Business and Democracy

“Capitalism can’t work without well-functioning governments that design rules to enable innovation and markets, ensure competition, and address social problems.” — Anat Admati, Stanford Economist & Business School Professor

The research is clear: democracy is good for business. Democracy is not a particular set of policy positions—right or left—but rather a remarkably well-suited system of government within which businesses can thrive. Rather than having to worry about a mercurial autocrat playing favorites and picking winners, in a democracy businesses can focus on innovation and competition in the marketplace.

Business has a vested interest in ensuring the stability of our system of government, and in keeping a broad array of consumers engaged. The case studies below offer a roadmap for doing just that. 

Pillars of Support

Pillars of Support are the groups and institutions that maintain a social or political system. They are the avenues through which power flows up from the people to political leaders. We are all embedded in various pillars of support, from the businesses where we work to the faith communities where we worship. And that embeddedness gives every one of us influence over our larger political system.

Businesses—and their executive leaders, board members, investors, and employees—have a key role to play in determining whether America’s system of government remains tied to traditions of rule of law and freedom. The cases below offer both historic and international examples of businesses working in tandem with other “pillars of support” to uphold democracy.

External Resources

Recognizing and Countering Authoritarian Threats to Democracy: What Role for Business? By Elizabeth Doty and Professor Daniel Kinderman

Alison Taylor ‘How business can do the right thing in a turbulent world’ podcast episode by The New Abnormal

The Importance of Corporate Political Responsibility by Andrew Winston, Elizabeth Doty, and Thomas Lyon

How Can Business Solve America’s Democracy Crisis? Podcast episode by Leadership Now Project

Case Studies

Small Businesses Fuel the Fight for Freedom in Ukraine 

*By Claire Trilling

A central part of Ukraine’s successful “Orange Revolution” was the sustained nonviolent occupation of Independence Square in Kyiv, which drew millions of participants. Small and medium-sized businesses provided much of the funding and the food and clothing which sustained the protest through the freezing temperatures of the Ukrainian winter. This support was organized through a student-led group named “Pora” who had built specific sections for fundraising and financial management into their organizational structure to facilitate the flow of donations from domestic partners. Outside of Kyiv, small- and medium-sized businesses participated in local strikes. Larger business organizations also provided critical support by throwing their weight behind opposition candidates and publicly supporting the movement. The example of Ukraine’s business community demonstrates that businesses and activist groups should work to build relationships ahead of time so, when a major mobilization comes, the streams of funding are already in place to support it.

Venezuelan Businesses Fight a Rising Dictator 

*By Claire Trilling

In response to the rapid deterioration of democracy in Venezuela, initiated in part by overhauling the oil industry and land expropriation processes, the Venezuelan business community activated the fledgling opposition movement. Organizing alongside labor, church groups, and a wide spectrum of political parties, they initiated several nation-wide strikes and regular marches. The strikes initially raised morale and momentum for the opposition, but after a strike on the oil sector led to a change in government and subsequent coup, the final result was Chávez’s re-installment and heightened levels of polarization in the country. 

Wisconsin Business Leaders Ensure Fair Elections

*By Louis Pascarella

In 2020, a bipartisan group of Wisconsin business leaders, concerned by unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election, formed an association to protect voting rights and democratic institutions: the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy. The association initially focused on encouraging civic engagement in the business sector and sending letters of support to Wisconsin election officials, legitimizing the electoral system and dismissing partisan attacks based on false claims of voter fraud. During the 2022 gubernatorial election and the 2023 WI Supreme Court election, the association publicized any candidate’s refusal to commit to democratic norms. With this public role, the association signaled the business community’s demands for a free and fair election that respected the choices of the people of Wisconsin. With their help, both elections proceeded with little issue.

German Businesses Defend Democracy and Fight Extremism

*By Louis Pascarella

Given Germany’s history of Nazism, business leaders there are particularly sensitive to the importance of speaking out against anti-democratic forces, recently the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party. German business leaders have engaged in several actions to strengthen democracy, including: 

1. The “Unity, Justice, and Liberty” campaign: an attempt to dissuade association employees and members of the public from voting for the AfD in the 2017 legislative elections.
2. The Europeworks campaign: which highlighted the importance of European integration and the role of immigration in building a strong German economy.
3. Welcome Saxony: opposing the autocratic right by providing association members educational employee training on several relevant topics, such as multiculturalism in the workplace, Neo-Nazism and the new right in Saxony, and fake news, conspiracy theories, and democracy. 

Leaders in the German business community have also spoken out against rising authoritarianism and condemned xenophobia and hate associated with the far-right.

Check My Ads Illuminates Authoritarian Advertising 

*By Louis Pascarella

Many advertisers are unwittingly funding groups tied to misinformation and hate. As there is no straightforward way to ensure that advertisements do not appear on controversial platforms, the Check My Ads Institute has been transforming the adtech industry through their educational newsletter, Branded, and social media work where they demand action and bring awareness to prominent issues in the adtech space. Through this multi pronged approach, Check My Ads has been able to defund and/or deplatform some of the biggest names in conspiracy theories and authoritarianism in the United States and publicly call out advertising hosts.

