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Here are a few noteworthy resources for newcomers to a growing philanthropic movement to heal the country’s fractures, strengthen democracy and community bonds, and address a culture that breeds division.
1.
“Hidden Brain,” the podcast by former NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam, recently devoted five episodes to the psychology behind polarization and how we form our political beliefs. Here’s the first episode: Series guests included psychologist Peter Coleman, author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, and Robb Willer, director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford.
2.
The 2020 “Our Common Purpose” report by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences is a fix-it guide for democracy. Its 31 recommendations target electoral and governance institutions — the U.S. House of Representatives and the Supreme Court among them — and call for building a “civic infrastructure.” That idea led to the Trust for Civic Life, a donor collaborative that launched this year to fund work in small towns and rural places.
Philanthropist Stephen Bechtel Jr. helped launch and fund the commission that produced the report. Commission co-chairs were Harvard scholar Danielle Allen, president of Partners in Democracy; Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and Citizen University CEO Eric Liu.
3.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt — founder of the Constructive Dialogue Institute and author of The Coddling of the American Mind — has researched and talked about the country’s divides for more than 15 years. Among his touchstone discussions: A 2008 TED Talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives (more than 4 million views) and his more recent Atlantic piece “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” (think social media).
The institute also has a resource library with tools, webinars, and exercises.
4.
The Center for Effective Philanthropy and Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) ran a six-part series of essays, “Complicating the Narrative on Bridging and Division.” Eric Ward, who’s now with Race Forward, wrote: “Most of us spend far too little time with those who differ from us. Whether the lines are drawn by race, income, ideology, geography, religion, or national origin, we barely know each other.”
Other essayists: PACE’s Kristen Cambell, Claudia Cummings of the Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, David Eisner of the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, Wendy Feliz of the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council, and Andrew Hanauer of the One America Movement.
5.
The Dignity Index — created by the nonprofit Unite, founded by Special Olympics chair Tim Shriver — charts language on an eight-point scale from constructive and trust-building to likely to spark violence. Unite tested the index this fall, scoring political rhetoric in Utah’s elections to mixed results.
6.
The Social Capital Campaign aims to promote social networks that create belonging, relationships, and meaning. Its white paper “A Civil Society” explores polarization and the decline of trust and points to solutions that include investment in small, local nonprofits — “the lifeblood of local charity and social capital building.”
The campaign, led by former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, draws on the ideas of the Social Capital Project led by Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee in the House of Representatives.
7.
TED Talks has a “playlist” of more than 100 discussions of democracy — how to build it, renew it, fix it. Sofia Ongele of Gen-Z for Change — which aims to use social media to drive social change — urged young people to engage politically using their creative talents. One example: When Virginia set up a tip line for parents to report “critical race theory” in schools, Ongele wrote code that allowed people to send song lyrics from The Bee Movie.
8.
The Council on Foundations, whose upcoming annual conference will feature workshops for grant makers to work across divides, is running a “Dialogue Across Difference” series featuring essays by philanthropy and nonprofit leaders. Ali Noorani, head of the program at the Hewlett Foundation, writes: “In this era of severe polarization, we don’t realize our institutions — our relationships — have been weaponized in service of political agendas.” Other bloggers have included social-justice advocate Janet Ekezie and the Walmart Foundation’s Kathleen McLaughlin.
9.
Several organizations offer guides for grant makers:
Candid hosts a database of foundation grants that aim to strengthen democracy. At last look, it includes nearly $16 billion in grants from almost 16,000 grant makers — money going to change campaigns and elections, increase civic participation, strengthen government, and more. And the Democracy Fund recently produced “Field in Focus” from a survey of institutional grant makers about their funding related to voting and elections issues, media and disinformation, and social justice. It estimates that institutional philanthropy in these areas grew as much as 61 percent from 2017 through 2022 and will continue to climb.
10.
A Brandeis University report points to the barriers and bias faced by people with disabilities as they try to vote and engage in the country’s civic life. It found that 11 percent of disabled voters had some type of difficulty voting in 2020 and that people with disabilities voted at a 7 percent lower rate than people of the same age without disabilities.
“Civic Engagement and People With Disabilities” was produced by the university’s Lurie Institute for Disability Policy and the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy.
11.
Judy Woodruff at the PBS NewsHour is reporting a philanthropy-backed series “America at a Crossroads” examining fractures in the country. Recently, Woodruff reported on how last year’s shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., has united people in the city for gun-safety measures.
12.
The Belonging Barometer is a new survey instrument that aims to measure whether people feel valued, welcomed, and connected to their families and friends as well as in their communities and the country as a whole. A fall analysis suggests nearly one in five Americans doesn’t have a sense of belonging in any aspect of their lives. Nearly three-quarters experience what the report calls “non-belonging” in their local communities.
The barometer was developed by Over Zero and the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council.
13.
Since 1981, Vanderbilt University’s Project on Unity and American Democracy has tracked Americans’ faith and trust in their political institutions. The most recent edition of its now quarterly Unity Index shows polarization on the rise, thanks to the Israel-Hamas War, the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, and the presidential election season.
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