Michelle Wu: Hope alone can't get you through a marathon — or to a more perfect union

On Monday, I’ll take part in two time-honored mayoral traditions, commemorating Boston’s shared celebrations of Patriots’ Day and Marathon Monday. In the morning, I’ll hand a scroll to a messenger on horseback, who will set off through the North End to reenact Paul Revere’s ride from Boston to Lexington. Then I’ll join the crowds at the finish line on Boylston Street to crown our marathon winners with gold-plated wreaths crafted from olive branches.

At first glance, a rider in a tri-corner hat and 30,000 people in carbon-fiber running shoes don’t seem to have much in common. But as we mark 250 years of America, I’ve been thinking about what connects them, and why Boston keeps both traditions alive.

Both are stories of ordinary people doing things the world once thought impossible. Both show what becomes possible when a community decides to get behind something bigger than any one person. And both remind the country of something our city never forgot: Real patriotism is not preached. It is practiced — and protected — by communities.

The militia at Lexington and Concord faced long odds: Farmers and shopkeepers were up against the most powerful and successful military in the world. But the underdog victories there — and at Breed’s Hill, Chelsea Creek and Dorchester Heights — were no accident. They were the result of months of organizing, among neighbors who gathered in taverns and meeting houses because they believed a better world was worth the fight and understood they couldn’t get there alone.

Community is also what makes the marathon so special. For 130 years, people from across Greater Boston and around the world have come here to take on a course that demands more than human beings were built to give. The distance, 26.2 miles, is hard anywhere. But in Boston, the hills come late, after fatigue has arrived. The weather rarely cooperates (for training or racing). And still, year after year, runners keep coming back, because Bostonians show up on Marathon Monday like fans nowhere else on Earth.

I saw that firsthand when I arrived here as a college student. I had never experienced anything like it: an entire region turning out to cheer for people they had never met, willing total strangers right on Hereford, left on Boylston and through the finish line.

But none of it was new for Boston.

Sixty years ago Sunday, Bobbi Gibb took a four-day bus ride from San Diego, hid in the bushes near the start line in Hopkinton, and jumped onto the course after the gun went off. The Boston Athletic Association had forbidden her from registering, telling her that women were physiologically incapable of running the distance. Within a few miles, the men running around her realized she was a woman, and what was happening. But instead of calling her out to race officials, they closed ranks. They formed a human shield, making sure nobody could pull her off the course. She finished before two-thirds of the field.

As federal leaders come after our neighbors and abandon the values Revere risked his life for, look to the revolution and the marathon for evidence that when individual effort isn’t enough, community is still the answer.

Community made the difference between American farmers and British soldiers and community helped Bobbi Gibb make history. And on Monday, community — lining Beacon, Commonwealth, Hereford and Boylston more than 10 deep — will propel runners through the hardest miles.

As federal leaders come after our neighbors and abandon the values Revere risked his life for, look to the revolution and the marathon for evidence that when individual effort isn’t enough, community is still the answer. Community is the reason we work every day to make Boston the safest major city in the country and the best place to raise a family. And community is the reason we will never back down from who we are and what we believe in.

These days, the finish line for a more perfect union can feel like it’s moving farther and farther away. But every runner knows that hope alone won’t get you through a marathon, and every revolutionary knows the same. Progress has always come from people willing to do the work together, over the long haul.

So on Patriots’ Day, get outside and cheer on our runners. You’ll be in good company.