A Missouri Chamber of Commerce Speaks up For Their Community

*By Louis Pascarella

In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations, members of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce (JACC) in Missouri chose to speak out. In a critical and candid op-ed, Chamber head Tobias Teeter condemned systemic racism, indicated support for the BLM movement, and pledged to address inequities in the Chamber of Commerce and its member businesses. When the Chamber refused to bow to the many threats which followed, the local community rallied behind them, demonstrating their support through a Unity Walk and raising funds to pay for chamber of commerce membership dues of Black businesses. As a result, the representation of Black owned businesses within the JACC sharply increased and Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) projects were instituted. Infused with new members and forming new connections with the broader community, the JACC demonstrates how democracy building can benefit both business and local organizers.

Dive Deeper

For the full version of these cases and others, check out this document.

Artistic and cultural processes are uniquely well-suited to address our current challenges of democratic decline and rising authoritarianism because they engage us cognitively, emotionally, sensorily, and, in some cases, spiritually. They can be crafted to cultivate the relationships and understandings needed for effective movement-building to resist current systems of oppression, to mobilize masses to stand up for our values, and to inspire people to come together to build our shared future. When we align the arts, cultural work and pro-democracy organizing, we enliven our sensibilities – sense of justice; sense of humor; sense of beauty; sense of integrity – and energize us to work with conviction, creativity and compassion.

Successful pro-democracy movements involve a wide range of sectors and actors who play different roles, with diverse insights and practices that arise from a variety of disciplines, organizing traditions, lived experiences and modes of knowing. Horizons is committed to supporting these many actors to come together to build the relational infrastructure to bolster democracy and confront the global rise of authoritarianism. We believe this will take a whole-of-system approach, taking into account the multiple forces contributing to democratic decline and amplifying the many bright spots that are fostering societal repair and democratic renewal. Arts and cultural work are an integral part of this pro-democracy ecosystem, with unique approaches to energize movements and actors to be nourished, supported, lifted up, and linked together in mutually reinforcing ways.

The following resources were curated by the Horizons Project in collaboration with Cindy Cohen, Senior Fellow with IMPACT, Inc. Launched in 2022, IMPACT, Inc. advocates for arts and culture to transform conflict and build more creative, inclusive societies. With a global network of doers, thinkers and influencers, IMPACT brings people together through events and platforms, and raises awareness of diverse voices and contexts. IMPACT, Inc. supports those delivering impactful work through capacity building, making connections and creating opportunities for sharing practice and learning. 

The resources listed and described here are by no means comprehensive; instead, they are meant to suggest the breadth and depth of work being done at the intersection of arts, culture and inclusive democracy. If you would like to suggest additional themes or resources, please contact us at [email protected].

1. Mobilizing voters

Elections matter, and yet we know that modern autocratic regimes are often democratically elected. Countering authoritarianism in the US therefore involves much more than electoral politics. Nevertheless, the need to mobilize people to vote, and to vote for candidates that uphold democratic principles, is an urgent and indispensable part of a multipronged strategy. Here we highlight successful practices of engaging artists and cultural workers in mobilizing voters; as well as two examples of locally rooted initiatives involving artists and cultural workers collaborating with organizers to get out the vote in the 2022 and 2020 elections in the US.

Artists For Democracy - People For the American Way

Art has the power to change perceptions and inspire action, cutting through the noise and speaking to our hopes, fears, and dreams. Artists are working to create art across four (and possibly more!) swing states: Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. They are conveying the stakes we’re up against in this election on billboards, in radio announcements, and at public gatherings. Related article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/10/artists-for-democracy-2024.

Rock the Vote

“A nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to building the political power of young people. For 30 years, Rock the Vote has revolutionized the way we use pop culture, music, art, and technology to engage young people in politics and build our collective power. For over thirty years, it has continuously adapted to the changing landscapes of media, technology and culture to break through and empower each new generation.” 

Art for the Polls - The Center for Artistic Activism

A program of the Center for Artistic Activism that supports U.S. artists creatively engaging in the 2024 election. Art moves people, making it vital in an election year where potential voters are fatigued, frustrated, fearful, and maybe even furious. Fortunately, we know creative minds like yours can communicate hope, perseverance, and the power of collective action through evocative visual and experiential art. Online and in-person workshops provide resources and insights to help artists channel unique skills and imagination into effective civic engagement in 2024.

Voter Mobilization and the Arts, Art2Action & Animating Democracy; Andrea Assaf, Michael Rohd, and Frances Valdez

“Ongoing voter suppression, disinformation, the overturning of laws protecting women’s rights: U.S. democracy is in distress…. this session [prior to 2022 elections] explores the roles that artists can play in working together with organizers to motivate voting and civic participation, and to promote dialogue about the state of our democracy. How can artists and activists navigate their different ways of working, and how can cross-training prepare them for strong collaborations and impactful results? What creative strategies have worked best? How do organizing bodies integrate the artistic imagination, and how can artists integrate organizing principles into their work? What’s needed to animate democracy right now?” 

Artists and Cultural Workers Mobilize the Vote, Art2Action

“Houston in Action awarded 12 projects to selected artists & cultural workers to create culturally relevant artistic expressions that inspire & mobilize voter engagement. THE GOAL: To activate Youth, Black, Latinx, & Asian American communities to register & turn-out to vote in Houston, TX (and beyond!).” 

