The Nine Revolutions of 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.
ALTITUDES OF ACTION
- 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 foundations of American society including providing infrastructure to support and encourage civic experiences built on an organizing model that more accurately reflects modern life.
- Process & Procedure: Support communities and campaigns that seek to reform and transform how we express this democratic culture in our political processes 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.
- 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 continue to ensure our collective solidarity and productive, joyous civic life.
HORIZONS OF ACTION
- Immeditate: Immediate/direct actions and campaigns focused on current leadership and interventions in current systems to make them more effective or less cruel
- Next cycle: Multi-cycle commitments to communities and interventions
- Next decade: Generational cultural and systematic changes
THE NINE REVOLUTIONS
1a. Basic deradicalization and reweaving of our social fabric
2a. Establishing new, healthier, regular civic rituals
3a. Renewing trust and social solidarity built on and with shared civic power
1b. Codifying healthy traditions
2b. Reforming accessible and participatory elections
3b. Expanding responsive and accountable governance
1c. Elect reformers
2c. Reshape parties
3c. Refine structures of power around resilient coalition government
Read more about The Nine Revolutions
PRIORITY COMMUNITIES
- 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
- 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