Zebras in the Wild: Abby Rapoport | Co-op member

With our series “Zebras in the Wild”, we are excited to take you on a journey around the world to meet founding members, chapter leads, co-op members and allies. We talk to Zebras in the wild and report back how they’re challenging the status quo, how they envision the future and how we can support them in their mission!

In this conversation, meet Abby Rapoport, the publisher and co-founder of Stranger’s Guide. She spent the first portion of her career as a political reporter, covering Texas politics for the Texas Tribune, the Texas Observer and then The American Prospect. Her work has also appeared in Glamour, The National Journal and The New Republic. Prior to founding Stranger’s Guide, she served as Acting Publisher for the Texas Observer and currently sits on the board of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and TYPE Investigations.

Read how Abby envisions the capital, community and culture of the next economy:

A Zebra is…

…a person who sees what extraordinary possibilities arise when entrepreneurial spirits collectively support their community and their world.

Our broken us-vs.-them mentality

We’ve been living with extreme polarization in our society for years now and we know many of us increasingly identify ourselves in opposition to others. This new “us vs. them” mentality makes it hard to build solidarity, let alone empathy for each other. As we each struggle independently, power disparities in our society increase, making it harder and harder to effect wide scale change.

Abby’s vision for the future

I want a future in which we bring our whole selves not only to our personal and professional work but to the coalitions and collective actions that help us move forward. Right now, so many of us struggle independently against the same structural challenges. We’re also frequently stuck defining success in the different terms of different spheres — professional success equates to dollars, while personal success may look very different. In my future, we could each have the opportunity to take a thoughtful approach to the intentional work we seek to do.

The role of community

Community and a sense of connection to each other is crucial to get beyond a hyper-polarized society and towards a place in which we can bring a unique identity and still share a sense of connection and obligation to one another.

What does the capital infrastructure of the future look like?

Accessible and distributed broadly.

What type of culture and values do you envision for this ideal future?

Full of curiosity, listening and collaborating instead of winner-take-all

Abby’s role in ushering in an alternative future

When we founded Stranger’s Guide,“America First’ rhetoric was on the rise, increasing polarization and contributing to a sense that Americans needn’t acknowledge or even know about other countries and cultures.

We produce quarterly guides, in print and online, each of which delves deep into a single location, exploring it from many different angles — covering food and sports but also human rights and social movements. Rather than parachute in foreign reporters, we center each guide on writing and photography from people from the place we’re covering. Our newsletters offer more thematic ways for readers to connect with unexpected stories.

Our goal is to provide nuanced portraits of locations around the world, challenging stereotypes and caricatures, while offering a new venue in which American audiences can encounter a global array of authors and photographers.

What does support look like?

Subscribe to Stranger’s Guide!

Additionally, we’re always looking for mission-driven partners interested in working with us to help build their storytelling capacity. Contact us at the email address below if you might like to collaborate on a project.

Abby asks the community

How can technology best help us find our people within the Zebra universe without getting overwhelmed?

Shout-out

So many people are doing amazing work — one of my first Zebra experiences was on a Zoom call with Malii Watts Witten. Her observations about swarming and other models for collective action in the natural world got me especially excited about the Zebras movement.

How can people connect with you?

Email me! rapoport@strangersguide.com