2. Bridging Differences

Pro-democracy movements require people to work together across many lines of difference to effectively organize and mobilize for change and constructively engage with conflict. To achieve the multi-racial, pluralistic and inclusive democracy we seek in the future, arts and culture can help to strengthen our collective capacity to work with those who may have opposing views; flex the muscles of dialogue and deliberation; and to find common ground to work together on shared issues of concern. Creative approaches to bridging differences can draw on qualities of deep listening, respect and presence cultivated by engaging with artistic practices and historic and cultural wisdom. 

Bridge Entertainment Labs

Bridge Entertainment Labs was created “to help reverse the trend towards deepening division in America by promoting the creation of content that humanizes political tribes to one another, develop shared cultural spaces for Americans of different backgrounds and beliefs, and fosters the societal preconditions for healthy civic debate and collaborative problem-solving.” Its founders “believe the entertainment industry has a powerful role to play in helping us overcome the ‘us versus them’ dynamics that are fracturing our country.”

Guidelines for Story Circles, John O’Neal, in Acting Together: Resources for Getting Started, pp. 3 - 5

These Guidelines offer a straightforward easy-to-implement framework for facilitating democratic story-sharing and community-building conversations, as described by a leader of the US Civil Rights movement. Listen to John O’Neal describe a specific story circle here! 

In Your Shoes™, The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics

In Your Shoes™ is a program of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University which “harnesses the power of theatrical performance, dialogue, and deep listening to surface and celebrate the rich life experiences that shape who we are and how we interact. Participants dwell ‘in each other’s shoes’ by performing each other’s words back to one another with exquisite care and creativity.” In Your Shoes™ was created and developed by acclaimed international theater-maker and educator Derek Goldman through over a decade of intensive workshops in a range of global contexts, including China, Russia, Bangladesh, and Sudan, and with diverse and often polarized university and community participants throughout the United States. 

Sojourn Theatre

Currently investigates civic discourse focusing “on how the action of theatre making can be best applied to the process of civic decision making; how creative practice can release creative collaborations and imaginative problem-solving in multi-party, cross ideological contexts.”

Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in Our Communities, January 30, 2024

An archive of the summit can be found here, including a session on Arts, Culture and Civic Infrastructure, described as: “Arts, culture, and the humanities knit the social fabric of our communities and are essential to advancing equitable outcomes. We must develop pathways for artists who are eager to work with other sectors and support them holistically in their endeavors.”

Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater, Vol 1 & Vol 2, Ben Fink

“This two-volume anthology tells the story of Roadside Theater’s first 45 years; Roadside has spent 45 years searching for what art in a democracy might look like. The anthology raises questions such as, "What are common principles and common barriers to achieving democracy across disciplines, and how can the disciplines unite in common democratic cause?” See also “Art in a democracy,” Episode 68 in ‘Cultural Democracy’ on Change the Story, Change the World “Our conversation with editor Ben Fink and contributor Arnaldo J. Lopez explores Roadside's 50-year history of creative collaboration percolating at the crossroads of art, community, and America's struggle to craft an authentic living democracy.”

Imagining America

“The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues. By dreaming and building together in public, IA creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures.”

“Let’s Make a Better World Podcast: Songs and Stories,” Jane Wilburn Sapp

Podcast episodes explore Imagination and Agency, Resilience and Transformation, Freedom and Justice, Music and Human Rights, Building Community. They feature Jane Sapp in conversation with civil rights leader Rose Saunders and LGBTQ/Women’s/Anti-racist activist Suzanne Pharr, among others, and illustrate the power of cultural work and music to bring people together across differences.

3. Art, Culture, and Justice

This section highlights a sampling of projects and organizations working towards greater racial, social, gender-based and environmental justice. Given the extent to which anti-Black racism and the genocide of Native American people are woven into the fabric of American society, pro-democracy efforts are indelibly linked with movements for racial and cultural justice and repair. We are inspired by the many diverse approaches taking place at community, state-wide, regional and national levels, and involving artists, arts organizations, cultural institutions, and philanthropies. 

Center for Performance and Civic Practice (CPCP)

CPCP “believes that with the right approach, the same tools and capacities that artists use to make meaningful art can be utilized to transform systems and improve the impacts of government and community-driven efforts and programs. Civic Practice refers to projects that bring artists into collaboration and co-design with community partners and local residents around a community-defined aspiration, challenge or vision.” 

Alternate Roots

“Alternate ROOTS is an organization that supports the creation and presentation of original art that is rooted in community, place, tradition or spirit. We are a group of artists and cultural organizers based in the South creating a better world together. As Alternate ROOTS, we call for social and economic justice and are working to dismantle all forms of oppression – everywhere. As a progressive arts organization, ROOTS is at the forefront of establishing model programs for regional cultural organizing in the US.”

Animating Democracy: A Program of Americans for the Arts – Fostering Civic Engagement Through Arts and Culture

A treasure trove of resources including books, case studies, essays, a glossary, frameworks for evaluation of arts and civic engagement initiatives, profiles of municipal – artist/partnerships, and other resources exploring arts-based civic engagement for social change.

Arts & Democracy

Arts & Democracy cross pollinates culture, participatory democracy, and social justice. It supports cultural organizing and cross-sector collaborations; raises the visibility of transformative work; connects cultural practitioners with activists, organizers and policymakers; and creates spaces for reflection.

