So, this is a list I have discarded and picked back up on several times, letting it go as I believed it was impossible. Mostly because of my own experiences with people. But I believe it is absolutely possible, if we gave it time, a chance, and trust. I don’t think the distrust in America will be fixed solely through our interpersonal relations, but in how we show up. How we interact with and see the world, how we decide what’s worth focusing on and what is not. The roles only exist as titles, nothing more, nothing less. They give a name to the work people are most passionate about, to help give people something to choose from that says, “yes that is me.” Because I believe people do their best work when it is aligned with them and what they are best at. I also believe that many people may do multiple roles, changing, growing, or just adapting to what they are most passionate about.
We all have our different focuses, so it’s important we give ourselves the chance to explore them. As well as I believe many roles are interconnected and reliant on each other.
So, now I will go into the list, but it is long, it is diverse, and I apologize if it’s a lot. I do not expect an answer right away (or at all tbh) so take your time to read, process, and come back when you’re able to.
If we’re going to build an alternative to the system that harms us, we need to protect the people. That’s why one of the very first things to establish, hypothetically or otherwise, is a legal team. This team is made up of people who understand the system because they’ve worked within it: lawyers, paralegals, legal advocates, and community defenders. People who already know where the cracks are and how to use those cracks to carve out something protective.
These folks wouldn’t just help build within the law; they would help build around it. Using real legal structures like trusts, nonprofits, cooperatives, or unincorporated associations. They would form and maintain the legal entity that would become our shield. That way if someone does something that pisses off the gov, they have to go through the entity and not only the individual. Which is much more difficult to do.
Especially if there is a well-trained group of lawyers!
Here are some other things the legal team could do:
-Research loopholes, exemptions, and pathways in their area that allows for people to live and work with more autonomy: Those in the city could find ways around certain laws against solar power or rain catchment systems, exemptions to licenses, and so on and so forth.
Depending on the state, city, and county; each focus would be dependent on the environment. And the group would discuss where the focus goes in what direction.
-Educate the rest of us on our rights, risks, and responsibilities in plain language, no gatekeeping.
-Offer legal aid and support where possible: things like eviction protection, disability filings, immigration cases, or systemic abuse.
Once the legal structure is in place and the foundational protections are set, the next step is to create a “board of directors” or council-folk. (A reminder that these are just names, and you can title these roles whatever you’d like.) This is the team that helps guide the whole operation, not govern it. This board isn’t about control, ego, or status, but vision management: holding the collective mission, helping the community stay aligned, and planning big-picture steps that reflect what people have said they need.
-Take in information from all parts of the collective, from care teams, tech teams, advocates, educators, and neighbors, and synthesize it into coherent proposals.
-Create project roadmaps based on community needs: anything from a neighborhood garden to setting up a local mutual aid fund, to coordinating an alternative medical facility.
These are essentially translators, taking the raw energy, desire, grief, wisdom, and hopes of the people, and shaping them into something we can act on together. They are also temporary. No one holds these positions forever. This is a rotating body, built to evolve with the people it serves. People come in, ‘serve’, rest, and shift out; because leadership should be shared and shapeshifting, not cemented. This ensures no one gets “too powerful or influential to question.”
Right now, most of our “leaders” are inaccessible. Politicians you can’t talk to, CEOs who don’t care, institutions that make decisions without you. The ‘board of directors’ flips that on its head. This team’s job is to listen first, act second, and always keep the door open. They keep the vision from scattering. They hold the compass steady. But they are not the crown, keepers of direction, not domination. And this is something that can not be formed alone, but only when you have enough people. Until a group has enough numbers, founders and early organizers may fill this role, with the intention of stepping back when the structure is strong enough to hold itself.
If the legal team forms the roots, and the board of directors is the trunk of the vision, then community advocates are the branches reaching into the world, connecting with real people and bringing their needs, ideas, and concerns back to the center.
These are the people who go door to door, visit grocery store parking lots, sit at bus stops, or set up tables at events, not to convert, recruit, or sell, but simply to listen.
Roles and responsibilities:
- Initiate non-intrusive conversations: “what do you need?”
“what’s not working for you?”
“Is there something you wish existed in this neighborhood?”
- Make people feel seen: not judged or convinced. This is not about changing minds, it’s giving people a space to speak.
- Map the emotional landscape of the community: What are people afraid of? What are they dreaming of? What hurts them? What gives them hope?
- Gather data ethically: Stories, ideas, concerns, and even resistance. All of it matters.
- Offer connection: Like a flyer or phone number, if someone wants to talk more or get involved. But if they say no, you still honor what they shared.
We can’t serve people we don’t understand. And too often the loudest voices in society are the least informed on what everyday people actually need. Community advocates are the antidote to that. They bring back human texture into decision-making. They make sure the work stays grounded and not idealistic. They are the ears and the voice of the people, not just a face or brand or program. And in return, they help the people feel heard, which is often the beginning of transformation.
Safety, Autonomy, and respect:
No one is required to do this work, absolutely volunteer only, for people who feel emotionally ready and called to connect. Advocates should be trauma-informed and trained in nonviolent communication, boundary-respecting engagement, and de-escalation. Information should be stored with strict community guidelines to avoid exploitation or voyeurism. This is a service, we are not surveying people to control them, only to understand.
4. Health care workers & Crisis response teams:
These two teams work in tandem, one to nurture, the other to respond. Together they make up the heart and immune system of the collective. Alternative and accessible care: These are nurses, doulas, medics, advocates, and other care workers who believe that healing should not be a luxury; it should be given.
