For the past several newsletters, we’ve been reflecting on what it takes to build the kind of communities we deserve. We’ve written about isolation, about the importance of relationships, and about the truth that lasting change has always come from ordinary people organizing together. This past Saturday, we had the opportunity to experience that truth together.
More than 70 members, neighbors, partners, and friends gathered at the Southside Cultural Center for our Community Forum. The room was filled with conversation, laughter, children, music, and a shared commitment to imagining what our communities need not only to survive, but to truly thrive.
The Choir on Fire welcomed us with songs that filled the room with hope and reminded us why we gather in the first place. Their voices grounded us before we settled into conversations that were both honest and expansive. The People’s Care Agenda didn’t begin at the Community Forum. If anything, the day helped us recognize what we’ve been building together all along.
For nearly a decade, SISTA Fire members have organized around Black maternal health, housing, economic justice, democracy, healing, and collective care. We’ve won campaigns, supported one another through crises, fought for policy change, and built spaces where people can belong. This forum created an opportunity to step back and ask a different question.
What connects all of this work?
As people rotated through conversations about housing, safety, healing, food, governance, land, and collective responsibility, something became clear. No matter where the conversations started, they kept arriving in the same place.
People spoke about communities where everyone has a safe place to live, enough food to eat, time to rest, clean air and green spaces, accessible public spaces, and a real voice in the decisions that affect their lives. They imagined safety built through relationships instead of punishment. They imagined care as something woven into our schools, neighborhoods, healthcare systems, and public institutions. They imagined communities where no one has to carry life’s burdens alone.
What emerged wasn’t a list of disconnected ideas. It was a shared understanding that these struggles are connected, and that the future we’re fighting for must be connected too.
That is the People’s Care Agenda.
Gatherings like this only happen because so many people bring their gifts. We’re deeply grateful to our partners at Onlyville Neighborhood Association, AMOR, PrYSM, Providence Student Union, and Building Circle for standing with us and helping create this space.
Thank you to the Southside Community Land Trust for sharing beautiful, fresh vegetables that nourished us throughout the afternoon. Thank you to Gentle Strength Herbal Co-op, Rhode Island’s first worker-owned herbal cooperative, for offering herbal care and reminding us that healing has always been part of movement building. And thank you to Indigo’s Home Child Care, whose loving childcare allowed parents and caregivers to fully participate in the conversations while knowing their children were safe, engaged, and cared for.
We left the forum with pages of ideas, new relationships, and a deeper sense of where we’re headed together. Over the coming months, we’ll continue shaping the People’s Care Agenda with our members, partners, and community. What began as conversations around tables will continue growing into a shared vision for the future we’re building together.
This wasn’t the end of a process. It was another step in a journey our community has been walking for years, and we’re grateful to be walking it together.
