In this paper, the author talks about community building and the power of active listening. Active listening is a particular kind of listening that requires conscious effort; it is a type of listening that some rarely practice and sometimes is virtually absent from classroom interactions. Thus active listening itself may be deceptively simple until one considers what it entails. The author focuses on these four goals: (1) to encourage one to think of the time one has as an opportunity for community building; (2) to disrupt conventional notions of building community and introduce the concept of critical community building by highlighting various definitions of community; (3) to provide strategies for building critical communities; and (4) to inspire people to continue discussions about community building and ideally take actions toward building critical communities in their lives. The author argues that it is important for social justice educators to promote "critical" communities. The term critical is derived from progressive forms of critical theory. She contends that critical communities are essential to sustaining social justice efforts. (Contains 10 notes.)