- Offering in-home visits for those who can’t access mainstream healthcare.
- Setting up community care spaces, no more corporate hospitals.
- Teaching about preventive health, nutrition, herbal medicine, and emotional well-being.
- Providing support to disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and elderly folks.
- Documenting and tracking needs across the community, who is sick, who is healing, and who needs help next.
This team works closely with educators and organizers to teach people how to care for themselves and each other, not just as individuals, but as a living network. We aren’t rejecting modern medicine, we are reclaiming our agency, our autonomy, our voice.
Offering alternatives, care without profit, and removing harm from a system that often fails to see us as whole.
These are the protectors, but not the police. These are trained volunteers who respond to immediate harm.
- De-escalators trained in conflict resolution
- Medics for protests or urgent situations
- Able-bodied security who can show up when someone is being harmed, harassed, or threatened.
- Trackers who monitor ICE raids, police violence, or systemic threats and mobilize a response.
- People who can escort vulnerable neighbors safely through town, across state lines, or out of danger if needed.
Why this absolutely matters:
These roles challenge one of the biggest lies of the system:
That you are only worth saving if you can afford it.
That only state violence can offer, “safety”.
By creating structures outside of state control, and by refusing to criminalize people in distress, we create a model that’s harder to co-opt. And we remind each other: our bodies and pain matter, even when the system looks away.
Next, I would like to talk about education as I believe it is not only important for us to focus on children and their roles in our community, but also give adults the opportunity to learn.
Most people aren’t ignoring change because they don’t care. They are scared and doing what they believe they have to do to stay safe. When information is kept from people, fear takes its place. And that is what most of us have been surviving under: a world designed to withhold. Most of us weren’t taught how to keep ourselves alive, let alone how the system works. We weren’t taught to question it, let alone build something better. Instead, we were told to obey, to trust the experts, to believe the degree meant more than experience. And when trying to ask new, different, questions, we are told to sit down and stop being difficult.
That’s why I believe education matters now more than ever. Not what we grew up with, not the worksheets, the standardized tests, or the punishment-disguised-as-discipline. Something rooted in care, curiosity, and consent. Because when people are invited to learn in ways that meet them where they are, they often say yes. They begin to trust again. And when people have information, they make better choices. They become less afraid and more autonomous.
This is where the Education and youth team come in. Their purpose is not to replicate current school systems or structure; it’s to protect and offer knowledge in whatever form it needs to take. To help people of all ages learn what they need to learn, how they need to learn it. This team does not answer to state curriculum. It answers to the community, to what is needed for the children and adults that exist right in front of them.
Some may offer public workshops, others might organize quiet learning pods for overstimulated kids. Some will serve as private teachers or digital mentors, offering tailored support to those who need discretion or safety. Every version of this work counts. Because education should not be standardized. It should adapt, flow, and learn with the knowledge of the people around them. Not governed by an invisible entity that may have never even walked in a classroom as an educator.
This gives educators a chance to have autonomy over their roles, to choose the curriculum that feels right to them. No restrictions, no policing, just communication, transparency and safe places for people to learn.
Educators should be trusted to teach in ways that align with their values, their students’ needs, and their own wisdom. For so long educators have been forced to operate under policies and mandates that didn’t serve the people in front of them. They were required to abandon certain children, ignore their instincts, or strip learning down into numbers that meant nothing. But many of them know better, and now, they get to ‘do better’ on their terms.
But let’s focus on children a bit more, how we honor children as learners is central to this vision. Because most systems don’t treat kids like people, they treat them like problems to solve, future workers to train, or liabilities to control. But children deserve better. They deserve education that respects their timing, their gifts, and their emotional rhythms. Not a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Not toxic obedience. Not age-segregated rooms that ignore how humans actually grow. Children thrive when they are surrounded by real life. Not chaos, but structure, safe spaces where they can explore, be included, and discover their place in a living world. They deserve to learn from people of all ages, to be seen as insightful contributors.
Children are often more observant, more creative, and more emotionally honest than adults. When we give them accurate information, support, and space to speak, they notice everything. They ask brilliant questions. They imagine new ways forward. And the educators who support them? Their job is not to control, but witness. To listen, to understand who a child is becoming. Not to mold them but to help them feel safe enough to unfold.
For example: A child’s “file” isn’t just grades or test scores. It’s insight. It’s care notes, it’s what helps them regulate, what lights them up, what they’re allergic to, who or what makes them feel calm, what kind of environment helps them thrive. Because education should be structured, yes, but not standardized. It should be protective, not punitive. And it should be designed around the learner, not the institution.
That is why I imagine community-rooted learning centers, spaces that function like daycares, play-based schools, multi-age learning hubs, like sanctuaries. Where parents can drop their children off to learn, explore, create, and connect- even better if they choose to stay and be part of that experience. These centers would be community built, “off-grid”, and designed to adapt to the children within them. In these spaces, parents are encouraged to volunteer, not just as supervision, but trusted anchors of safety. We understand the reality of parents not wanting to leave their children with strangers, I am one of them, it is valid. So, instead of forcing parents to push through the fear, or “deal with it”, we build around it. We invite parents, grandparents, aunties, and safe adults to participate with the children, offering to care for others while remaining near their own. But participation is not enough. In a world where harm can hide behind smiles, we must also be relentlessly committed to safety.
