In the aftermath of a sharply polarizing election, it’s more important than ever to focus on the foundational aspects of our community.
Since 2020, I’ve found myself increasingly disillusioned with American politics. I felt increasingly as though I lived in a media and political environment that left me powerless and passive as politicians and other power brokers in Washington D.C. made decisions about which I could only voice my opinion through a visit to the ballot box every two years.
And I’m clearly not the only one who feels like this. In the last election, we saw increasing cynicism and dissatisfaction with our national politics. Our political system does not feel like it works for us. We are at a point where no matter who wins a national election, a substantial portion of people will feel shut out, in a government they feel does not represent them.
While I can’t pinpoint any singular cause of what plagues our nation, I believe that part of the problem is our focus on national politics to the exclusion of our local communities. We know more about the personal lives of politicians in Washington than the policy decisions in our own city that impact us most directly.
But more than just being disconnected from the politics of our communities, we are disconnected from the life of our communities. Modern society, abetted by social media, encourages us to seclude ourselves from our neighbors in increasingly stagnant and constrained echo chambers. It’s no surprise that our politics imitate that same sluggishness and disconnection.
I can’t offer a perfect solution to these problems. But I believe I found a starting point through my experiences with the Garfield Community Farm.
Random interactions: a revolutionary concept
Started by the Open Door Presbyterian Church in 2009 but now an independent nonprofit, the Garfield Community Farm consists of two acres in the shadow of the Garfield neighborhood water tower.
Built atop the foundations of previous neighborhood buildings, you can still find bricks and other remnants of the old construction in places just beneath the upper layer of soil. Walking up wooden steps built into the earth transports you to a circular, decorative garden, with a small amphitheater for events on one side and a shed with an Octavia Butler mural on the other. Further up the path you find layers of crop fields, a chicken coop, greenhouses and even a space where goats co-owned by community members sojourn in the off-season.
But more than just being disconnected from the politics of our communities, we are disconnected from the life of our communities.
Depending on the time of day and year, you may hear the shouts of children, the chatter of volunteers and staff, an outdoor mass, or simply the dense quiet of nature.
I was introduced to the farm in 2019, invited by a friend. Initially, the experience seems modest — the people coordinating the volunteer night help you find a task, whether that be weeding, shoveling wood chips, or turning compost — and set you free to do it, either on your own or with others.
But in an increasingly stagnant, gray and screen-bound world, working my body and breaking through the soil lends a refreshing change of pace, bringing me into contact with nature.
The work also brings me in contact with other people. People my own age, people younger and older. Some with careers like mine, some in jobs and positions vastly different. I’ve met a self-identified anarchist, a teenager who talks excitedly about the benefits of communism, an elderly gay Christian living with AIDS, an individual who recently had to flee an abusive relationship, a person who lives with fibromyalgia and chronic pain and many others I’d have been unlikely to encounter in the ordinary rhythms of my life. But here we’re coming together for the common purpose of making this burst of green in the city a nicer place. Through that common ground we get to know and befriend each other in turn — a phenomenon common in previous generations, but so rare as to seem revolutionary now.
An alternative to spectacle
I was hooked. I kept showing up religiously from the moment the weekly volunteer nights started to when they ended at sunset. I marked the calendar for when the volunteer season ended and when it started again. I helped to organize a group chat for regular volunteers, and started inviting others to join me.
Over time, my engagement with the farm deepened. I attended more events beyond the regular Thursday meetups. I donated money and tools. I helped organize additional volunteer events. In other volunteer or pro-social spaces, I took the lessons learned with me from the farm, using them as a point of reference when asking myself, “What is needed to make this a stronger, and more vibrant space?”
I was hooked. I kept showing up religiously from the moment the weekly volunteer nights started to when they ended at sunset.
What I experienced changed me. When I first started coming to the farm, I struggled with self-confidence and loneliness, mired in recurring cycles of depression. And while I can’t attribute all the growth I’ve done over the past five years to the farm, the farm contributed.