United States Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC)

“The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture contributes to the strength and vibrancy of the movement for collective liberation by resourcing and mobilizing cultural organizers and artists. As a people-led and people-centered arts and culture department, we merge organizing, political education, and performance to create a vibrant ecosystem that activates and harnesses spaces ripe for social, cultural and political change. The USDAC contributes to the strength and vibrancy of the movement for collective liberation by resourcing and mobilizing cultural organizers and artists.”

Americans for the Arts: Cultural Equity

To support a full creative life for all, Americans for the Arts commits to championing policies and practices of cultural equity that empower a just, inclusive, equitable nation. Cultural equity embodies the values, policies, and practices that ensure that all people—including but not limited to those who have been historically underrepresented based on race/ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, citizenship status, or religion—are represented in the development of arts policy; the support of artists; the nurturing of accessible, thriving venues for expression; and the fair distribution of programmatic, financial, and informational resources.

Borders to Bridges: Arts-based Curriculum for Social Justice, Lynn Glixon Ditchfield

Borders to Bridges is designed to promote dialogue in schools and communities by engendering deeper understanding and discussion to counter the myths and fears that negatively affect our learning institutions. This guidebook contains practical lesson plans, narratives, poetry, mixed media artwork, and resources for K-12 educators to enrich learning and engage students about critical issues that touch their lives and communities. Contributors include world-renowned educators, poets, artists, and writers from 38 countries and 20 states of the U.S.

Theatre for Community Conflict and Dialogue: The Hope Is Vital Training Manual, Michael Rohd 

“The first step forward in working with today's youth is to create a dialogue, and that is exactly what this exciting new book does. It helps you provide opportunities for young people to open up and explore their feelings through theatre, offering a safe place for them to air their views with dignity, respect, and freedom through the Hope Is Vital interactive theatre techniques.” 

“Harry Boyte: Democracy & Imagination,” Episode 79, in ‘Cultural Democracy’ on Change the Story, Change the World.

“How can we make democracy an everyday practice for everyone? Given the warnings about the end of democracy, our discussion about the role of culture in the labor and civil rights movements, and the inseparable nature of imagination and democracy is timely, to say the least.”

“Carlton Turner – Sipp Culture Rising,” Episode 47, in ‘Cultural Democracy’ on Change the Story, Change the World.

“Sipp Culture uses food and story to support rural community development in Utica, Mississippi. We believe that history, culture, and food affirm our individual and collective humanity. So, we are strengthening our local food system, advancing health equity, and supporting rural artistic voices – while activating the power of story – all to promote the legacy and vision of our hometown.”

Theatre in the Age of Climate Change: Creating Work in Series in the Anthropocene, Changal Bilodeau

“I want to invite audiences into a sacred space where grief, anger, and despair can be laid bare and transformed into joy, courage, and hope. As I stand here, surrounded by the vastness of Iceland, I start to formulate a question: what happens once we have so thoroughly imposed our will on the earth systems that we no longer feel small?”

Sustaining Places: An Encyclopedia of Resources for Small Historical Organizations.

“The museum field is currently experiencing a paradigm shift which places people, not objects, at the core of a museum’s purposes. This new paradigm responds to changing ideas about cultural authority, in which the community’s voice is as important as the expert’s voice…. Museums operating within the new paradigm empower their communities by fostering dialogue, with the goal of re-evaluating the past and the present in order to envision a more just future.” 

4. Art and Creative Nonviolent Action

Artistic and cultural processes can be crafted to embody a compelling but non-coercive power that can be mobilized in support of creative nonviolent action. They can reach beneath the defensive structures of guilt, shame and rage to restore capacities for agency and collective action; they can challenge existing assumptions; they can support expression that is otherwise forbidden; they can bring reluctant adversaries into conversation; they can lower barriers of fear and motivate people to challenge injustices and repression; they can offer new ways of framing issues. Even when confronted with the power of violence, racism, and domination – whether economic, political, social, gender-based, or cultural – artistic and cultural processes can challenge and subvert widely accepted patterns of supremacy, fear, exclusion and repression. [Adapted from ‘Lessons from the Acting Together Project, Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict, Volume II. Cynthia Cohen, Roberto Gutierrez Varea and Polly O. Walker. P. 191]

Creative Boom: Celebrating Art as Nonviolent Resistance, Taylor Alarcon

As many artists know, there is an everlasting connection between social justice, activism and creativity. Art can, and continues to be, a medium for commentary and resistance – and another way that we engage in challenging our society. This piece by Creative Boom introduces a few names whose work continues the legacy of King, reveals a "deep faith" in a possibly different future, and uses art and creativity to share that unique message. 

Tracing the Long Story of “We Shall Overcome,” Kate Stewart

In 1956, a 12-year-old girl named Jamila Jones participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. About two years later, she came to the Highlander Folk School for nonviolent activist training. As Jones recalls in an interview conducted for the Civil Rights History Project, Highlander was raided by the police, who shut off all the lights in the building. She found the strength to sing out into the darkness, adding a new verse to “We Shall Overcome.” When a police officer, trembling, asked her to sing more quietly, she realized the power of music in the struggle for civil rights, and sang louder and louder along with others in the room. To listen to excerpts from an oral history interview scroll down the page.