That is why I think we would need an entirely safety-focused team, the “Safety Squad”, whose job it is to dig deep. These are the folks responsible for background checks, psychological evaluations, personal interviews, and full transparency assignments. Not to create bureaucracy, but to protect our most vulnerable. To ensure that those who want access to children, elders, or vulnerable adults are not doing so out of control, projection, or harm. We know this kind of protection is hard to build, but with intention, transparency, and shared responsibility, it is possible. And it will be vital. The safety squad will be addressed in full, in a later part of this. But for now, education or community without protection is unsustainable, and will shatter our trust over and over again.
Moving along, I also wanted to mention how, as a collective, we hold onto degrees, licenses, and certificates. These things have often been used as tools to gatekeep knowledge, locking out brilliant people who learned through life. Some of the most powerful educators are self-taught people who turned survival into skill. They didn’t need permission to become wise, and we don’t need permission to trust them. So, instead of asking who is certified, maybe ask;
Who is willing to show up and share what they know with care?”
Here are some tangible roles you can take with you:
- Educators: teachers, guides, and skill-shares offering real, non-extractive knowledge.
- Youth Workers: playgroup leaders, child co-regulators, joy bringers.
- Mentors: one-on-one guides, project partners, or listening ears.
- Cultural Memory Keepers: Historians, storytellers, ritualists.
- Emotional Educators: teaching grief literacy, consent, and nervous system care.
- Accessibility Advocates: Making materials and environments reachable to all minds and bodies.
- Organizers: schedule keepers, space holders, communication bridges.
- Creative Facilitators: turning education into expression through art, games, and movement.
- Pod Teachers and Private Tutors: offering care-centered teaching with privacy and adaptability.
Without shared knowledge we lose our direction; but with it offered gently, and without shame, we begin to remember who we are.
6. Digital Infrastructure and Coordination Team:
Movements do not run on passion alone. They need spreadsheets, calendars, and quiet systems. They run on reminders, updates, secure group chats, access codes. They run because someone, usually underpaid or unnamed, makes sure they don’t fall apart. When we imagine a future built on mutual care, we often picture the visible roles first: the healers, land stewards, protestors, teachers, or builders. But none of them can operate without infrastructure. And infrastructure isn’t just physical; it is digital as well. It’s energetic, logistical. We need people who are willing and excited, to build the backend. To hold invisible threads of coordination. To make collective life work.
This team includes the ones who:
- Set up websites and secure communication platforms.
- Create encrypted community databases (not Google Docs).
- Build private forums, wikis, cloud servers, and internal dashboards.
- Set up conference calls, co-working platforms, and calendar syncs.
- Archive important documents, notes, and files.
- Design and print flyers, posters, or pamphlets for community outreach.
- Maintain up-to-date contact lists and internal onboarding flows.
- Track everyone’s evolving needs and capacities
- Translate complex systems into clear, useable language.
- Keep it all functioning without burning out.
It’s not glamorous but it’s essential.
Without this team, everything slows down. Information is lost, frustration builds, people feel unsafe, confused, or disoriented, and that makes organizing fragile. But if this role is held with intention, with care, clarity, and adaptability, it becomes the nervous system of the entire movement. It allows every other team to do their work with precision, clarity, and grace. In old-world systems, these kinds of roles were often taken for granted; feminized, racialized, invisibilized. Admins, assistants, “support staff”.
This team holds power, through their connection. They keep us informed, coordinated, transparent, and accountable. They turn chaotic energy into something everyone can step into together.
- Builders in digital spaces:
o Develops websites, internal platforms, and encrypted forums.
o Creates tools for scheduling voting, data tracking, and file storage.
o Builds infrastructure that doesn’t rely on exploitative tech (e.g, Google, Meta).
o Ensures digital spaces are sovereign, not owned by the system.
Without control of our tech, we cannot control our future.
o Keeps records of meetings, decisions, and changes across all teams.
o Maintains accessible but secure digital archives.
o Tracks progress, documents experiments, and preserves memory.
o Helps the community remember what worked, and why.
History is not something we study later; it’s something we write now.
o Takes complex plans or tech systems and explains them clearly
o Creates onboarding materials, how-to guides, and internal documentation.
o Bridges communication between tech, language, strategy, and community teams.
o Ensures no one is left out due to jargon or technical overwhelm.
o Coordinates meetings, shared calendars, and collective timelines.
o Sends out reminders, summaries, and key updates.
o Keeps ground momentum by managing pace and rhythm.
o Tracks deadlines without replicating hustle culture.
o Monitors platform security, access, and permissions.
o Protects sensitive information and use safety.
o Sets up encrypted email, two-factor authentication, and data backups.
o Act as the first responder when tech goes down or is breached.
o Creates visual templates, posters, pamphlets, and use-friendly interfaces.
o Ensures clarity, beauty, and consistency across all media.
o Makes materials accessible to different learning styles (visual, tactile, etc.).
o Helps the movement feel coherent.
o Manages internal messaging platforms
o Oversees announcements, message boards, and team coordination spaces.
o Ensures information moves at the right speed, not too fast, not too slow.
o Helps different teams stay in alignment with one another.
- The accessibility Steward:
o Ensures all tech tools and documents are usable by all bodies and minds.
o Provides alt text, transcripts, screen reader compatibility, and low-tech options.
o Offers support to anyone struggling with tech access or digital overwhelm.
o Helps people feel invited in, not locked out.
If it isn’t accessible, it’s not revolutionary.
o Looks at the whole picture of the infrastructure and how it connects.
o Designs workflows, feedback, loops, and inter-team communication channels.
o Helps build systems that are adaptive, not overcomplicated or brittle.
o Thinks ahead to what we’ll need tomorrow, not just today.
o Welcomes new members into digital and organizational systems.
o Walks people through set up, access, and their first few steps.
o Offers-real-time human support (not just documents)
o Protects the energy of new members by giving the orientation, not chaos.
