When Government Works

Given the world news this week, I had second thoughts about sending this out. However, now more than ever we need to focus on our local community for our needs, perhaps all our needs in the future. Our support comes from our immediate environment—both the land itself and the people.  This is where we need to place our energy, this is where our responsibility lies.  April 5th 2025

I live in the mountains of Umbria, on forested land off a long and winding mountain road. But we are still considered part of the comune—the municipality—of Assisi, though the absolute periphery. Assisi maintains our roads, our schools, the hospital... but out in the mountains we have little contact with the government. Though there is the occasional town meeting at the village church to discuss local issues with the mayor, most of our day-to-day relationships are with our neighbors. Those discussions revolve around the more important issues: the weather, what we are planting, and does anyone know a good plumber? But recently we talk only of the rain and the mudslides. Recently the small river which runs through the bottom of our land and down into Assisi has overflowed its banks in numerous places - one time ultimately flooding the radiology department all the way down at our hospital. For the most part, however, the hillsides along the road are heavily planted in blackberries and oak trees which hold the soil from erosion. But we also have rocky farmland—a thin but rich substrate of soil just deep enough for our crops, with trees sometimes sitting on top of rock shelves and boulders. And, we also have earthquakes. Sometimes rocks slide down on the road. Occasionally huge boulders are loosened, smashing down the hillside, taking crops, trees, and shrubs along with them and winding up blocking the road. We all shrug and say, at least no one was hurt and push them to the side of the road. Along our road, parts of the hillside are held back with large blocks of rock, sometimes reinforced with heavy wire. In the past I thought little about it. It was a preventive measure.

But one month ago, there was a rockslide nearby. It closed our only direct road to Assisi. For weeks now, boulders have continued to come down onto the road, which has been blockaded with barriers saying no entry. While the road belongs to the comune, the land on both sides of the rockslide—and technically the boulders—belong to our neighbors: Diego, a musician and his partner Claudia.

Ours is a dirt road, which the local government maintains... but minimally. It is a bit rugged in spots—but we all like it that way. It keeps the tourists away and, as all of us have animals, it slows down any potentially fast drivers. To get to Assisi now we can take another roundabout country road to a fairly unexciting highway—but it adds both time and emissions to the drive. We all want and need the road re-opened.

The Assisi government sent Diego a letter saying that the comune would clear the road, fixing any damage but that the property owners were responsible to stabilize the situation, as the eroded land belongs to them. The estimated cost to our friends would be 24,000 euros… money they don’t have. And the directive was to clear and stabilize everything within the month. This was a great expense and an unreasonable time frame for Diego. After receiving this notice, they called the comune and requested a meeting to discuss the situation. They were given a time the following week with the mayor and the involved officials. So, on Tuesday, my partner and I went with Diego and Claudia to the meeting at the mayor’s office. We are neighbors but we are also supportive friends... when they asked us to go with them, we said of course. But honestly, we have a vested interest. It's our road too.

We were shown into a large and very formal conference room with an enormous table. The first thing I noticed was that after greetings and introductions, everyone sat down together at one corner of the conference table... our friends, two deputies and the mayor. Not at opposite sides of the table as they do in all the movies about litigation. Our friends were nervous, but they showed none of it and came prepared. Diego explained that the amount the comune estimated for stabilizing the situation was much more than he was able to pay - and that the estimates seemed higher than necessary. Claudia did most of the talking initially; she was gentle but to the point - armed with photographs, their technician's estimates, logic and charm. As our friends spoke, the deputies were polite, listened attentively, and looked at all the photos. They leaned in toward them, their body language showing their interest. I just sat in amazed silence watching our friends and the Assisi government working together. The resistance we anticipated in dealing with "the government" wasn't developing.

Our friends made their major point that the road was essential for both work and access to Assisi by our community; that they relied on it for their students and concerts. It also joined two villages and two major roads. (Well, major for our area.) Both sides came with a report on the state of the hillside and estimates. Our friends' estimate for the needed work was far less than that of the comune. (They were dealing with workers they knew.) The mayor looked at the report, said that he knew the excavator who made Diego's estimate and, seeing that the price was far lower, suggested they speak with him. Which they did, right then, with everyone in on the cellphone call. (First photo) After listening to the excavator's explanation, the deputies agreed to his doing the work at the lower price. They also agreed that a 30-day time frame was unrealistic given the scope of the work and the weather at this time of year. Slowly, with each gentle back and forth, the tension I saw initially in Diego's body dissipated. Finally, the comune offered to split the lower cost and everyone lightened up. We had reached an accord. Then we all shook hands, said our usual “un piacere” (a pleasure), and ended the meeting.

