We like to believe revolution is just a matter of will. Of fire. Of people suddenly waking up and pouring into the streets to say, “No more.”
But what if the reason we haven’t overthrown this bullshit yet isn’t because we’re apathetic, but because we’ve been systematically prevented from organizing?
What if the real problem is that they sterilized the petri dish?
By “petri dish,” I mean the environment where ideas grow. Where friendships form. Where kids get weird and adults get curious and bored people make magic.
You know - community.
That magical, messy, friction-filled third space where people don’t need to buy anything to belong. Where things aren’t monetized, moderated, or micromanaged.
The local park.
The corner bar.
The rec center.
The community college quad.
The punk venue.
The library.
The bowling alley.
The plaza.
The shared church basement that doubled as an AA meeting and an after-school tutoring spot.
These places were petri dishes for protest. For organizing. For solidarity.
And over time, they’ve been sterilized, scrubbed clean by policy, gentrification, police presence, and privatization.
This Didn’t Just Happen
I recently saw a photo of a woman holding a protest sign in downtown Los Angeles. The year was 1937. Her sign said:
“Stop Illegal Raids by the Immigration Department.”
That was almost 90 years ago and it could’ve been taken yesterday.
It hit me like a gut punch. We’ve been fighting the same fights for generations.
And it’s not because people didn’t care.
It’s because every time we got close to collective momentum, the state figured out a new way to keep us apart.
What I mean by sterilization is the public commons have turned private property. The neighborhood hangout replaced by surveillance cameras and HOA approved landscaping. The gathering place turned into a luxury.
They shut down our gathering places.
They passed loitering laws.
They filled our neighborhoods with surveillance.
They gentrified our communities to death.
They told us to go home and shop instead.
They turned social infrastructure into gig economy hustle. They didn’t just strip us of wages or housing, they stripped us of each other.
And it worked, for a while.
Because where do you build trust without time or space?
Where do you spark rebellion when you’re isolated, overworked, and watching life through a screen?
You don’t.
You spiral. You survive. You forget how to play.
Revolution Requires Relationship
People think the hard part of organizing is the politics. It’s not.
It’s the logistics.
It’s getting people in a room.
It’s creating the space where they can hear each other. Disagree. Laugh. Share a cigarette or a sandwich.
It’s letting people linger.
But lingering got criminalized. Hanging out got priced out.
And now we’ve got generations of people with a fire in their chest and nowhere to put it.
But Here’s the Hope
The petri dish may have been sterilized but it’s not gone.
Because people keep finding each other anyway.
In Discord servers. In protests. In book clubs. In group texts. In those weird little free libraries. In witchy group chats. In backyards. In skateparks. On TikTok. At protests.
We always find each other.
Because community isn’t a building. It’s a practice.
And no matter how many times they try to dismantle it, someone always lights a match again.
So What Now?
We name it. That’s the first step.
We name the theft.
We name the loss.
We name the system that sterilized our joy.
Because if we don’t name it, we can’t resist it.
And once we name it we build something new. Or maybe something ancient.
Not perfect. Not polished. But real.
You don’t need a nonprofit or a permit to build community.
You just need a lawn chair, some snacks, and a willingness to stay a while.
The petri dish is cracked.
The environment is hostile.
But the culture?
Still growing. Still weird. Still alive.
We’re the bacteria.
And they should be scared.
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