Martin Luther King III professed that, “Violence is the language of the unheard.”

We in the United States were early champions of such a language, for more than 150 years the Thirteen Colonies gave fealty to a king across an ocean, and our rebellion didn’t start when one redcoat committed a crime on an American colonist, or one single tax that caused us to rise up violently, but a compounding mass of issues.

When the word “community” is spoken, it pulls with it feelings of other words: “kindness,” “hospitality,” and maybe even “warmth.” It is certainly a good word to put in a headline, but as time goes it has become a lofty ideal, bereft of its substance. A plea then: to recognize what has been lost so we may attempt to recover it.