This team is where practicality meets trust. Where security meets sacred care. Where nobody claps, but everything flows. And most of all they hold the web that allows us to build, breathe, and begin again.
7. Physical Infrastructure:
Next, I’d like to go into roles that would focus on physical infrastructure. While I do believe homes are very important, this team would handle affairs outside of that. Because infrastructure is not just about homes; it’s sidewalks, pipes, old lots, cracked parking lots, abandoned buildings, disconnected neighbors, broken water lines, inaccessible entrances, and neglected shared spaces. The state often neglects places that do not generate profit. But we still have to live around it, we see these spaces when we go out for a walk, or take a long drive. Those empty shells, homes that are falling apart, can be or are already homes for many Americans. This team would look at what’s falling apart and asks,
No flipping, just restoring, restructuring. It takes volunteers to come together to protect these spaces, to build something more from the rubble.
- Reclaims abandoned or broken-down buildings: malls, motels, schools, warehouse, churches.
- Repurposes them into useable, collective spaces: learning centers, community clinics, workshops, kitchens, studios, indoor gardens, etc.
- Installs greywater systems, solar, rainwater catchment, insulation, composting toilets (or alternatives), and alternative energy systems.
- Restores public areas: sidewalks, footpaths, greenways, community benches, gathering areas, stairs, ramps, lighting(solar).
- Creates walkable connections between neighborhoods.
- Makes inaccessible or unsafe areas useable again: alleys, underpasses, lots, parks.
- Collaborates with environmental teams to build in alignment with land, wildlife, water, and air flow.
Roles that can be considered in this regard:
- Repair person: Fixes what is broken; doors, plumbing, insulation, locks, windows, ramps.
- Sustainable systems technician: specializes in solar panels, greywater, compost systems, rain catchment.
- Structural teams: Reinforces abandoned or unstable buildings so they can be safely reused.
- Pathway builder: Lays down sidewalks, safe crossings, lighting, and walkable paths between disconnected neighborhoods.
- Carpenters/insert cool recycle title: Builds custom structures from salvaged materials: benches, shelves, cabinets, planters, stages, ramps.
- Designer/Architect: Designs creative uses for dead spaces: turns parking garages into gardens, malls into healing centers.
- Mobile maintenance crew: Responds to requests for small repairs or retrofits in people’s homes and community buildings.
- Demolishing team: Carefully dismantles unsalvageable buildings to reuse wood, brick, glass, and steel.
- The Liaison: talks with neighbors, assesses needs, organizes collective workdays, ensures consent and safety.
- The project coordinator: Maps timelines, materials, logistics, and crew rotations to keep projects flowing smoothly.
There is more to this than just restoring buildings. We are, in little ways, restoring trust. Bringing form to the future, not just by dreaming but also asking,
“What do we already have? And what can we do with it if we listen, plan, and work together?”
Everyone deserves a home, no questions asked. The state treats housing like a privilege. Something you must work for. Qualify for. Be, “stable enough” to deserve. But how can one gain stability when the very foundation they stand on is shaky? How can one feel relaxed when they must constantly worry about where they will live next? We need safety to heal, a place to rest before we are expected to rise. That is why housing cannot be a subsection of infrastructure. It needs to be its own living branch, clear, and fully supported. The housing and shelter team exists to do what the government refuses to do. House people without condition, place them with care, and treat them like people- not case numbers.
- Keeps active lists of people who need housing, updated regularly.
- Maintains a map of available housing options: reclaimed homes, retrofitted motels, converted shelters, community-owned land plots, etc.
- Helps with matching: who needs what kind of space?
- Works closely with the legal team to navigate property law, squatting protections, utility setup, inheritance issues, and local codes.
- Works with the physical infrastructure team to request home builds, retrofits, or repairs based on community needs.
- Organizes moving crews: furnishing drives, and basic household setup (kitchen tools, bedding, cleaning supplies, accessibility modifications).
- Supports the relationship between people and their homes, not just placing them, but checking in after.
- Housing coordinator: manages waitlists, intake, availability, and household assessments.
- Placement guide: works one-on-one with people to help folks choose homes that fit their needs and emotional safety.
- Move-in Crew: Organizes transportation, volunteers, packing help, and first-day supplies.
- The legal liaison: Handles paperwork, title transfers, tenant rights, land use protections.
- Transitional supporter: Checks in after move-in, helps people adjust to housing after homelessness, abuse, or instability.
- Home Set-up team: Helps furnish, clean, and organize homes before or after someone arrives
- Cleaning crew: Helps with keeping homes clean for those who are disabled, chronically ill, or are willing to pay so that they don’t have to clean (maybe like a monthly cleaning fee to the community?)
- The Utility & Access point: Ensures electricity, water, internet, and other needs are safely connected or rerouted.
- Home Care Steward: Offers education and gentle support on upkeep, safety, and shared expectations without shame.
What about yards and outdoor spaces?
Once someone is housed, they’re not left alone to “figure it out.” This team, which would be separate from housing and can be called “the yard team”, would work with each person or family to ask,
“What would you like to see from your yards?”
Some may be asked to volunteer space for a community garden, some may want to all on their own. But when it comes to their yard, we would work with each and every individual owner to give them a yard that not only works for their needs, but is also beneficial to the environment itself. Using native flowers and plants over invasives, informing homeowners of the importance of creating these spaces and how it would lead to less infestations in their homes. Bugs won’t invade our homes if we stopped destroying theirs.
The team facilitates these conversations block by block, honoring:
- Mobility/accessibility needs.
