Today, the Automotive Free Clinic is a pay-what-you-can auto repair shop in Prattville, just outside Montgomery. The shop has one certified technician — Henson — and an army of volunteers who work in the shop, fix their own cars, create content for the shop’s newsletter, fundraise, and do any number of other things. The shop’s customers are primarily community members and relations, who generally pay at-cost for parts and on a sliding scale for labor. Most donate the full cost of the repairs, Henson says. To date, the shop has repaired over 100 cars. Its success is beyond what Henson imagined.

There’s another dimension to the AFC for the people who volunteer there. Car culture in Alabama, as in most places, is deeply tied to traditional masculinity and reactionary politics. So the AFC is a place to confront toxic masculinity and change the nature of work. Because of the culture of Alabama, the project is not explicit about its leftist politics and doesn’t do much in the way of conventional political organizing, allowing it to engage with and retain volunteers from a wide spectrum of ideologies, including unrepentant Trump supporters. But, quietly, for some of its volunteers, the AFC is a chance to turn theory into reality. When people ask Henson about his communist ideas, he just points to the shop. “We’re living communism,” he says with a shrug.