Why Nazis are so Afraid of These Clowns, Sarah Freeman-Woolpert

Clowns have an impressive track record of subverting Nazi ideology, de-escalating rallies and bringing communities together in creative resistance. This 2017 article in Waging Nonviolence documents several effective examples, including a performance in Knoxville, Tennessee in which clowns feigned confusion at neo-Nazi demonstrators’ cries of “White power!” calling back “White flour?”, “White flowers?”, “Tight shower?”, and “Wife Power!” The neo-Nazis called off their demonstration several hours early. “Since humor and clowning can incorporate so many community members — children and the elderly, musicians and athletes, politicians and school teachers — they draw everyone into a joyful, silly expression of solidarity. That’s something a band of tiki torch-wielding neo-Nazis don’t stand a chance against.”

Don't Look Away: Art, Nonviolence, and Preventive Publics in Contemporary Europe, Brianne Cohen

This book delves deeply into the role that art can play in creating public commitment to curbing structural violence in Europe. Art often looks at past violence, and has, at times, enabled it. In Don’t Look Away, Brianne Cohen explores how it can be used to prevent violence, particularly by helping to create a “shared social sense of vulnerability” and “mass stranger relationality.” “Art can have a critical role to play not only in challenging injurious public discourse but also in actively reconceiving the groundwork of more ethically self-reflexive, pluralistic public spheres,” she writes. “I wish to transform a question of informed public action in the aftermath of violence to one of informed public prevention of both direct and more indirect aggression.”

Conclusion Paper: How can arts, civic pride and culture contribute to boosting local resilience and democracy against extremism, hate crimes and other threats to democracy? Radicalization Awareness Network

This paper from the Radicalization Awareness Network highlighted examples of initiatives in 17 participating countries and concluded that “promoting arts, cultural activities and civic pride can significantly enhance local resilience and democracy and in turn prevent violence, extremism, hate crimes and other threats by: promoting diversity and inclusion, reducing polarization; empowering individuals and communities, thereby reducing the appeal of radicalization; building social cohesion, creating a sense of belonging; fostering critical thinking; countering misinformation; providing powerful counter-narratives to extremism; fostering a sense of responsibility of one’s community; offering positive role models who embody democratic values; enhancing resilience against extremist recruitment tactics; and providing neutral ground for discussion of sensitive topics, fostering understanding and empathy.”

Culture and Conflict Summit Resource Guide, USIP and the British Council

This resource guide is the beginning of a comprehensive resource for educators and peacebuilders interested in using arts both inside and outside academia. It is meant to be a useful guide to those who are teaching about using arts in conflict scenarios for the purposes of peace, and those who will engage in it in practice. The resources cover a variety of mediums – including music, theater, books, and more.

5. Art and Transitional Justice

A sustainable, robust and truly just democracy requires its citizens to acknowledge past harms, address unjust conditions in the present, and together imagine a fairer future. Artistic and cultural processes can be crafted to support communities to do the difficult work of mourning losses, composing more complex narratives, seeking justice and imagining a better future, even when relationships have been adversarial, where harms have been inflicted, and where trust must gradually be restored.

Artistic Imagination as a Force for Change, Art2Action & Animating Democracy; adrienne maree brown, Sage Crump, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

“This session, honoring the vibrant legacy of the late Grace Lee Boggs, explores artists’ imaginative power to grow the personal and collective soul, featuring cultural activists adrienne maree brown and Sage Crump, both with deep roots in Detroit, and Urban Bush Women’s founder Jawole Zollar. These three powerful thought leaders delve into the relationship between the artistic imagination and civic/social/political action, and how artistic strategies and emergent strategies can bolster movements and make progress toward change.”

BLIS Collective: Black Liberation - Indigenous Sovereignty 

The BLIS Collective is “borne out of the idea that we must repair the damages done to Black and Indigenous people in what we now call the United States and create a future where every individual, no matter their identity, has equal opportunity to live life freely and fully… We produce and support original works of literature and art and cultivate a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, historians, cultural bearers, comedians, poets, and athletes committed to forwarding narratives of liberation and decolonization.” It also produces a newsletter: “Reparations Daily (ish).”

Echoes of a Coup - Scene on Radio

“In November 1898, an armed White supremacist mob—supported by most White elites in North Carolina—murdered untold Black Wilmington residents and drove the city’s elected Fusionist government from power, installing Democrats in their place. (Fusionists were a biracial coalition of mostly-Black Republicans and mostly-White members of the Populist Party.) The coup in North Carolina’s then-largest city violently snuffed out some of the last flickers of multiracial democracy in post-Civil War America. Scene on Radio Season 6, Echoes of a Coup, a five-episode podcast tells the story of 1898 and puts these events in historical context, at a time when the United States is once again facing threats of political violence, amid orchestrated attacks on democracy—from within.”

Art, Dialogue, and Race, Art2Action & Animating Democracy; Kim Pevia, Katrina Browne and James Scruggs

“In the context of countless murders of Black people, racially-motivated assaults on Asian and Arab Americans, and continuing systemic and structural racism against Black, Indigenous/First Nations, and people of color communities, art and artists can advance meaningful, transformative dialogue and racial reckoning. The artists and leaders in this session explore this path, from deepening understanding, to shifting minds and hearts, to healing historical wounds, to advancing actions, policies, and systemic and structural change. Through the lens of their radically different artistic approaches, they will examine the role of art to disrupt narratives, reveal complicity, deepen dialogue, and make progress toward truth and reconciliation.”