- Cultural relationships to land and food.
- Trauma histories related to land ownership, colonization, or displacement.
Land is seen as property currently; how can it be useful for us? But I see it as relational, how can we work in alignment with everything? Honoring land, space, and everything that lives within. This team would answer the questions, “How can we heal the land while increasing quality of life?”
Here are some things they can do:
- Prioritize native plants and perennials over invasive or high-maintenance ornamentals.
- Use companion plants to deter pests naturally (no pesticides or chemical warfare).
- Encourage gardens to include medicine, not just food.
- Offer options like edible landscaping, sensory paths, and privacy hedges.
People are also educated gently and clearly, about why these changes matter.
Many different teams would work together (but mostly housing, yard, and environment). To help people to reclaim their yards as more than just places for their kids to spend time, they mow, or where their dog craps. This team would also assist with greywater, rainwater and other systems that would be affected by/could be connected to the yard outside.
They would work with other teams to install systems that would help improve overall self-reliance. Like:
- Greywater recycling for laundry or garden irrigation.
- Rain barrels or cisterns for watering plants.
- Swales and native grass buffers for stormwater absorption
- Permeable paths and patios to reduce runoff.
- The creation of ponds in areas of the yard that falls victim to flooding.
Survival tools hidden as “green upgrades”, we can use terminology like
“An environmentally sustainable recyclable system to reduce waste and encourage efficacy and maximum growth in gardens”.
And not many people will really bat an eye at it (mostly because it’s just a bunch of big words). Using words against the system can be beneficial to us, if we are not doing so to manipulate the desires of others. But these survival tools will help support communities where utility costs are high, drought is increasing, and the power grid is fragile. And we can create something beautiful, pathways made of brick, rainwater sculptures, herb spiral gardens-built hand by hand. The yard becomes part of the infrastructure, not there to flex the idea of having servants but to connect all of us to the earth.
Accessibility and Inclusion:
All yard plans are developed with accessibility in mind, for elders, disabled residents, neurodivergent folks, and children.
- Raised beds and low maintenance zones.
- Shaded spaces for overstimulation recovery.
- Clear walkways and non-slip surfaces
- Seating nooks, because people deserve to sit outside.
Maybe you want to grow food, maybe you don’t. Maybe you want to garden with your neighbors, maybe you need solitude. Maybe you don’t want anyone else in your yard, that is valid too. The team is here to support your rhythm not override it. They’ll build it with you.
And if you change your mind later? That’s okay too, there’s room to grow, to change, to adapt. But let’s close up housing with a few more points not directly related to this, as it would go far too much into the “environmental team”.
What would be the requirement for housing?
That you respect the space and care for it to the best of your ability. That’s it.
There are no income requirements, no job applications, no endless interviews. Just a commitment to begin part of something that cares for you and others too. There should be a communication requirement as well, but that would be the care-team’s role to handle. Ensuring that people feel safe enough to share their vulnerable moments with us. Willing to approach someone in the community and say, “I am struggling to maintain my home (cleanliness, home repair, etc.), can you help me?” We have to ensure we are always seen as a place of safety and not control or oversight.
Why does “housing” have to be its own team?
Because housing is important and it touches on many aspects; legal, infrastructure, care, finance, safety, environment. And without a team to focus directly on it, details slip, people fall through the cracks, and resentment builds.
So, this team ensures clarity:
- What support is required to make it livable?
- Who is responsible for follow-up?
This team can hold the vision that “home” is a birthright, not something to be earned. That people just need to find where they fit in personally. Their community of like-minded individuals working together for the collective good of humanity.
9. Finance & Resource Flow
This team is responsible for managing the flow of money, resources, and exchange within the community. This team would honor care, structure, and transparency, doing our best not to replicate any pattern of harm. Which can be extremely difficult to do when in regards to currency. But the hard truth is, survival takes more than values, it needs resources. And resources need coordination if they’re going to serve people fairly and consistently. This team would handle how money moves, how it’s earned, how it’s shared, how it’s protected, and how it’s redirected when something no longer serves the collective.
This team works and communicates with the community, learns what’s needed, and works with other branches to allocate funds where they’re most urgent and impactful. They help create budgets for new projects, track all community income and expenses, and ensures there’s a rotating structure. So, no one becomes a permanent money-holder.
They’re also responsible for:
- Distributing individual stipends for payments (similar to a needs-based UBI).
- Helping decide which projects are funded first (through community input and shared priorities).
- Setting aside and managing an emergency fund large enough to handle any crisis’s that may arise.
- Developing creative pathways to make money as a collective (not just surviving off donations).
- Tracking in-kind donations, shared tools, land use, and other resources that don’t show up in bank accounts.
No one in this team holds power forever. All major decisions are made in collaboration with the community or its rotating council. All donations or contributions to the community fund are transparent and easily accessible.
This isn’t a casual team. The people here should be carefully chosen, vetted, and trained. Not just in math or recordkeeping, but in ethics, transparency, and accountability. There’s no room for secrecy or hoarding, there’s no glorification of “finance bros”. There is no tolerance for using money as leverage. Every decision is documented; every role is rotated.
And if there is a surplus? The team doesn’t get to decide alone, they bring options to the community, “Here’s what we have. Where should it go next?”
There is a larger purpose at play here:
In a capitalist system, money becomes a wall. Something you either have or don’t, and your survival is tied to it. But this team treats money as a tool, a temporary bridge to help us build something beyond it.
This team can also explore:
- How we reduce our dependence on money over time.
- How to fund collective projects without being surveilled.