It was a revelation for Phil and me—two ex-pat Americans—to see this kind of cooperation and responsiveness from the government, particularly in a dispute over money. It was clear that everyone involved seemed focused primarily on solving the problem and coming to a resolution with which all could be satisfied. The concern was about the best way to fix the erosion, to stabilize the hillside, and how all of us shared responsibility. The only way this could be accomplished was by listening. No one was discussing who was right. There were no accusations. No demands. I saw a real desire by the deputies to truly understand what it was that the property owners needed and wanted. And our friends, in turn, listened equally hard to understand who was responsible for the road, for the erosion, for cleanup and for further prevention. And why. It never felt adversarial. It felt like a group looking for commonality.

Thinking about the experience, I believe it comes down to more than just listening. Having grown up in various protest movements in American cities, I was habituated to unconditional demands, to shouting and fighting, to walking into meetings with both guns blazing. The American government has been about money and power speaking the loudest, devastating the other side while making as much noise as possible to distract from the real issues. What was happening in the mayor's office was that all five people at that table were there to find common ground. Admittedly, the meeting was at a local level, a personal level, enabling common ground to be reached. But no one came in with a winner take all, scorched earth approach. They genuinely appeared to want to work things out together. I witnessed the art form of a caring compromise... finding that perfect place where everyone got enough of what they needed so no one walked away feeling beaten or taken advantage of.

In the countryside, in an emergency we depend on one another more than city services: for a ride to the emergency room or grocery shopping when neighbors are sick. Friends help with an extra pair of hands during a heavy olive harvest and the priest at the monastery next door calls when our donkeys have found an open gate and made a break for the neighboring pasture. (That happened two weeks ago.) We swap our harvest surplus and our plumbing and iron work skills. Perhaps it is because we are all farmers and we all understand that we are part of this mountain, part of the land on which we depend. None of us see ourselves as more important than one another, more important than this mountain on which we live. We recognize that we are all in this together, part of the fabric of the whole; what affects my neighbor affects me. At first it seemed remarkable that the mayor of one of the most visited cities in Europe would understand this and take the time to resolve this issue. But, in fact, most of what is considered the comune of Assisi is rural, the city itself is a very small part. Its food and water - and most of its B&B's for tourists - are in the countryside. There is a core recognition that we are all connected, all interdependent.

I saw this throughout Italy during the first surge of Covid. Masks were required; vaccines were not. No one was disputing one's right to not have the vaccine but we could not enter a public place without a mask... and no one tried. (However, it should be noted that the vaccination rate in Italy eventually approached 90 percent.) Even in the local supermarket, in the outback of our province, there was someone taking our temperature and checking that we had gloves and masks on before entering the store. To enter a bank, the hospital or a doctor's office, the pharmacy, we waited—two meters apart in the street outside. Cafes and restaurants went out of business but no one protested the rules. No one put the economy over our health.

I came to understand that neither our Covid rules and responses nor the meeting at mayor's office was about winning, or individual rights, or refuting the opposite point of view, or, ultimately, destroying the other team. It was about making a dangerous situation safe for everyone. The eroding hillside did indeed belong to someone but the road connecting two villages and access to the main road to the city belonged to us all. But larger than that was the issue of responsibility—a strong sense of our responsibility to one another as well as the government's responsibility to all its people. I think of the motto of the French revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité, but especially the word fraternity—which meant that everyone was united, everyone was together in the struggle. The best possible interactions with neighbors, or with the government, are predicated on the understanding that we are all in this together.

© www.thesubversivefarmer.com April 2025

In a previous lifetime, Zia Gallina worked as a botanist for the National Parks Service, on the C&O Canal outside of Washington D.C. (lecturing on wild indigenous and naturalized medicinal and culinary plants). She was also an adjunct professor teaching biology and environmental science at American University, Washington D.C. But she has always been a champion of small-scale biointensive farming, tagging along behind Mother Nature, trying to stay as close as she can get.