Creative Approaches to Reconciliation, Cynthia Cohen

This chapter explains why the arts and cultural work are critical to promoting coexistence and reconciliation in the aftermath of violent conflict. It lays out theoretical frameworks for reconciliation and for the nature of aesthetic engagement that explain why the arts and cultural work should be effective resources for peace-builders. Then it offers examples of how the arts and cultural work are already being used to facilitate seven different educational tasks crucial to reconciliation, including assisting former adversaries to appreciate each other’s humanity, to empathize with each other’s suffering, to address injustice, and to imagine a new future. 

Acting Together on the World Stage Resources

The Acting Together initiative is a global multi-media educational initiative intended to document and strengthen the contributions of performance and ritual to social justice and conflict transformation. It consists of a feature documentary, a two-volume anthology, mini-docs on targeted issues, and PDF resources for learning and teaching. The documentary includes sections on resistance, re-humanization and reconciliation. Watch the trailer here. 

Case studies include “Do You Smell Something Stinky? Notes from conversations about Making Art while Working for Peace in Racist, Imperial America in the 21st Century,” by John O’Neal available here.

Here I Am, The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics

“Here I Am weaves narrative, music, and multimedia imagery, inviting the audience on an experiential journey celebrating Mélisande Short-Colomb’s 11 generations of maternal grandmothers and exploring her complicated relationship with the institution that enslaved her ancestors. Mélisande Short-Colomb is a direct descendant of families sold into slavery by the Society of Jesus in 1838 to keep Georgetown University solvent, (The GU 272), and has been an anchoring member of President’s Task Force Examining Loyola’s Connections to Slavery.”

International Journal of Transitional Justice Special Issue on Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice: The Contributions of Arts and Culture, Volume 14, Number 1, March 2020.

Articles highlight creative transitional justice processes in Myanmar, Colombia, Tunisia, South Africa, Bosnia Herzegovina, Argentina, Cambodia, Peru among others. 

Imagination Infrastructures 

A long-term investment in growing and maintaining the capacity of communities and institutions to collectively imagine, so that they are able to see, feel and think differently in order to act differently. Imagination Infrastructures recognize that collective imagination is a practice that you develop overtime, and therefore our capacity to do so can be strengthened.

6. Global Perspectives

Art can be a medium for expressing dissent and subverting status quo norms; it provides a voice, and thus power, to voices deemed unimportant or dangerous. As such, art can threaten authoritarian control and help dream up alternative, more free, futures. It is no surprise then that artists, their resources, and their creations are highly targeted by authoritarian regimes. Artists and cultural workers from around the world are sharing knowledge about the vulnerabilities of being an artist under authoritarian regimes, as well as creative contributions to successful efforts to overthrow dictatorships and oppose authoritarian tendencies. 

 Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts, Eve L Ewing

After referencing the silencing of artists under several authoritarian regimes, past and present, Ewing concludes that “[w]e need the arts because they make us full human beings. But we also need the arts as a protective factor against authoritarianism. In saving the arts, we save ourselves from a society where creative production is permissible only insofar as it serves the instruments of power. When the canary in the coal mine goes silent, we should be very afraid — not only because its song was so beautiful, but also because it was the only sign that we still had a chance to see daylight again.”

Artist at Risk Connection, PEN America

PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) safeguards the fundamental right to artistic freedom of expression worldwide. Its mission is to ensure that artists and cultural workers can live and create without fear, regardless of their country or discipline. ARC plays the critical role of connecting at-risk artists from any country and discipline to available resources across a global network of more than 800 organizations, providing urgent support, fellowships, and legal support. In addition, ARC provides emergency grants, resilience grants, and technical assistance, bolstering protection and resilience for artists at risk. ARC’s impact is amplified by its regional protective networks in Africa and Latin America. By advocating for policy reforms that uphold the safety and well-being of artists under international human rights law, ARC works tirelessly with its coalitions to create a more secure environment for artistic expression worldwide.

To learn more about the artists around the world who have used their creative talents to uplift, sustain, and mobilize social and political movements, check out ARC’s 2023 publication Art is Power: 20 Artists on How They Fight for Justice and Inspire Change. The report was written by PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) and features profiles of 20 artists from across the globe, exploring why they became artists, how they became involved in social and political movements, and the persecution they have faced as a result of their creative expression. 

Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment and Mourning in Syria, Lisa Wedeen

If the Arab uprisings initially heralded the end of tyrannies and a move toward liberal democratic governments, their defeat not only marked a reversal but was of a piece with emerging forms of authoritarianism worldwide. In Authoritarian Apprehensions, Lisa Wedeen draws on her decades-long engagement with Syria to offer an erudite and compassionate analysis of this extraordinary rush of events—the revolutionary exhilaration of the initial days of unrest and then the devastating violence that shattered hopes of any quick undoing of dictatorship. Developing a fresh, insightful, and theoretically imaginative approach to both authoritarianism and conflict, Wedeen asks, What led a sizable part of the citizenry to stick by the regime through one atrocity after another? What happens to political judgment in a context of pervasive misinformation? And what might the Syrian example suggest about how authoritarian leaders exploit digital media to create uncertainty, political impasses, and fractures among their citizens? Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a variety of Syrian artistic practices, Wedeen lays bare the ideological investments that sustain ambivalent attachments to established organizations of power and contribute to the ongoing challenge of pursuing political change. 

