You've tried community. You've shown up for it, invested in it, maybe even built your identity around it — and it still ended up feeling like the thing you were trying to escape.
This episode is going to tell you exactly why, and it's not what you think.
In this episode, Nikki names what most community spaces won't: that the dysfunction you keep encountering isn't random, isn't your fault, and isn't a reflection of what community can actually be.
She breaks down the sixteen behaviors that follow people into every community space — activist circles, churches, workplaces, neighborhood groups — and explains why spaces that claim to be about liberation keep producing the same dynamics of harm.
In this episode you'll learn:
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What counterfeit community is actually costing you individually and collectively
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The sixteen behaviors that sabotage even the most values-aligned spaces
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The charismatic leader problem and what Ella J. Baker understood about power that most communities still haven't learned
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The difference between codependence and interdependence, and why accountability is not punishment
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What real community actually looks like in practice
Mentioned in this episode:
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TAP HERE to listen to Episode 30: White Women Can't Be Centered in Solidarity: Why Main Character Energy Is Killing Your Activism
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TAP HERE to listen to Episode 74: The Problem With Leadership in Social Justice Spaces
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TAP HERE to listen to Episode 27: What We Get Wrong About Community
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TAP HERE to listen to Episode 78: We Can't Have Matriarchy Without Community
Special thanks to Def Sound for providing the theme for Interrupting Business As Usual.
Where do we go from here?
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To learn more about what you heard on the podcast today, visit nikkiblak.com.
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TAP HERE to subscribe to the free weekly email series Resourcing a Revolution for more exclusive content delivered right to your email inbox.
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Follow me on IG: @nikkiblak
Work With Me
If this conversation challenged the way you think about community and your place in it, applications for 1:1 coaching are open.
Through an intersectional feminist lens, Nikki supports women and femmes to examine the systems shaping their lives, relationships, work, money, ambition, caregiving, and self-worth so they can build lives rooted in liberation, not extraction.
TAP HERE to apply.
Next episode: Hot Community Summer finale — From Surviving Alone to Building Together: What Collective Action Actually Looks Like
Resource: Finding Your People: From Sociopolitical Isolation to Collective Action, a mini-course for anyone ready to move from disconnection to collective action. TAP HERE to get it.