- How to organize fair barter, time banks, and other systems of care-based trade.
- How to keep ourselves fed, warm, and resourced without begging anyone to see us as worthy first.
Their job is to make sure the lights stay on for everyone, that no one is out there burning out trying to chase it alone.
Now to talk about a role I find extremely important, a group of people that aren’t out here to judge your past, but protect our future. Every community has vulnerable members: children, disabled folks, elders, trauma survivors, the newly unhoused. And we cannot build a world rooted in care without proactively protecting those people from harm. Including the kind of harm that comes wrapped in charm, good intentions, or spiritual language. The safety squad exists to create layers of prevention and accountability.
Acknowledging the ways we could lean into surveillance and focusing on more intentional, structured, courageous methods.
- Conduct background and history checks for those working closely with vulnerable groups.
- Design and uphold community vetting protocols: who gets access to certain roles or sensitive information?
- Facilitate restorative processes when harm has occurred.
- Holds confidential information with care and consent. No gossip.
- Assess risk and compatibility, especially for long-term projects or communal living setups.
- Offer trauma-informed interviews for those applying to hold positions of trust.
- Monitor emerging concerns in the community (calling out patterns when recognized, not accusing.)
- Create safety plans and communication protocols for high-risk situations.
Hopefully this team would help prevent abuse from occurring, without having to use fear tactics. But through truth, clarity, and quiet diligence.
What makes this different from policing?
- There are no weapons or badges, no power over another.
- There is no permanent authority, this team rotates like all others.
- No one gets exiled or condemned without process and consent.
- This team is accountable to the community, not the state.
They exist to protect the vulnerable from:
- Reputational manipulation.
- Coercive leaders or toxic dynamics.
- Hidden predatory behavior.
- Emotional/Spiritual grooming.
No looking for “bad apples”, this team would be watching for patterns, subtle red flags, breaches of trust, repeated harm masked as help. And they respond early, not after someone has already been harmed.
Here are a few roles to be considered:
- Consent and Confidentiality officers: Trained to hold sensitive stories and records with care. Not therapist, but they know how to track patterns across time without turning it into gossip or suspicion.
- Vetting Facilitators: Skilled in trauma informed interviews. They ask hard questions, not just crimes but beliefs, behavior, and capacity. This is especially important when someone wants to work with children or take on a high-trust role.
- Accountability Stewards: These people track harm once it’s named, they may not be dishing out punishments, but they will help navigate next steps:
o Do we pause their involvement?
o Do we need a mediated conversation?
o Is it time to bring in mental health or care support?
There will be no one person making a decision, they facilitate collective clarity and allows for the collective to make an informed decision on steps moving forward.
- Survivor Advocates: People who support the harmed person. Making sure they’re not retraumatized during the process. (You could also have a completely separate Care and Accountability circle, but it’s up to the collective.)
- Event space monitors: Gentle eyes and ears during group events, community centers, youth programs, etc. Trained in de-escalation and prevention. Some may also monitor digital spaces.
All Safety Squad members must agree to:
- Stay humble and unassuming: this is sacred work, not status.
- Pass psychological screening and vetting themselves.
- Regularly rotate roles, no long-term power.
- Attend reflective sessions to monitor their own energy and judgement.
- Be transparent about their methods and accountable to the community.
And the community must agree that this team has a difficult job at hand. They’re going to make decisions that not everyone agrees with. But they do it so that no one is left unprotected, or left to carry their fear alone.
11. Emotional & Mental Health Care Team
Once people have shelter, food, protection, and a voice. What they often need next is space to feel. Not everyone is ready, not everyone will want to. But when the moment comes, this team will be there for them. We don’t want to fix, pathologize, or prescribe, but to walk with people through the quiet, messy, necessary work of remembering who they are.
Survival does not mean the pain has ended, sometimes, it’s just beginning to surface. This team would hold space for what emerges when the screaming stops. Without looking away.
The emotional and mental health care team is responsible for tending to the inner life of the community. Its grief, its rage, its weariness, its longing, its disorientation, and its joy. They help people process what’s happened, not erase it. They remind us that collective healing isn’t linear, and it also doesn’t follow policy.
- Grief support for personal and collective loss.
- Crisis de-escalation with emotional safety in mind.
- Non-pathologizing therapy: community-based, culturally-informed.
- Support circles for burnout, loneliness, fear, or transition.
- Somatic care for trauma release.
- Space for celebration, reflection, and emotional regulation.
And just as importantly, they help design systems of rest, because sometimes healing looks like laughter, quiet, or sleep.
Some key roles within this team:
- Peer Support Guides: Trained to listen without judgement. They might lead regular check-ins, hold space for folks after a crisis, or just be a presence in the community that people know they can trust.
- Therapists and Counselors: Licensed or unlicensed, what matters is that they’ve done their own work and are committed to consent-based, non-coercive care. They may offer one-on-one support, group sessions, or work with other teams (like housing or safety) during times of emotional transition.
- Grief and Rage Workers: Some people need to cry. Others need to scream. These practitioners create safe containers for emotional release: rage rituals, grief circles, memory altars, or silent spaces for mourning.
- Somatic and Embodiment Practitioners: Trauma is not only in your mind; it lives in your body. These folks use breathwork, movement, sound, and energy regulation to help people ground, soothe, and reconnect with themselves.
- Rest and Burnout Monitors: Their job is to watch the watchers, making sure caretakers, organizers, and high-output community members aren’t collapsing in silence. They help build rest into community rhythms, from naps and nature walks to emotional sabbaticals.
