If you’re reading this blog, if you’re interested in RU, you understand our goals. You see the struggles our community faces. You see its difficult for change to happen at a macro, community level. But you also see if we work together, if we become united, we can mend our community struggles. And by community I don’t mean government. By community I mean you. I mean me. I mean us.

Us as a community.

In order to make lasting change a reality, we need to inspire and engage more of our community. We need to get people to join the “tribe”. But to get them to join we need to invite them. And not only do we need to invite them, we also need to give them the freedom to create a movement. We all know what helps a movement grow; commitment, fearlessness and unabashed joy.

RU is different than most ideas, but that’s okay. We understand it’s different. We understand becoming more engaged might feel odd. There may be some hesitation to stick our necks out at such a community level, when everyone is watching. We feel it too. That’s why we want to provide the community with a “social cover”.

Social cover is a term I ran across in a video during RU’s infancy. When RU was just an idea in my head. Before it was a website and certainly before it was a nonprofit organization. I’ve searched for that video many times since but I keep coming up empty. However, I distinctly remember the video and how the seed of social cover was firmly planted in my head.

The video was recorded on a hillside in San Francisco. Hundreds of people are sitting in the grass watching a concert take place below. The video shows a man slowly walk to an open area on the hill and begin to dance in the middle of the crowd.

For some very uncomfortable minutes the man is watched by others around him. He’s perceived as strange. People keep their distance.

Then spontaneously, another person comes in from off panel and begins dancing with the lone man. There is now a pair.

Suddenly, a third. And a fourth. A fifth and a sixth.

The man doesn’t seem so strange anymore.

Over the scope of minutes, the entire hillside transforms into a mass of dancing people. The majority of the dancers are people who were sitting and judging the strange dancing man only minutes before. But now they were part of the community. They found their social cover.

What social cover do you need to become more engaged in your community?