No One is Coming to Help--Except Your Neighbors
Truly Effective Community Resilience Requires Forming Local Resilience Networks That Build Social Connections and Engage Residents in Providing Mutual Aid
(7 Minute Read)
Recently I met with a group near Asheville, North Carolina, and asked them how locals dealt with the prolific damage caused by Hurricane Helene that, out-of-the-blue, hammered their area in 2024. They all said neighbors helped each other and strangers. Neighbors helping people they know and don’t know is always key to surviving calamities and activating positive solutions. With compounding adversities now happening everywhere, building robust social support networks and mutual aid groups in every neighborhood and community should be a top national priority. This requires forming local resilience networks nationwide.
Americans today are being impacted by multiple accumulating perils. There are too many to list here, so I am going to focus on just three of the most pressing.
The Rise of Far-Right Authoritarianism and Violence by the Federal Government
One of the top hazards people are experiencing is aggression and violence by Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The public executions by ICE agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti riveted public attention on the problem. But last year ICE agents murdered or contributed to the death of at least 8 people. They have also been involved in numerous other violent encounters.
Detentions in ICE prisons reached a record 73,000 people in January, with over 74 percent having no criminal record. The ICE tactics of high-profile and often violent raids on work and community sites by armed masked men in unmarked cars, their arrest of children and separation of families, and other dreadful actions have traumatized immigrants, people of color--and almost everyone else--in the urban and rural communities where they occurred. They have also activated widespread fear, anxiety, suspicion, and uncertainty in most other communities nationwide.
During these difficult times, it is neighbors-helping-neighbors-and-strangers that is keeping people as safe as possible. In many communities’ residents are distributing flyers and running workshops on how fellow residents can prepare for and respond to ICE raids. They are forming watch patrols that use community hotlines and whistles to alert people when ICE agents are spotted.
Neighbors are also filming encounters, recording vehicle license plates, and in other ways working to ensure accountability. In addition, they are creating coordinated emergency response plans to provide verbal support to people who are rounded up, inform them of their rights, and create methods to provide childcare and cover detainees’ costs for rent, utilities, and legal representation.
These actions are not being undertaken by people just for members of their own clan. Residents are assisting people with many skin colors and worldviews. This shows that crises can bring people together to support others they don’t know and press for beneficial change.
Record Economic Inequality and Related Job and Income Struggles
Another very serious hardship millions of Americans are experiencing is skyrocketing economic inequality. In the U.S. inequality is now at levels last seen in the “Roaring 20s” and resembles the pre-great depression conditions of a century ago. The level of economic inequality in our country is by far the largest of all high-income G7 nations, even after taxes and social-welfare policies are considered.
The richest 1% of Americans have accumulated almost 1,000 times more wealth than the poorest 20%. Between 1989 and 2022, households in the top 0.1% (one tenth) gained an average of $39.5 million in wealth, while the top 1% of households gained $8.35 million. In contrast, during the same period, households in the bottom 20% gained less than $8,500. The economic divide continues to grow just as the share of Americans that were once part of the middle class continues to shrink.
The widespread distress generated by vast inequality has significantly reduced social cohesion and trust. It has also created poorer health outcomes, which will be made much worse by Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill” that ended Affordable Care Act subsidies. In addition, the distress has created major job and income struggles and increased poverty, particularly among people without college degrees and who live in rural areas. Further, it has caused many people to believe their way of life is threatened, and produced resentment toward those with different political affiliations, and dissimilar ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds, especially immigrants.
Throughout history huge gaps between the rich and the rest of society have always been a primary driver of the rise of authoritarianism and destruction of democracies. So, it is no surprise that today’s enormous economic inequality has powered the anger and resentment that Trump and his billionaire buddies have used to form the MAGA authoritarian movement.
In many communities it is neighbors-helping-neighbors-and-strangers that take the lead in addressing job and financial hardships. Examples include neighbors reducing food insecurity by establishing and continually restocking public refrigerators and pantry boxes that allow people to obtain food for free. Neighborhood GoFundMe campaigns and microgrants have been used to help fellow residents pay rent and utility bills. Lending libraries are often established to give residents free access to tools, clothing, baby food, and other necessities, and neighbors have given free home repair and IT assistance to others.
Residents also frequently create childcare co-ops, provide carpooling to help people get to work and medical appointments, and help workers improve their resumes and interview skills to secure jobs.
Further, neighbors often play important roles in creating better jobs and higher incomes. Some, for example, have established local businesses such as shared commercial kitchens to launch companies in the food industry. Neighbors have also founded non-profit Community Land Trusts that purchase vacant land or abandoned buildings to create inexpensive spaces for commercial enterprises and affordable housing.
Neighborhood Investment Trusts and other community investment mechanisms have been established through crowdfunding and lending circles, as have neighborhood apprenticeship worker training programs and job-matching mechanisms. In many locations neighbors have also come together to urge employers to pay living wages and prioritize hiring local residents in construction and other jobs. These actions build the social connections, mutual supports, and trust that form the basis of truly effective community resilience.
As more communities engage in these activities, pressure will build from the bottom-up for federal, state, and local policies and structural changes that significantly reduce today’s massive gaps in income and wealth. To succeed, however, many economic experts have said a major focus must on strengthening local family-owned businesses rather than huge multinational firms, and prioritize labor-friendly innovations and technologies that enable people without advanced education to increase their productivity and wages doing meaningful work. Active engagement by communities will be need to achieve these changes.
