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It felt beautiful when neighbours came together on WhatsApp during Covid. Then came the rows about teens | Zoe Williams
There was a definite blitz-spirit as we joined group chats in lockdown. But as arguments erupted, it turned out there was an upside to not having everyone’s number
This time two years ago, as the country went into lockdown, the neighbourhood WhatsApp group came into its own. It often just spanned a couple of streets – but the shock of the moment and the surge of civic spirit delivered at least one adult in any 40m radius, prepared to do the legwork of tracking down every phone. And it would be stupid to the point of deliberate amnesia to pretend that it didn’t, at the time, seem like something genuinely beautiful was happening – solidarity, care, mutual aid, respectful watchfulness, a forest of collective responsibility springing up overnight, where previously there had only been the odd tendril of “do you have my parcel?”, and “did you hear that last night – do you think it was a fox or a murder?”
My group fell apart over low-traffic neighbourhoods. That’s not quite right; it would be more accurate to say it split irretrievably, divided by the most profound ideological differences, but stayed together on the tacit understanding that LTNs would never be spoken of again, except when they were, and the fight would be more brutal every time. It was a lot like the Labour party.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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