New York street parties model communal equality spontaneously formed

Evidence

Such actions remind me of the spirit of a summer Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, when two cars park kitty-corner across the street and halt the traffic, and suddenly there’s a block party on the pavement. People begin streaming out of the town houses, stores, and restaurants. Some bring guitars with them, others carry food, and still others are holding their babies. People laugh about politics and delight in the differences in religions while others set up the stage for the band. Everybody eats one another’s food. More tables have to be found, the lights blaze, and out of nowhere the street has been transformed into a celebration. Before long it has become a party of everyone for everyone and by everyone, and it lasts late into the night. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 994

Categorization

• SEED: The block party as a lived model of prefigurative politics — ‘a party of everyone for everyone by everyone’ — could anchor an essay on how urban conviviality rehearses the egalitarian society we claim to want.
• XREF: connects to: The New Left’s communal we was an aggregate of consenting individuals — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 451