“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody,” sang out Reverend Glenda Allsopp of the Kingdom Empowerment Center (KEC), a faith-based community in Central Square. At the KEC block party, one of the 23 block parties held in Cambridge between the 8th and the 16th, everybody was dancing with somebody. Alsopp danced with Lorraine Thornhill, KEC’s lead pastor. A cotton candy machine spun sugar onto paper cones, corn and bubbles popped, and one by one children emerged from the face paint station adorned with butterfly wings and fake mustaches.
Thanks to Cambridge’s new Meet Your Neighbor Day, streets across the city reflected this scene. Meet Your Neighbor
Day was dreamed up by Brian Corr, the executive director of the Peace Commission, a city department with a mission to promote peace and social justice within Cambridge. The event provides a platform for Cambridge residents to host their own block parties designed to meet their community’s own unique needs. “People reach out to me and ask, ‘Oh, what are you organizing?’” Corr told the Register Forum while at the Raymond Park Block Party. “I tell them, ‘No, what are you organizing?’”
On Kenwood Street, residents organized an array of live music (courtesy of the block’s own band, the Oyagi Gags), food, face painting, bubbles, and storytime. “We’ve wanted to have a block party for a long time,” coordinators Kathleen Bill and Patty Parker told the Register Forum. “We use the street as a block party half the time anyway, so we figured why not block it off and actually do it for real?”
Corr emphasizes that, while Meet Your Neighbor day is loose and creative, it also addresses deeper issues that cities today face: rising isolation and disintegrating social networks. “[T]here are people that are so isolated in their own homes,” he told the Register Forum. “And it’s because they don’t have anyone to talk to.”
Organizers of the KEC block party echoed similar sentiments. “I grew up when you knew your neighbor; you knew people you lived next door to. But now we’ve got so many people, and most of them don’t know one another,” KEC’s Pastor Lorraine expressed to the Register Forum. Reverend Alsopp agreed, adding, “We walk by one another with-
out saying hello. Today is all about saying hello.” Attendees across the city remarked on the success of Meet Your Neighbor Day: Farooz Khan Trunnell ’24, a Kenwood Street block party attendee, reminisced to the Register Forum, “Seeing everyone come together is a really nice moment.” Jane Nunley, who attended the KEC block party told the Register Forum that she believed the block party united neighborhoods that don’t normally embrace contact. “Sometimes you don’t even cross the street. But today we cross the street! And meet the people across the street!”
Though inspired by the national initiatives “Welcoming Week” and “National Neighborhood Day,” Meet Your Neighbor day is unique to Cambridge. The city has enacted several other measures this summer encouraging block parties, including $200 cash awards to support block party refreshment and entertainment, and the Play Streets Program, which loans free games and activities.
Block party organizers across the city had one message to share: “Thank you for coming!”
This article also appears in our October 2023 print edition.