At the farm, I was able to make meaningful contributions to something larger than myself, and see those contributions appreciated. I developed friendships that extended beyond the farm and filled the social holes in my life. And as my engagement deepened, I surprised myself with the confidence and charisma I showed in bringing others to the farm and influencing its growth. I felt like a valued and important member of the community, at a cost of just two or three hours a week.
This, I believe, is part of the solution to our national malaise. Trained on media fixed on the spectacular, we seek dramatic solutions to the problems of our national life. Yet because we are each just one small part of a much larger national organism, we find ourselves individually unable to nudge our national trajectory in any meaningful way. Our efforts frustrated, we become discouraged and cynical. We disengage.
To feel that our efforts make a difference, we need to see them make a difference. We can’t do that on a national level. But we can do that in our communities. At the farm, I see the fruits of my efforts. I see the piles of mulch moved, the tools I donate used, how the other volunteers and staff remember and appreciate my contributions.
My efforts aren’t anything more than modest. But the beauty of a volunteer space like the farm is that, if you have the capacity to pull weeds or shovel woodchips, you will make a difference.
And over time, we ourselves become better citizens.
Small actions can ripple into movements
One of the people I met through the farm, who had the most profound impact on me, was a teenager who grew up in the surrounding neighborhood. Sharp-witted, energetic and unconventional in a way I related to, I came to look forward to them joining us on our volunteer activities. During that time, I’d listen to them tell me about their life, the purported benefits of communism, and what strange things they and their friends did. I learned about how they lived with their grandma, and how they wanted to do more extracurriculars but the neighborhood buses weren’t reliable enough to get them to those extracurriculars. A few times, I got the opportunity to give them advice on some of their own challenges.
During adolescence, I was someone who struggled with feelings of low self-worth, and often felt an acute absence of healthy role models. The opportunity to offer validation and guidance, in whatever limited fashion, to someone like myself, but in a considerably different context, was profoundly moving and eye-opening. The act of doing something tangible for people you don’t otherwise know, people you might not always agree with but who are tied to the same space as you are, changes you. It turns your attention away from your own personal concerns and to the concerns of the larger community, in a way that reading a newspaper or social media post cannot.
But it is not just about being personally changed — it is also about the way that efforts in our own communities cascade and ripple out into the larger body politic.
History shows us the power of community action. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s sprouted up from the fertile soil laid by countless churches, grassroots movements and community organizations. These organizations consisted of people far more profoundly disconnected from public life than we are today. By supporting their own communities, they strengthened them and built connections with others, through efforts such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or the Freedom Riders. Over time, these efforts multiplied, building momentum and moving forward with an inertia that crested with the passage of landmark legislation including the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
From left, Sam Smith, Len Rial, Cecilia Oliveros, Max Chis, Claudia Newell and Isa Villegas at Garfield Community Farm in November 2024. (Photo courtesy of Max Chis) 
From left, Garfield Community Farm volunteers Max Chis, Bre Stanton, AJ Monsma, and Russ Thorsen working on setting up a new farm fence gate in the rain in 2024. (Photo courtesy Max Chis) 
Max Chis poses in a green house on Jan. 25, at Garfield Community Garden in Garfield. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource)
Critically, changes like this do not even need to start from an explicitly political space. The sheer act of getting to know and support your neighbors builds networks of connection and trust. Those networks can be leveraged to have a magnified effect, not only because you are connected to each other, but because you know, intimately, what your own community needs.
As individuals, our ability to influence our city of 300,000, much less a nation of 300 million, is limited. But perhaps the solutions we need do not come from the top. Perhaps they start at the earth beneath our feet, in spaces like the Garfield Community Farm, where we can rebuild the connections to our own communities that modern life has fractured. If we make a difference in our community, we move the needle on our nation. In larger networks of like-minded people, our influence multiplies into national change. As our national motto says, “E Pluribus Unum”: Out of Many, One.
Max Chis is the Lead Software Engineer for the Police Data Accessibility Project and can be reached at maxachis@gmail.com.
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