Trust is not a service to be ordered the moment a need appears; it is the accumulation of small encounters already lived. Sometimes the most genuinely revolutionary act is as simple as knocking for the first time on the door of someone who lives on our street.
Hundreds of people living on the same street in a neighbourhood can pass years without knowing one another’s names. They use the same lift, queue in the same shop, are affected by the same water cut, yet when a shared problem arises they have no way of reaching each other. City life has managed to bring people physically closer while moving them socially apart. We do not know who lives in the flat next door; meanwhile we can see someone’s breakfast on the other side of the world every morning. In this strange order of proximity, local solidarity is not a nostalgic longing for neighbourliness but the capacity to answer the real needs of daily life together.
A local network need not mean a large association, a formal membership system or a detailed constitution. Sometimes it begins with an emergency contact list for a few buildings, families taking turns collecting children from school, a group for sharing unused belongings, or a few people who regularly call the elderly living alone in the neighbourhood. Being small does not mean being unimportant. On the contrary, the strength of a local network usually comes from people knowing one another’s circumstances, the possibilities of the street and the details of the need.
A network works if it is built before the need
Most solidarity networks are born in a moment of crisis. An earthquake happens, a neighbour falls ill, rents rise sharply, or a commonly used space is threatened. People gather in a messaging group, share tasks quickly and act with surprising energy. But once the emergency passes the group falls silent. A few months later, when a new need arises, the old list is out of date and those who carried the responsibility are tired.
The secret of well-functioning local networks is not living in a permanent state of emergency. It is being able to build small, concrete and unexhausting ties when there is no crisis. A monthly open gathering, a shared tool cupboard, a food-sharing day or mapping the neighbourhood’s accessibility keeps people from meeting one another only when they need help. Trust is not a service to be ordered the moment a need appears; it is the accumulation of small encounters already lived.
This preparation need not turn into military discipline. Organising people through a constant sense of threat quickly produces burnout. Watching a film together, cooking, or arranging an activity for children in the neighbourhood is also part of the network. Solidarity is not only the ability to respond to catastrophe but people being able to enjoy time in one another’s company. A community without joy struggles to stay standing when the load comes.
When everything is left to a messaging group
Today the first step of a local network is usually opening a messaging group. These tools provide speed and reach; but taking the group itself for organisation is a serious error. Groups through which hundreds of messages flow, in which the same few people speak and where important information is lost amid everyday chat quickly become exhausting. They are muted, then forgotten. Moreover, those without a smartphone, those who cannot use the language well and those who feel uncomfortable in digital spaces may be excluded from the outset.
Digital communication works when it serves rather than replaces face-to-face relations. Separate channels can be used for urgent announcements, need lists and task rotas; decisions should not be taken in late-night chats joined only by the fastest typists. Important information must be kept somewhere fixed and easy to find, and a newcomer must be told how the network operates. If the password to the account is held by one person, the fate of all communication lies in that person’s hands. Technical administration looks like a small detail but can over time become a genuine power.
The network’s physical traces in the neighbourhood matter too. A notice board, a meeting point open at certain hours or someone reachable by telephone reduces digital exclusion. The assumption that everyone is online renders the elderly and the most fragile invisible in particular. A system that those who need it most cannot reach only strengthens the circle of people who were already connected.
Who decides what the need is?
Solidarity work sometimes begins with a few well-meaning people deciding what others require. Unused clothes are collected, parcels are prepared and distributed to people defined as “those in need.” But when the need is not asked of those who live it, what is given may not correspond to the real problem. More importantly, people are turned into recipients with no say over their own lives.
A local network’s advantage in knowledge comes from knowing the residents; yet in the name of knowing, everyone’s private life may come under watch. Who earns how much, who lives in which house, who receives help can turn into the gossip of a narrow circle. Someone forced to prove their poverty repeatedly in order to receive help pays for that support with their privacy. How data is kept, who has access to it and when it is deleted is therefore a moral question of solidarity.
Need lists should rest as far as possible on people’s own statements; they must not become interrogations judging why someone needs help. If resources are limited, priorities can be set openly and together. Secret decisions, giving precedence to acquaintances and a culture of selecting “those who really deserve it” quickly corrode a network. Solidarity is not a warmer name for policing poverty.
Openness is needed as much as trust
In small communities the thought “we all know each other” often makes rules and accountability look unnecessary. Yet where money, materials and decision-making authority are involved, personal trust alone is not enough. Who collected how much in donations, where expenditure went, who uses the keys and how a decision was taken must be visible to all. Openness is needed not because people are distrusted but so that trust does not depend on particular persons.
Rotating tasks matters as well. If the same person always answers the calls for help, manages the money and speaks with outside institutions, the network may in time become their personal circle. Even if that person is well intentioned, their accumulation of knowledge and contacts makes others’ participation harder. When they burn out, the whole structure stops. Sharing authority is at the same time rescuing the network from fragility.
When disagreements arise, covering them over by saying “we are here for solidarity” is no solution. Distribution of resources, political views, personal grievances or discriminatory behaviour can create tension. A simple, agreed method of discussion and mediation prevents conflict turning into personal camps. Networks that suppress problems in order to appear harmonious usually lose their quietest members.
A door opening from the neighbourhood to the world
The limit of local solidarity can be localism. When a neighbourhood becomes a closed community protecting its own resources, it may see the outsider as a threat, the migrant as a burden and the next district as a rival. The language of “our own people first” resembles solidarity yet turns internal closeness into privilege against those outside. Genuine solidarity draws strength from proximity but does not grant rights only to the near.
Local networks therefore need to connect with other neighbourhoods, professional bodies, unions and wider struggles for rights. A neighbourhood’s rent problem does not stem only from a few bad landlords on that street; it is linked to policies concerning the whole city. Access to food, care services and disaster preparedness are likewise problems of a scale that neighbourliness alone cannot solve. Local knowledge and close relations are not an alternative to broader organisation but can be its solid starting point.
The success of a solidarity network cannot be measured by how many parcels it has distributed. Can people reach one another more easily when they need to? Do more people take part in decisions? Is the burden spread beyond a few volunteers? Is the neighbourhood becoming a place where excluded people can also feel safe? Most importantly, can people meet not only as givers and receivers of help but as neighbours with a say over their shared life?
A local solidarity network is never fully ready. People move away, needs change, conflicts arise and the tools used grow obsolete. What keeps it alive is not a perfect scheme but the willingness to renew the ties regularly. Sometimes the most genuinely revolutionary act is as simple as knocking for the first time on the door of someone who lives on our street and introducing ourselves.