The cover of the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Environmental Action used green ink to ask the question, "Can We Overcome the Politics of Property, Profits and Fear to Build Community?"This question, posed as it is in the quarterly publication of the Environmental Action Foundation of Takoma Park, Maryland, infers that, indeed, contemporary society has the politics of property, profits, and fear to contend with before community can be built.
I would like to contend that as Cosmopolitan Club members, past and present, we already have a significant jump start on the building of community, and our community is the globe itself. Into the historical environment of separation of individuals by language, by race, and by military and political maneuvers, the Cosmopolitan Club founders, nearly 100 years ago, formulated a motto proclaiming their new vision:
Among the first members of the Cosmopolitan Club on the University of Illinois campus was the son of Rabindranath Tagore, who very likely shaped the thinking of his peers. Indeed, the Cosmopolitan Club motto comes from the same perspective that prompted Tagore to write:
In the context of contemporary automobile and air travel, Cornel West has observed that "we substitute continual departures for the more profound satisfying, stay-put work of building community." Let us disprove the pessimistic contention that property, politics, and fear outweigh the collective potential of the positive networking capabilities of global humanity.
Although you may no longer be in the Champaign-Urbana community and may feel "unconnected" to the activities taking place each semester, the tightening of the bonds of the unique Cosmopolitan perspective is what real community building is all about.