- Ritual and Integration Stewards: Help communities make meaning out of what’s happened, after a death, a disaster, a shift, a birth, a break up, a new home. They may not use words like “spiritual”, but their work brings things back into wholeness.
- Emotional Mediation Support: Some conflict does not need formal facilitation; it just needs a skilled listener to hold both people with care.
These workers won’t replace the accountability process but they will soften the path back to reconnection.
How this team works differently!
Theres is no forced healing, no diagnosis without consent. No centering of whiteness, productivity, or “resilience” performance. No saviorism. No pretending emotional labor is unpaid, invisible, or unskilled. Instead, healing is slow, cyclical, personal, unpredictable, and deeply deserving of time, attention, and infrastructure. These aren’t volunteers “doing it from the goodness of their hearts”. They will be trained, supported, and held by the community just as much as they hold others. Because emotional labor is labor, and those who offer it deserve safety too.
This team is responsible for connecting people to food, land, and the sacred cycles that sustain life. Nourishment, sovereignty, and staying alive without asking for permission. This team holds one of the most essential pieces of any liberated world:
How we feed ourselves, and how we treat the soil we depend on.
Because food is medicine, food is memory, and food systems are power systems. Which is why they’ve been so violently controlled. This team is how we take that power back, one seed, one shovel, one meal at a time.
- Organizes collective growing projects (gardens, food forests, rooftops, greenhouses).
- Supports household food production, even in small containers or rented yards.
- Maintains seed banks and local food libraries.
- Reclaims abandoned lots for food use.
- Builds relationships with land stewards, farmers, and indigenous food-keepers.
- Teaches food literacy, how to grow, forage, preserve and cook.
- Designs food distribution systems within the community (fresh produce swaps, free fridges, shared kitchens).
- Collaborates with housing, education, and infrastructure teams to ensure food spaces are woven into community living.
- Growers and Gardeners: They tend the soil, plant the seeds, manage rotations, and adapt to seasons. This includes people who know small-scale gardening, hydroponics, vertical growing, greenhouse management, or native food systems.
- Seed Keepers and Crop Protectors: These workers steward heirloom seeds, maintain seed libraries, and teach others how to save and store seeds properly, protecting food diversity and independence.
- Foragers and Wild Food Educators: Teach people how to safely identify, gather, and prepare wild food: mushrooms, herbs, nuts, berries. Without overharvesting or damaging ecosystems.
- Compost and Soil Health Stewards: Manage compost systems, vermiculture (worm bins), soil testing, and microbe-rich practices that regenerate land instead of depleting it.
- Community Food Coordinators: Bridge between growers and neighbors: organizing food swaps, harvest shares, produce giveaways, and kitchen teams for meal prep or preserving.
- Infrastructure Collaborators: Work with the physical team to install raised beds, irrigation, water catchment, and root cellars. Work with housing teams to bring food access directly to people’s homes.
- Food Literacy and Cooking Teachers: Offer classes, videos, or one-on-one support for those learning how to cook, preserve, or store food. Especially supportive to youth, disabled folks, and people unlearning shame around eating.
- Land Stewards and reclamation Workers: Organize community access to land for growing, through relationships, negotiation, or direct reclamation. Protect that land from being sold, fenced, or poisoned.
This team would center people; there is no food sovereignty without food dignity. They would understand that not everyone has the ability to grow or cook food, and that’s okay. They make sure no one is excluded from eating well. They work with environmental and healing teams, understanding that food is directly tied to emotional, physical, and ecological health. And they’re not here to mimic old structures, they’re here to nurture ecosystems that give back more than they take.
- Abundance over efficiency.
- Relationship over ownership.
- Nourishment over control.
Mostly this team is about growing food, but still, the impact they will make will be felt throughout the community and those beyond us. It’s not just food, it is ensuring that everyone gets the food they need, when they need it.
13. Environmental Restoration
Let’s now go into something I am extremely passionate about; I love the earth. I love the beauty of nature. And I know we can live in a world that gives back more than it ever takes. This team is responsible for repairing the broken relationship between land, water, air, and human life. Their work is sooo much more than cleaning up pollution or planting trees. They will restore our relationship to the planet.
For generations, systems of extraction and domination have left behind poisoned soil, paved-over rivers, ruined biodiversity, collapsing ecosystems, and forgotten sacred places. And still, the earth tries to heal. The team will join her in that effort, honoring her for carrying us this far, and promising to right wrongs that have been done long before any of us were born. We don’t want to dominate nature, we want to listen, learn, rebuild, and care with intention. Because healing the planet is not separate from healing ourselves.
- Restores damaged or abandoned land: soil regeneration, reforestation, rewilding.
- Works with builder and housing teams to make cities more walkable, breathable, and green.
- Installs natural water filtration systems, rain gardens, greywater systems, and rooftop catchments.
- Removes invasive species and reintroduces native plants, trees, and pollinators.
- Collaborates with the food and land team to maintain long-term soil health.
- Creates shaded pathways, urban green corridors, and wildlife sanctuaries.
- Tracks ecosystem shifts due to climate stress (migration patterns, seasonal changes, wildfires, droughts).
- Offers ecological education to help the community live in alignment with local life.
- Land Healers and Soil Restorers: use composting, mycelium (mushroom networks), and plant allies to detoxify, enrich, and regenerate soil.
- Native Species Coordinators: research and reintroduce native trees, pollinators, plants, and animals in community areas. Replacing invasive or ornamental landscaping with purposeful ecologies.
- Water Systems Stewards: work on water restoration projects, creating rain catchment, repairing waterways, cleaning runoff, and building natural filtration systems for homes and gardens.
