A Framework for Building Democracy

Democracy is how we share power in a free society. It is not one thing or one idea. It is a stack of values, principles, and practices that together align our beliefs in self-determination, self-government, pluralism, and interdependence with processes that ensure our civic life is fair, trusted, and joyous and that our collective efforts of leadership and participation produce systems that are shaped by the same values and principles.

See the collection of Partners & Projects that serves to create and use leverage for healing and rebuilding across all nine of these dimensions.

ALTITUDES OF ACTION

1. Culture: Promote and provide regular, repeatable civic practices and experiences that reinforce the underlying cultural values necessary to reweave our social fabric and strengthen the democratic cultural foundation of American society.
   1. Including providing infrastructure to support and encourage civic experiences built on an organizing model that reflects modern life
2. Processes: Support communities and campaigns that seek to reform and transform how we express this democratic culture in our political processes.
   1. Including providing infrastructure to ensure that our leaders and campaigns interface and engage communities in ways that support the civic experiences layer and organizing model and communicate in ways that leverage and respect the way communities tell stories, build culture, and activate in daily life
3. Policy & Practice: Support leaders and policies that seek to demonstrate these principles in action in systems that deliver on the core promises of our shared democratic values and ensure our collective thriving.

HORIZONS OF ACTION

1. Immeditate: Immediate/direct actions and campaigns focused on current leadership and interventions in current systems to make them more effective or less cruel
2. Next cycle: Multi-cycle commitments to communities and interventions
3. Next decade: Generational cultural and systematic changes

PRIORITY COMMUNITIES 

1. 70% of the adults in America did not vote for President Trump, and a meaningful percentage who did would have preferred a different kind of leader – entirely independent of partisanship or policy. This massive majority can be engaged in a re-commitment to the values and principles of democratic culture despite different languages and different histories 
2. Use the theory of human values to link disparate groups from the top half and lower left quadrants into a tight fabric of powerful intra-community bonds and inter-community bridges capable of supporting a broad range of creativity and ideas