American civic infrastructure has broken down, and the hopelessness spreading across the country is a predictable consequence of a fifty-year campaign to dismantle democratic power. This essay is about the antidote: being a builder. Not as motivational slogan, but as the only response that has ever actually worked when systems fail. What it takes to be the person who does repair work, what it costs, why it’s hard, and why nobody else is coming to do it for us.
