Breathe

“Artists and activists generate breath for a community to take in — and breath is what makes survival possible.”
- Alissa Wilkinson

Here's what I've learned after years of trying to stitch communities back together, one conversation at a time: We are like trees generating oxygen. We are like light piercing through the undergrowth to reach a hidden pond. We create space - time and breath and conversation - that gives life to community.

This is what happens at Radical Sidewalk Hospitality. This is what happens when you put up chairs, offer something to drink, and say the four most powerful words in the world right now: "Hello. My name is..."

We are a soft place to land in a hard world. We are a threshold space where connection becomes possible, where the lost art of conversation gets remembered, taught, modeled, and encouraged. Not because it's efficient or profitable or easily explained in elevator pitches, but because it's how we survive.

Because breath—the kind Alissa Wilkinson writes about, the kind we generate here between the coffee cups and name tags and question cards—is what makes survival possible. And survival, real survival, happens one hello at a time, one shared cup at a time, one willing moment at a time.

It doesn’t always look like much. Some Saturdays, we’re simply drawing on paper feathers, drinking cups of coffee, and playing rounds of Uno.

But this is the soil where skill of conversation is remembered, taught, and modeled. Where the good things grow.

Come see for yourself. We're here on Montgomery Road, generating breath for anyone ready to take it in.