While reading excerpts from Books of the Living, the idea of how people should act together as a community really struck me. Lauren truly lived by that mentality because she would gather everyone in Acorn for a weekly meeting and whenever something was proposed, all would discuss it. Objections would be heard out, and there would be discussions and votes.
In small communities, she believed, people are more accountable to one another. Serious misbehavior is harder to get away with, harder even to begin when everyone who sees you knows who you are, where you live, who your family is, and whether you have any business doing what you’re doing. (171)
This idea about communities reminds me of Andrea Smith’s Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, specifically how we must work as a community to make a new justice system apart from jails, because jails are just growing bigger and there is, at times, no true justice. It’s not a good justice system. One proposed idea was something like Olamina’s–accountability, but this is something that would only work in small communities without much travel. Continue reading Community in Parable of Talents and Andrea Smith’s Conquest.