Community Connectors are the volunteers who keep Pana MIA running — neighborhood pods across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, each one building the South Florida they actually want to live in.
The zine, the free market, the food share — somebody already worked out how to run each one, and wrote none of it down. The next person begins at zero.
Dozens of people are organizing across three counties right now. Because none of it is counted together, it reads to a funder as scattered effort rather than as a movement.
With no tiers and no handover, the only way to stay involved is to do everything. So the people who care most are the ones who leave first.
Pick a house, join a pod, start at the first tier. Everybody starts at the first tier.
Four of them, grouped by what you already like doing rather than by what needs covering. The yappers and the researchers do not belong in the same room, and the programme stops pretending they do.
Pods are geographic — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach. A pod is a third space: somewhere to bring a project, argue it out, and be held to it. Each one runs its own Signal chat.
Tiers are about how much you are taking on, not how good you are. One assists the builders, two builds, three supports other builders and brings what the pod learned back to everyone else.
Houses group connectors by what they already like doing, not by what needs covering. You pick yours — and you can sit in more than one if that is honestly where you are.
For the extroverts, the community organizers and leaders, the people persons, the coalition builders, the bridge makers, the event coordinators, and the yappers.
Turning a list of names into a network that actually calls each other. Tabling, free markets, and getting local businesses to act like community centers.
For the life-long learners, the campaigners, the educators, the researchers and investigators, the self-described experts, the journalists and the archivists.
Making what we know portable. Zines, workshops, translation, research and the newsletter — everything that lets the next person skip the part we already solved.
For the storytellers, the chronically-online, the content creators, the filmmakers, the journalists, the writers, the directors and the producers.
Taking raw research and making it a story the public can hold. Countering the status quo about South Florida, and telling the truth about what is being built here.
For the artists, performers, musicians, curators, designers, artivists, cultural organizers, publishers, poets, dreamers and muralists.
Cultural change is lasting change. Art builds, murals, playlists, posters, and the work that imagines a liberated South Florida out loud.
Panas in your county working on the street you live on — not a volunteer list two cities away that emails you when something needs carrying.
Pods report what they did back to roots, so a hundred small actions can be shown as one body of work. That is what turns into funding, venues and a say in the story being told about South Florida.
PITbooks — Praxis Informed Theory books — are living how-tos for the things we already know how to do. Hydration stations, food shares, zine displays, free markets. You start from the last person's ending.
It is transformed by groups and collectives that know and recognize one another, below and to the left, and build another world. That is the whole job. Come do it with us.