When former President Donald Trump declared that the “American Dream is dead” during his campaign launch in June 2015, for many Americans, that was simply the case. Somehow, a multi-billionaire intuited a truth that the American elite had ignored for decades: certain places had flourished, giving their next generation ample opportunity to succeed and community life to flourish, while certain places had collapsed, leaving their next generation hollowed out neighborhoods, broken families, and despair. As civil society and community declined in the United States after a high in the mid-20th century, a new lower class began to form. This new lower class is deprived of the institutions of civil society which form people as self-governing creatures, leaving fewer and fewer mediating layers between man and state. This stratification of social capital along class lines and the social isolation it has wrought are among the chief threats to human flourishing in the United States in the twenty-first century, depriving people of authentic freedom and supplanting it with a base understanding of liberty-as-license. The alienation facing tens of millions of Americans, and impacting our entire society, was not caused by a singular economic, social, political, or technological innovation (though plenty of these changes have accelerated and accentuated this phenomena). At the base of community’s decline is a mismanaged individualism -- a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville -- which has warped our politics, and simultaneously empowered radical self-centeredness and government centralization. This thesis builds on a large body of work surrounding Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the role of civil society in America, and the stratification of community over the last half-century, drawing on the thought of Robert Putnam, Tim Carney, Yuval Levin, Patrick Deneen, Charles Murray, and Robert Nisbet -- among others -- to build an outline of the state of civil society and meaningful community in America today. It also charts a path forward for conceptualizing the American Dream in such a way that empowers rather than demotes the role of community in human life, arguing for a conscientious communitarianism. This revised definition of the American Dream relies upon a new concept -- authentic freedom -- that contradicts freedom-as-license. Analyzing diagnoses of our current situation and proposed solutions from the aforementioned thinkers, this thesis posits that Americans must organize and reinvigorate community on a local scale in order to confront these challenges. Ultimately, while community can only be formed productively at the local, human-scale, the long-term restoration of community and civil society in the United States will rely on political reform, framed after Yuval Levin’s modernized ethic of subsidiarity and Robert Nisbet’s conception of a new kind of state. The framework for renewal presented is not simply advocacy for a greater number of voluntary associations, but the formation and maintenance of particular sorts of associations: those which are purposeful about moral formation, the inculcation of the habits and mores necessary for a free people to flourish, and ultimately the proliferation of authentic freedom. While the conscientious communitarian advocates for a politics that prizes civil society broadly, they advocate for, create, and join institutions of this particular character. This is both an argument for a more robust and diverse civil society, and an affirmative case for particular institutions of civil society which form people towards authentic freedom.

This creative project outlines the steps taken to successfully plan and host a fundraising event at Arizona State University. In my case, this more specifically dealt with organizing a dodgeball tournament between two friendly rivals: police officers and firefighters in the city of Phoenix. All proceeds raised from this fundraising dodgeball tournament were donated back to first responders working in the city of Phoenix.

This creative project outlines the steps taken to successfully plan and host a fundraising event at Arizona State University. In my case, this more specifically dealt with organizing a dodgeball tournament between two friendly rivals: police officers and firefighters in the city of Phoenix. All proceeds raised from this fundraising dodgeball tournament were donated back to first responders working in the city of Phoenix.

"Black in Bleu" is a reflection on my life as a young, Black woman in America told through poetry, and music in conjunction with feminist activists' work as well as results from a survey amongst other young, black students. This paper is a window into Blackness reflecting my experiences as well as many others in a way to find love in that reflection. There is a playlist that goes along with the paper meant to be listened to simultaneously with the reading.

This is what I had for the abstract: Maryvale is the most densely populated neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona. Originally master-planned for white middle-class families, Maryvale has become a majority-minority neighborhood that is still impacted by socioeconomic problems left from the 1980's white flight, as well as a reputation for being dangerous. Residents share their experiences living in the community and their opinions about its problematic reputation and its impact and current development efforts. Oral history brings a personal perspective to the literal history of Maryvale to create a more accurate and comprehensive story.

In January of 2022, 61 women from Afghanistan were accepted to Arizona State University and joined our campus from the Asian University of Women. Of One Heart is a Phoenix based nonprofit which aims to connect refugees with mentors to cultivate intercultural relationships, assist refugees in integrating into a new community, and to empower refugees to utilize their unique perspectives and talents in their new home. In addition to these goals, these relationships aim to connect refugees with the networks their mentor has and to assist them in understanding the new systems and norms of American culture. The relationship is reciprocal in the sharing of background and stories to facilitate trust and to recognize the value refugees have to contribute to society. The mission of this project is to implement the Of One Heart mentoring model onto ASU campus to help facilitate intercultural friendships between our new students from Afghanistan and other ASU students, faculty and staff. In doing so, we hope to create a model demonstrating refugee student success by collecting data through pre and post program surveys to track if involvement in the program improved participants utilization of existing ASU resources, cultural competency, mental health, and participation in community activities and internships/job opportunities. Ideally, we hope to create a program model which is proven to support refugee students to be replicated for future semesters as the program expands to serve not only the students from Afghanistan, but all refugee and asylum seeking students.

Activist burnout theory has produced minimal but meaningful literature and research that explores the dynamics of burnout culture, movement in-fighting, marginalized identities, and dimensions of burnout symptoms. Black feminist visionaries and writers such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks have developed theories of love, self-care and community as central to resistance that have informed my research approach. Thus, my study aims to investigate activist burnout from a perspective that marries popular activist burnout theory with these frameworks of self-care and community. I conducted a survey of Arizona State University student organizers and activists (N=34) to address the following research questions: What are the causes and symptoms of burnout for Arizona State University activists and organizers? How have self-care and community played a role in their work and countered burnout? Can working conceptions of self-care and community serve as resistance in ways that feel meaningful to activists? The survey was broken into three dimensions: “Demographics and Experience,” “Burnout,” and “Self-Care and Community.” The results reinforced prior findings on established toxic cultures and burnout symptoms but introduced complications to working theories, such as the connections between cycles of burnout and the cyclical nature of electoral politics along with the roles of chronic and mental illness. Respondents largely demonstrated conceptions of self-care and community as resistance but also demonstrated personal and professional barriers to putting these conceptions into practice.

Crazed Oasis strives to create a community-based, sustainable clothing brand that looks and feels great, while creating a community that is safe and welcoming to individuals of all backgrounds. We strive to educate all about the world to provide an understanding and appreciation for all individuals and cultures. The current climate of the world is a crazy one, and the clothing industry is highly unsustainable. Crazed Oasis is creating the solution by building a community to create new friendships and connections while focusing on the important topics of the world, such as sustainability, mental health, human rights, arts and passions, and more. Through our clothing products, we will educate and create a culture of understanding through art.