The Citizens' Revival Is Already Happening (And This Is What It Looks Like)

 A love letter to the builders, neighbors and quiet revolutionaries who are stitching a new world into being, right where they stand.

I want you to picture something with me: It’s a Tuesday evening, and somewhere in your town, a group of people isn’t scrolling through bad news. They’re gathered in a church basement that smells of soil and solder, passing around a broken toaster. A teenager shows a retired engineer how to re-wire it. The repair becomes a small act of independence in a culture that treats everything as disposable.

A few blocks over, in a formerly vacant lot, the scent of basil and ripe tomatoes mixes with the sound of laughter. That lot, now a community garden, feeds people while also doubling as a classroom, a pharmacy and a shared pantry for anyone who passes by. This is the Citizens’ Revival.

For too long, we’ve been told our power begins and ends with our wallets. So we boycott this or spend elsewhere instead. But what if our real power lies in becoming producers, neighbors and stewards again? What if the escape from the corporate labyrinth is less about finding an exit and more about building a more beautiful home right inside it? 

The Citizens’ Revival is built on a simple, discerning question: Where does your deepest care meet your immediate ability to act? 

Let’s walk through what that can look like.

Maybe your sphere of influence starts at your own doorstep and ripples to the folks next door. You revive the ancient art of neighboring and formalize it into a Care Pod—a pact with a few households to share tools, watch kids and be each other’s first call. You practice financial localism by turning your weekly budget into a game: how much life can I fuel within 50 miles? You meet local bakers, ceramicists, beekeepers and the mechanic who can fix anything. Your money circulates like nutrients through the soil of the community.

From there, the social fabric thickens the spaces where trust becomes tangible and spendable. You start a front porch tradition where the only agenda is presence. You join a time bank where you trade your graphic design skills hour-for-hour with a neighbor’s plumbing expertise, and in doing so, you contribute toward building an economy grounded in reciprocity. Perhaps you help steward a community fridge on a busy corner where surplus turns into solidarity and anyone can eat.

Then attention shifts to the structures themselves. You attend a Budget Bootcamp to learn the language of municipal finance, because you can't change what you don't understand. You realize power confined to just the the mayor's office, so you sit in on library board meetings, planning commission hearings and water district votes. These low offices shape what gets built, what gets preserved and what local children will inherit. They need people who care enough to show up. So you run. Or you apply. You take a seat at the table where the rules can be made—or changed.

For some, the work stretches further into the future. You join the century-old Rotary Club and channel its trust and resources toward a solar co-op or a community land trust. You become the local journalist for the river behind your house, sending out a simple newsletter that turns a forgotten waterway into a shared responsibility. You organize seed swaps and protect genetic diversity, tending the foundations of food sovereignty.

This is the vibrant, messy, beautiful mosaic of the revival. It’s unfolding in Northern New Mexico, where I’m helping weave these threads together for a gathering next year. It’s unfolding in countless towns where people anchor their citizenship to a patch of ground and the people who share it.

The grip of corporate America is strong, but it relies on our isolation, our abstraction and our belief that we are only consumers. It cannot compete with the irresistible force of a community that is fed by its own gardens, enriched by its own repairs, governed by its own neighbors and celebrated in its own stories. 

So, the invitation is simple: Do more than you have done before. Look at your one wild and precious sphere of influence—your block, your skill, your passion, your meeting hall—and ask, "What can we build here, together, that makes the old, extractive ways irrelevant?" 

The blueprint lives in the soil, in the repaired toaster, in the updated zoning code and in the shared meal. The Citizens’ Revival is already underway. So, pull up a chair—the table is being built as we speak.