The Ordinary Work That Holds a City Together

 

Every month, on a Friday morning in Indianapolis, something happens that most people will never see.

There’s no press release. No ribbon cutting. No applause. Just a folding table covered in flyers, a crockpot of homemade food, and sixty or so people from across the city—pastors, nonprofit staff, neighborhood organizers, public servants, social workers, a few government employees, sometimes someone’s cousin who just heard it was worth coming.

It’s called the HOPE Team, short for Helping Others Prosper Economically. It’s led by a woman named Kim Boyd.

And if you want to understand what community looks like when government and institutions forget, you start with her.

Kim has been running HOPE for over twenty years. There’s no big foundation money behind it. No consultant. No budget line. Just consistency—month after month, year after year, she gathers the people who still believe that neighbors can solve problems faster than bureaucracy can.

Each meeting starts the same way: everyone goes around the room, says their name, and where they’re from. You hear everything from “Assistant Director, City of Indianapolis” to “IMPD Chaplain” to “I’m just here to help.”

Then the stack of flyers comes out. On the back table there’s everything from free health clinics to housing resources to reentry programs to addiction services to job fairs. It’s ten pages of real opportunity, the kind of information that doesn’t go viral but keeps people alive.

After the updates, there’s a speaker. Someone will talk about a new initiative or a community crisis or a success story. The camera in the back films it for public access television. Not for prestige, but so someone at home who can’t attend can still feel connected.

And every single time, Kim stands up at the end to remind people that the meeting is only the tip of the iceberg. The real work happens between meetings—in phone calls, porch visits, shared spreadsheets, and text chains.

I first came to a HOPE meeting early in this campaign. What struck me wasn’t just the coordination, but it was the spirit. These weren’t people waiting for permission. These were people who’d been holding this city together quietly while the rest of the system looked away.

There’s a saying that politics is about who shows up. Kim Boyd shows up and and brings sixty others with her.

When the government shutdown hit and food stamps were about to lapse, she didn’t issue a statement. She started calling.
She began compiling a list of every church, pantry, and community group that could help fill the gap. I built a parallel tracker for my campaign to share what we were hearing on the doors and soon, we were exchanging information back and forth in real time.

That’s what community looks like: collaboration without ego. Kim doesn’t care whose logo is on the flier. She cares if someone eats.

To me, she represents the kind of leadership we desperately need more of. Not positional power, but connective power. Not the kind that shows up for a photo, but the kind that knows every name in the room and every gap in the system.

We talk a lot in politics about “meeting people where they are.” But the truth is, Kim never had to meet people where they were. She was already there.

She’s the living refutation of performative outreach—the proof that when you’re truly in community, you don’t have to descend from some perch of privilege to find people. You’re already walking beside them.

If we had a hundred Kim Boyds in every city, we’d have stronger neighborhoods and a more humane politics. Because Kim reminds me—every time I see her work—that the most extraordinary people in this country are usually the ones no one writes about.

They’re the glue. The bridge. The connective tissue.
 

They are what make democracy feel local, not theoretical.

And maybe, in a moment where cynicism feels like the default, what our politics needs most isn’t another national savior or viral slogan. Maybe it just needs more rooms like that one, filled with people who believe the work is worth doing even when no one’s watching.