- Climate Adaptation Planners: Collaborate with housing and physical infrastructure to ensure all rebuilding efforts are aligned with changing climate patterns. Heat resistance, flood zones, fire risk, drought plans, etc.
- Wildlife protection and Corridors team: design green corridors and safe passages for birds, insects, and other animals displaced by urban development or climate migration.
- Environmental Educators: offer hands-on community learning about ecosystems, symbiosis, climate impact, seasonal shifts, and how to care for local life respectfully and reciprocally.
- Land Back Negotiators/Indigenous Allies: Support indigenous-led land return and stewardship efforts, or work toward long-term agreements to honor and restore the sovereignty of displaced peoples and ecosystems.
No deadlines here, just seasons. People trusting their instincts, what they know, and listening to the land. Some days they move compost with their hands. Other days, they stand at the edge of a dried-up stream and just ask,
They are the ones who leave no footprint, but everything they touch begins to breathe again. They speak the languages of mushrooms, erosion, bees, weeds. Inviting the wild back into their hearts and dreams. Sometimes it’ll look like art, might smell like rosemary and soil. Might sound like silence, or birdsong, or the cracking open of pavement to let the roots back through.
They don’t need credit, but they need support. Because what they carry is ancient, and often invisible until it’s gone.
- No one actually owns the land.
- Restoration begins with listening.
- Every ecosystem is sacred.
- Healing the earth is part of healing the people.
This team ensures that everything we build is in alignment with the earth and universe. And their work is never finished. Because the earth is alive, and we’re in a lifelong relationship with her.
14. Creative and Storytelling Team
Last but not least the creative team, when the world begins to change, we need someone to tell the story. This team holds the emotional current of the movement, the language, the imagery, the songs, the myths, the memory. A transmission of the collective and their story as they evolve with the world around them. Because every revolution, every culture, every healing cycle begins with a story. And for too long, our stories have been owned, censored, distorted, or erased.
This team is more than making content, they would create meaning, the kind that makes people feel, remember, and act.
- Crafts the public-facing voice of the community: its values, its updates, its invitations.
- Documents what’s happening as it happens: creating videos, posters, books, zines, and oral archives.
- Designs educational materials that are visual, poetic, intuitive, and informed.
- Builds safe, off-grid platforms for sharing truth outside censorship or algorithms.
- Works with all other teams to help translate their work into accessible, inspiring language.
- Supports joy and cultural memory: art shows, murals, poems, plays, stories, and celebration.
- Tracks shift in tone and mood across the community: helping us stay emotionally connected even when times are hard.
And everyone is encouraged to create, as we would believe that art is a form of self-expression. There is no one right way to create, and we will encourage everyone to share in the ways they feel comfortable.
- Visual Artists and Illustrators: Create art for zines, signage, murals, toolkits, education boards, community altars, healing spaces, and emotional storytelling.
- Video editors and Content Creators: Shape and share moments: educational videos, community updates, voice-over explainers, interviews, archival footage. With care.
- Writers, Poets, and Narrative Weavers: Hold the emotional resonance of what’s happening: Writing reflections, community messages, spoken word, and cultural essays.
- Historians and Memory Keppers: Track and preserve the truth of how things changed. Document stories with consent. Archive art. Record elder wisdom. Protect the timeline.
- Social media Mangers: Hold the “voice” of the community online. Clear, poetic, honest, bold. Respond to misinformation. Build connections.
- Captioners, Translators, and Access Designers: Make sure everything shared is understandable and reachable: closed captions, plain language, multiple languages, and audio friendly design.
Their role is NOT to sell!! They are reminding us. To remember who we are when everything else tries to make us forget. To imagine who we could be if we gave ourselves permission.
To hold grief and beauty in the same image. To ask questions no spreadsheet could ever answer.
Some tools might include:
- Zines, posters, comics, and stickers.
- Mini-documentaries or short films.
- Oral storytelling, podcasts, and audio essays.
- Public art installations or chalk poetry.
- Local newspapers or community bulletins.
- Interactive exhibits, projections, or guided walks.
- Songs, lullabies, prayers, and protest chants.
- Dances, plays, and street performance.
- Memes that carry truth where words can’t go
- And so much more, your limit is your imagination.
This team makes everything else feel real. They take paperwork and turn them into story. They turn fear into expression. Confusion to clarity, silence into voice. They are the mirror and the window- reflecting the now, and opening into the next. Because without vision, people starve, they stop believing. And you, yes you, are already one of them.
This post is not a command; it is not a final blueprint. It is a starting point, or word vomit from a dream I have carried throughout my life. A start for a society based in care, for people, for animals, for the earth, and everything else around us. A living, evolving framework for communities who are ready to organize outside the systems that have failed them. These roles were written with care, tears, reflection, lived experience, and grief. But they’re not meant to be rigid. Every community is different, every place has its own needs, gifts, and rhythms. Adapt them, expand them, rewrite them. These ideas are here to be used, not idolized.
What matters most is that we stop waiting to be rescued, and start remembering that we were always capable of saving each other. That roles don’t mean jobs. That work doesn’t have to mean suffering. And that no one should have to burnout, break down, or beg just to belong. We don’t need you to be a perfect version of yourself, we just need you to show up authentically, intentionally. Structure in service of care, not control.
So, whether you use one idea or every single one… Whether you’re one person or part of growing a team… Let this remind you that we can organize, create, and protect each other, on our own terms. You don’t need permission. You don’t need credentials. You just need people, principles, and a willingness to begin. And if you’re seeing this right now, then you already have what you need to take the next step.
