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## The gathering you're waiting for may be yours to host.

WATCH: A conversation with Garrett Bucks on local noticing and building community that lasts

[Priya Parker](https://substack.com/@priyaparker) and  [Garrett Bucks](https://substack.com/@garrettbucks)

Jun 08, 2026

A few months ago, I came across a piece by [Garrett Bucks](https://thewhitepages.net/) called [“Seven reasons why hosting a silly little potluck (or game night, or porch hang, or book club, or group hike) is essential to defeating fascism.”](https://thewhitepages.net/p/seven-reasons-why-hosting-a-silly)

I proceeded to read the entire thing while standing in my kitchen.

Bucks is a writer and organizer from Milwaukee who has trained over a thousand community builders through the [Barnraisers Project](https://barnraisersproject.org/). His argument, laid out across seven reasons laced with historical evidence, is one I have been making for years from a different angle: gathering is not a distraction from the urgent work of this moment. It is the urgent work.

So when I learned about the project he’s organizing, the [Declarations of Interdependence Relay](https://jointherelay.org/), a year-long effort connecting gatherings in all 50 states through a traveling wooden box that collects artifacts and stories from each community, I invited Bucks onto GROUP LIFE to break it down for us.

Most of us are waiting for someone else to start the thing. This conversation is my nudge to you to go first.

### Here are five things from our conversation that stayed with me.

**1. Start from longing, not obligation.** One of the most common mistakes I see gatherers make is starting from what they think they should do rather than what they actually want. Gatherings that start from a “should” often feel dutiful and flat. Bucks trains organizers across the country to start somewhere different: what do you wish someone would invite you to? What gathering do you keep wishing existed in your neighborhood, your building, your town? If you feel genuine longing for the thing you are building, that energy is contagious. [Start with what you actually want to attend](https://priyaparker.substack.com/p/replay-how-to-host-a-gathering-you).

**2. “Your friends are potentially your hype team. They’re not necessarily your audience.”** When most people decide to host a community event, a block party, a neighborhood potluck, or a local meetup, the first thing they do is text their friends. And then their friends, who have full lives, don’t come. Bucks has watched this happen so many times that he now teaches it as a principle: your friends are your hype team, not your audience. The people who show up to something new are often strangers. People who have been quietly waiting for exactly what you decided to build, who saw the flyer in the coffee shop or the post in the neighborhood group and thought, finally. This is actually good news. It means the person you are gathering for may not be someone you know yet.

**3. Big problems don’t require big solutions.** We tend to overcomplicate our gatherings. We wait until we have the right space, the right format, the right number of people confirmed. We tell ourselves the moment is too big for a potluck, too urgent for a book club, too serious for a porch hang. But some of the most powerful community groups start with almost nothing. [A folding table at a farmers’ market](https://jointherelay.org/follow-our-progress/relay-report-washington-state-seattle-april-22nd) with a sign that says: Would you like to know a neighbor? [A flyer in a coffee shop inviting strangers to journal together](https://priyaparker.substack.com/p/how-to-start-a-journaling-club-with). The simpler the ask, the easier it is for people to say yes.

**4. You have more power than you think.** If you can regularly bring forty to fifty people together, you are one of the most powerful groups in your city. We spend so much time feeling small because we are not reaching thousands, not going viral, not building a platform. But community has never worked that way. It is built in rooms, around tables, one person at a time. Bucks shared, “The most useful people weren’t the people with the biggest megaphones. They were the people who already knew their neighbors.”

**5. Good gatherers practice local noticing.** Every relay stop Bucks visits is different, because every community has a different problem it is trying to solve. A neighborhood art collective in Seattle. A breakfast burrito mutual aid group in Santa Fe. An indigenous punk collective in North Dakota. What they share is not a format. They are paying close attention to what the people around them actually need, rather than importing a solution from somewhere else. When you stay curious about your specific corner of the world (even when the headlines are pulling your attention everywhere else), you become the person your community can count on when it matters.

* * *

I’m curious. What do you wish a neighbor would invite you to right now? That longing is your signal. Now go build it.

As always,

Priya