A European body condemns Turkey’s sentencing of an activist for links to 2013 protests

Osman Kavala, the founder of Anadolu Kultur, a nonprofit organization that focuses on arts and cultural projects promoting peace and dialogue, was imprisoned in Turkey on charges of attempting to overthrow the government through involvement in the Gezi Park protests. To learn more about Kavala and his impact on Turkey’s civil society check out this documentary.

The Contributions of Arts and Culture to Pro-Democracy Anti-Authoritarian Movements: A report on sessions of the 22nd Century Conference/Forging a People-Powered Democracy, Cynthia Cohen, IMPACT Senior Fellow.

How are artists and cultural workers contributing to strengthening just and vibrant democracies and opposing rising authoritarianism – in the US and around the world? What approaches have been effective and in what contexts? How have artists and cultural workers minimized risks of harm to themselves and others? How could experiences of friends and colleagues from around the world be of help to artists and cultural workers aligning with the emerging multi-sectoral anti-authoritarian movement in the United States? This report shares stories from Kenya, the Philippines, Iran, Australia and the United States. 

Romanian Artist Tackles Art and Freedom in Authoritarian Times

Geta Brătescu’s work positions the artist as a creator of freedom even in oppressive times.

Acting Together Video Shorts

This set of videos includes examples of creative approaches to resistance to authoritarian regimes (Argentina, Serbia, Uganda); re-humanization in the aftermath of violence and oppression (Peru, United States, Australia); building capacity for democracy (Palestine).

Acting Together Summaries of chapters

This set of chapter summaries highlights performances in contexts of, and in the aftermath of, authoritarian regimes, including in Serbia, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Peru, Cambodia, the United States, and Australia. 

Howlround Theatre Commons

“Your hub for global theatre conversations…a free and open platform for theatre makers worldwide….We function as a commons – a social structure that invites open participation around shared values: Generosity and abundance; Community and collaboration; Diverse aesthetics; Equity, inclusivity and accessibility; Global citizenship (local communities intersecting with global practice.

7. Theory and Practice 

The transformative power of art and cultural work derive in part from their aesthetic integrity. Linking art and activism requires integrating strategic thinking with these embodied and emotional modes of apprehending and interpreting the world and its challenges. The resources in this section offer frameworks for understanding how art, culture and pro-democracy efforts are working together, drawing insights from the fields of conflict transformation, neuroscience, journalism and more. They offer examples from the United States and around the world. 

Art Works: How Organizers and Artists Are Creating a Better World Together, Ken Grossinger

“When artists and organizers combine forces, new forms of political mobilization follow—which shape lasting social change. And yet few people appreciate how much deliberate strategy often propels this vital social change work. Behind the scenes, artists, organizers, political activists, and philanthropists have worked together to hone powerful strategies for achieving the world we want and the world we need. In Art Works, noted movement leader Ken Grossinger chronicles these efforts for the first time, distilling lessons and insights from grassroots leaders and luminaries such as Ai Weiwei, Courtland Cox, Jackson Browne, Shepard Fairey, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Alexander, Bill McKibben, JR, Jose Antonio Vargas, and more.”

The Center for the Study of Art and Community: Change the Story, Change the World 

CSA&C has over thirty years experience building arts partnerships in educational, community and social institutions. We have provided expert guidance for developing artistic, educational, funding, community development collaborations with over 250 partners from the arts and other community sectors. CSA&C's clients include artists and arts organizations, educational, health, human service, and criminal justice agencies, state and local government, and the business and philanthropic communities.

The Craftivist Collective Handbook, Sarah Corbett 

If we want our world to be more beautiful, kind and fair, can we make our activism more beautiful, kind and fair? ‘Gentle Protest’ is a unique methodology of strategic, compassionate and visually intriguing activism using handicrafts as a tool. Since its creation in 2009, the award-winning global Craftivist Collective has helped change laws, policies, hearts and minds around the world as well as expand the view of what activism can be. Dreams inspire positive action, so stitch a Dream Cloud to hang up at home or work and prompt you to think past a problem to the solution. Sew a Gentle Nudge Label to help keep your conscience sharp and your spirit strong. Craft your own Mini Protest Banner to turn heads and influence change, or fly solidarity’s flag for those suffering as a result of the world’s injustices. Stitch a Handmade Hedgerow to champion one of the solutions to the climate crisis or if you are nervous about protesting in public or if there’s a ban on public rallies where you live, let a doll speak your truth by creating a Toy Protest. Listen to the author discuss craftivism, a form of activism and collective empowerment that is centered on practices of craft, here.

The Center for Artistic Activism

“In 2009, the Center for Artistic Activism saw artists struggling to affect change, but without the practical skills to implement their visions. Elsewhere we saw frustrated activists, repeating their traditional marches, petition drives, and vigils until they became frustrated and moved on. We saw movements for social change stagnating with wins coming more by luck than planning. The Center for Artistic Activism started bringing these practices together to transform art and activism, using the best of each to leverage creativity and culture and successfully bring about social change…From our very beginning we identified the fields of culture, art and creativity as key to social justice work because these elements create opportunities for people marginalized from other spheres of influence such as law, politics and business to use their own unique perspectives to gain power, representation and real political change. But we knew creativity wasn’t enough. Training and organization is key. Our decade of experience and research has evolved into theory, curricula, and programs for activists and artists to fully understand how to effectively deploy artistic activism methodologies and win campaigns.”

