees it as a workbook or curriculum for trainings — “one of BCN’s foundational labs.” She adds, “the beautiful thing about this project is it is very alive in the sense that it keeps growing and showing us new ways it can be useful.” She envisions a stories series, a podcast, and “some other exciting projects that are on the horizon.”

Initially, McCabe and Zimmerman imagined self-publishing their book with a print on demand platform. Ultimately, they decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign instead — to build energy, momentum, and a sense of community around the project. MSC is helping fund the project, and providing copies of the book to core staff who are still learning the tenets of Beloved Community.

But the guide is intended for an audience well beyond the MSC ecosystem. Zimmerman says, “it builds on a lot of the wisdom and the voices of the transitions community,” and it “shares some core practices that people can apply in their own communities.” It’s a chance for anyone who encounters it to continue the work of Beloved Community, and Zimmerman hopes to see “a lot of people pollinating it in many different places, applying it, making it their own, and riffing on it.” She sees Ten Thousand Beloved Communities as a resource for “for people writing their own story, and creating their own community.”

You can pre-order Ten Thousand Beloved Communities here, at the project’s Kickstarter.