Parking Lot Dinners

COVID-19 has been making us rethink how we gather together and how we use our public spaces. I've already noticed how restaurants have moved onto patios, people eat in their cars in parking lots, and parks are getting new appreciation. Meanwhile, our community spaces have been shrinking, being gated off, more policed...we've become an anti-social society. Then there is the problem that religious buildings have monopolized community spaces with zoning and tax privilege. It is not an acceptable trade that if we want community or meeting spaces...we must expose our children to indoctrination and delusion. THIS is a great time to plan/create new community spaces/parks, killing two birds with one stone; we can create public, outdoor spaces that allow us to distance while being together...and in non-pandemic times, create community spaces where we can have discussions without having social media algorithms shoving outrage-inducing messages in our faces. We'll have places we can meet real people, no bots, and have real conversations, and learn to socialize in healthy and productive ways; all that on neutral, public territory.