IGP Roundtable with Maryam Banikarim Discusses Community Organizing During Difficult Times

Professor Ester Fuchs, director of the Urban and Social Policy Program at Columbia SIPA and affiliated faculty member at the Institute of Global Politics (IGP), hosted an IGP roundtable on October 28 to discuss effective methods for building community in cities. She was joined by Maryam Banikarim (BC ’89, SIPA ’93, CBS ’93), co-founder of NYCNext and managing director of the Most Powerful Women event series on women in leadership and the Brainstorm Tech forum on thought leadership in Silicon Valley at Fortune magazine.

During the roundtable, Fuchs and Banikarim discussed community-building efforts in New York City, the possible social and economic benefits of these efforts to their local communities, and ways of replicating these successes in different cities worldwide.

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As an immigrant who left her native Iran at age 11, Banikarim soon found herself in a completely unfamiliar Californian community—a formative experience she said sparked a life-long search for belonging. Banikarim noted that the COVID-19 pandemic created a similar need for many who were forced to isolate at home, separated from family, friends, and neighbors. Banikarim, then living in New York City, described feeling overwhelmed by a wave of think pieces and commentary during the summer of 2020, proclaiming the end of the city. “I don’t know what to do, but I’m tired of these headlines,” she thought at the time.

Determined to do something, Banikarim began hosting weekly brainstorming sessions over Zoom with friends and colleagues who were also looking to remind the world that New York City was alive and well. Inspired by Jimmy Fallon and Miley Cyrus’ viral impromptu subway performance, the informal group decided to produce a pop-up event of their own. Banikarim and her colleagues tapped their networks until they were able to get the proper licensing, permitting, and participants to produce a video of Broadway stars performing Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday,” from Sunday in the Park With George, in Times Square, which received over 35,000 views on YouTube.

“We all believed that the arts are the soul of our city. While I loved musicals, I wasn’t personally entrenched in the Broadway world, but others in the group were," Banikarim said, “By pooling our skills and networks and skills we made magic happen. That is the power of community.” With the success of this pop-up, NYCNext transformed from an informal cohort into a fully-fledged organization. They immediately turned their efforts toward replicating their initial success with additional pop-ups across the city’s five boroughs. The “Sunday” video helped galvanize an army of volunteers to support NYCNext in this mission. The organization produced 14 such events, managing as many as 600 volunteers by its last event. They then went on to produce a love letter to NYC via Billy Joel’s NY State of Mind.

Motivated by her work with NYCNext, Banikarim moved to her next community-building initiative, The Longest Table,—inspired by an image of a potluck dinner bringing neighbors together at long tables on the street in Egypt during Ramadan. She set a goal to create space for people to cook and eat together in New York City. “In six weeks, we took this idea and made it happen on 21st Street between 9th and 10th Avenues,” she said. Neighbors carried their tables, chairs, and food down to the street. What started as a relatively impromptu potluck in its first year drew around 1,000 attendees for this year’s third annual dinner.

These dinners have been transformative for attendees; 92 percent connected with a stranger at last year’s dinner, and 62 percent reported feeling less lonely afterward, according to Banikarim. “Connection leads to better social and economic outcomes,” she said.

In all her efforts, Banikarim relies primarily on volunteers to organize and execute her programs. Responding to a student who asked how she keeps this volunteer workforce motivated and accountable, she replied, “We had to take a leap of faith,” trusting new volunteers who wanted to own big responsibilities. “People who show up with an incredible amount of passion” often do the best work, she said. “Having a strategy is important,” Fuchs added, “but it’s also about being opportunistic. You don’t necessarily need to have a formal infrastructure.”

Banikarim believes there is an opportunity to rebuild the community at Columbia through The Longest Table-styled gatherings. “It strikes me that we need to figure out how to build community back on campus, not from the top down but from the bottom out,” she said.

“I was always someone who connected with people,” Banikarim said of what keeps her motivated. “I think the world is better when we can be kind to one another.”