The Physical Destruction, Rising Deaths, and Lost Livelihoods Caused by the Accelerating Climate-Ecosystem-Biodiversity (C-E-B) Crisis
Adding to the mounting list of hazards are the many produced by the accelerating C-E-B crisis. In January of this year more that 1,300 miles of the U.S. and up to 230 million people were impacted by an extreme cold, snow, and ice storm. Multiple injuries and at least 100 deaths occurred, along with extensive damage to physical infrastructure. Many scientists say a warming climate has amplified Arctic warming in ways that caused the mass of cold air, known as the polar vortex, to move south beyond its usual confines and make winter cold waves and storms more extreme than ever.
Last month’s winter storm followed more than twenty three billion-dollar extreme weather disasters in 2025 that impacted the U.S. Record disasters are occurring not just in the U.S. They are taking lives, destroying livelihoods, and damaging physical infrastructure worldwide.
Rising global temperatures are powering these events. Temperatures have now risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels for three consecutive years. Unless humanity quickly and drastically cuts greenhouse gas emissions and restores ecological systems, the World Meteorological Organization says that within five years, temperatures in some parts of the world are likely to rise by close to 2C (3.6F), at least temporarily. Research released last year by renown climate scientist Dr. James Hansen determined that by 2045 temperatures are likely to rise by 2C permanently everywhere.
A new research paper concluded that climate warming is increasing faster than any time in the last 3 million years. One of the authors, climate scientist Johan Rockstrom, recently said this means “Nature has so far balanced our abuse...but this is coming to an end.” More frequent, prolonged, surprising, and destructive wind, rain, snow, and cold storms, floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, sea level rise and storm surges, and other disasters are now certain in coming years.
Emergency responders are important in disasters. However, when disasters impact large areas or multiple ones simultaneously occur, they are often stretched thin, and in some areas, there are few or no trained professionals. This problem is being made worse by the Trump Administration’s cuts to FEMA, federal weather forecasting, and other government disaster preparedness and response programs.
This is why, just as neighbors are stepping forward to help others deal with ICE agents and navigate struggles caused by economic inequality, it is always residents who spontaneously assist others during extreme weather disasters.
Some locals put their lives on-the-line to save people they don’t even know. Neighbors also join together to voluntarily provide numerous types of practical assistance, as well as food, water, shelter, medical care, emotional support, and other vital needs and services to others during and after a severe stress, emergency, or disaster.
The organic process of neighbors-helping-neighbors-and-strangers is called the “community cohesion“ or “honeymoon” phase of a disaster. Following calamities, residents freely come together to provide each other with mutual aid. This process prevents and heals many physical health, mental health, and other issues, creates bonds, and increases trust, all of which helps residents feel safe, supported, and cared for.
However, the community cohesion phase is usually short-lived and, depending on the scale of the disaster, can last just a few weeks or months. People then return to their former lives and the social supports, mutual aid, trust, and optimism that was produced fade away. This leads to what is called the “disillusionment phase“ of a disaster. In this phase people mourn what has been lost and struggle to put their lives back together. For many the disillusionment phase can last months or years, and the great distress they often feel can generate serious physical, social, psychological, emotional, or behavioral health issues.
Truly Effective Community Resilience Requires Maintaining the “Community Cohesion” Into Perpetuity
The many accumulating adversities Americans are experiencing today--and those speeding our way as temperatures rise toward 2C--underscores the urgency of forming the social infrastructure in neighborhoods and large and small towns needed to maintain the “community cohesion” phase of disasters into perpetuity. We must establish mechanisms that can continually engage residents in supporting each other to prevent the “disillusionment” phase from kicking in. This is essential to build truly effective community resilience for relentless severe stresses, emergencies, and disasters.
Organizing Local Resilience Networks in Neighborhoods and Communities All Across The U.S. (and In Other Nation) Is The Most Effective Way To Achieve These Ends
Researchers have found that truly effective community resilience is a collective activity in which people join together with others to respond to a shared crisis. It involves a process, where individuals, groups, and organizations in the community use a variety of strength-based capacities to collectively respond to adversities. Effective community resilience also involves an outcome where residents recovers from hardships by increasing wellbeing in ways that produce positive new sources of meaning, purpose, and hope, and enables them to thrive.
A number of factors have been identified that contribute to these outcomes. They include the strength and extent of social connections, psychological cohesiveness, and trust among local residents, their level of attachment to place, vision of success, and belief in community leaders’ capacity to effectively pursue the vision.
These factors combine to determine the level of collective efficacy that exists in a community. This term refers to the belief among residents that they have the capacity to manage and respond constructively to crises and achieve their collective vision and goals.
Building effective collective efficacy requires that the top priority must be to proactively strengthen the human social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of community resilience. This involves actively engaging residents in strengthening “protective factors,” including forming robust networked social support systems and mutual aid networks, that buffer them from and help them push back against severe stresses and traumas. A number of other “protective factors” are also typically pursued, with the goal of creating population-level resilience. This is exactly the type of work local resilience networks can do.
The priority of forming local community-led resilience networks to address the human social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral aspects of resilience is likely to surprise many professionals in the climate mitigation and adaptation fields that have mostly focused on external physical factors. But if they engage, they will realize this is the way forward.
The widespread formation of community-led resilience networks is also likely to transform the way mental health, physical health, disaster response, social and environmental justice, business and job development, and many other issues are addressed.
Due to the multiple interacting adversities already occurring, and those we are certain to experience in the future as temperatures rise, forming local resilience networks in every neighborhood and community should now be a top national (and global) priority.