Interview 3: August

Description: August "Auggie" is my brother! He is a 26-year-old guy from Oakland, California. He identifies himself as Latino and white as well as middle class. He has long curly hair and a bushy beard that he has been cultivating for the lockdown. He was very nice and agreed to be interviewed on zoom to help out his little sister.

The bolded text is my dialogue and everything else is the interviewee's.

What does community mean to you?

Great question! Hmmm. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this on my own lately. I would say that community exists in spaces that you feel nurtured in. Whether that be family, fellow laborers, or the same identity marker. [Identity markers?] Yeah, like ethnicity, class, regional spaces. Just anywhere that feels restorative. 

Where did you find community during quarantine?/Did you find it at all?

Yeah! So I work for the San Francisco Transportation Department and we’ve been online for a full year with at least another half a year expected. That’s been pretty surreal. I went from traveling from Oakland every day and walking out in the neighborhoods, having friends over regularly, and other events to basically sitting in my room on work calls for ten hours a day. All that to say that I’ve had to find my community in new places, and even when it’s been the same places it’s looked fundamentally different. Like it’s weird to say but I know my coworkers on a completely different plane now. [Could you give an example?] Absolutely! So I used to work in an office in my own little corner and go in for a couple weekly meetings. Now, we all work on our own stuff but on a system similar to a zoom room. I’m watching live camera feeds of everyone’s faces working while I’m working too. You see like this more intimate picture, ya know? 

What did these community moments look like?

Okay, so I kind of covered what those moments with my coworkers have looked like. As for friends, I’ve definitely had to step up my texting game. Remember how bad I was in high school? [Yes I think you had about 300 imessage notifications that were unopened!] Yes! So that’s about what I’d set the bar at so I really had to work on being a better virtual friend. 

Did you have different expectations on those community moments than you would have pre-pandemic?

I think just extending more grace in all your relationships is healthy during this time. You have an even harder time knowing what people are going through than before. I think that’s been a big takeaway for me through all of this.

Will community look different for you after the pandemic is over?

I do think, and maybe you can attest to this as well, I think our family became more insular during this time. Especially with mom’s illness coupled with the quarantine, I think I positioned our family as more of a priority than I ever have in my life. Not to say that I didn’t value our moments, just they’d never been tested in quite the same way.