The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, John Paul Lederach

Lederach suggests that in addition to understanding the “landscape of protracted violence,” peacebuilding practitioners must “...explore the creative process itself, not as a tangential inquiry, but as the wellspring that feeds the building of peace. In other words, we must venture into the mostly uncharted territory of the artist’s way as applied to social change, the canvases and poetics of human relationships, imagination, and discovery, and ultimately the mystery of vocation for those who take up such a journey.” 

Invite | Affirm | Evoke | Unleash: How artistic and cultural processes transform complex challenges , Cynthia Cohen and IMPACT, Inc. 

How and why do arts and other aspects of culture contribute in constructive ways to addressing the complex challenges that confront humanity and the ecosystems of the planet? …Ethical arts and cultural processes can be crafted to evoke honesty, and nourish capacities to negotiate ambiguity and paradox, key features of complex systems. They unleash creativity and agency. They affirm the dignity of human beings and our interdependence with each other and the natural world. And they can be crafted to do all this not by manipulation or coercion, but by issuing invitations to engage, to enjoy, to co-construct meaning, and to be present – to oneself, to others, to the natural world and to the opportunities and challenges that inscribe the present moment. It is through their beauty, and through the ways they simultaneously animate our sensory, cognitive and emotional faculties, that ethical arts and cultural work invite transformation while respecting the integrity of all who are involved. The report includes examples from Spain, Cambodia, Inuit People, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, Israeli and Palestinian diaspora communities, Colombia, Kenya and Australia. 

Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

From artists David Byrnem and Renée Fleming to evolutionary biologist E.O.Wilson, this book is a journey of discovery and an authoritative guide to the new science of neuroaesthetics that weaves a vibrant tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to make a positive impact on our day-to-day life. Your Brain on Art isn’t a plea to “bring back the arts.” It’s a call-to-arms for the radical integration of the arts with science and technology to design a more humane future. It’s about creating a new ethos that brings together different realms of human knowledge and experience to shape the future. It’s a fresh way of thinking and addressing the increasingly complex problems that face us. This book is perfectly poised to elevate this moment and bring it to the center of our cultural conversation. 

Aeffect: The Affect and Effect of Artistic Activism, Stephen Duncombe

Does artistic activism work aesthetically? Does it work politically? And what does “working” even mean when one combines art and activism? In Æffect, author Stephen Duncombe sets out to address these questions at the heart of the field of artistic activism.

Building powerful movements for a just and democratic society requires tearing down the walls separating people and welcoming new people into the movement. It takes recognizing that individuals, shaped by their lived experiences, are in different places along their journeys towards growth and change. Call-out culture, which includes public shaming to hold people accountable and oftentimes claiming one’s own moral high ground, can generate antagonism and challenge our ability to make progress together. But what other strategies do we have to hold people accountable for saying and doing harmful things?

Social justice and women’s rights activist Loretta Ross makes a case for the need to “call-in” instead of call-out. This approach prioritizes relationship-building over shaming. By “calling-in” someone who makes a harmful comment, a person may take them aside to share why the comment was harmful or inappropriate and offer alternative framing instead of calling them out in front of a large group. It creates a compassionate space for the person to reflect, hold themselves accountable and grow, instead of a space in which they may deny or deflect responsibility, retreat and/or not return out of shame or embarrassment.

However, not all situations lend themselves to calling someone in. Urgency, power dynamics, and individual safety are all important factors to consider when choosing how to respond to someone engaging in harmful behavior. In other words, calling out may sometimes be the more appropriate approach, especially if the individual in question has more power or is a repeat offender that has not been open to change. Yet, too often, we resort to calling out as the first and/or only option when this is not always the case, and we do so in ways that can cause additional harm and shame. By taking the time to pause and reflect on our intended outcome and how it will serve our larger goals for positive social change, we can create opportunities for people to reflect, grow and re-engage with accountability and new understanding.

Constructive methods of calling in and calling out both involve holding individuals and institutions accountable for harm while centering human dignity and embracing individuals’ capacity to change. However, calling in usually involves a private conversation with a small group or 1:1, while calling out means engaging in a more public space or forum. Based on the larger goal, an individual may choose either approach, or a mix of both—all while centering these approaches around care and a common humanity. At the Horizons Project, we work with networks of academics, social justice activists, bridge-builders, and democracy advocates to better understand how and when to use calling in and calling out methods in a way that will prevent harm, inspire collective learning, and hold people accountable with love.

*We would like to thank Tabitha Moore, a Vermont-based racial justice trainer and activist, for her thought leadership and contributions to this area of exploration as part of The Horizons Project research team.

RESOURCES

Interested in learning more? Check out these resources on calling in and calling out that are inspiring us right now.

Calling In and Calling Out Guide, Harvard University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

“In fostering spaces of inclusion and belonging, it is important to recognize, name, and address when individuals or groups with marginalized identities are experiencing harm, such as bias or discrimination. The concepts of “calling out” or “calling in” have become popular ways of thinking about how to bring attention to this type of harm. Knowing the difference between these concepts can help us reflect, then act, in the ways we feel will best promote constructive change. This guide is a continuously evolving document that we plan to improve over time.”

Interrupting Bias: Calling Out vs. Calling In, The Vermont-NEA Racial Justice Task Force and Seed the Way

A quick tips guide for when you might choose to call someone in or out and how to do it.

#ListenFirst Conversations Complete Guide, #Listen First

“A #ListenFirst conversation is any conversation that helps us see each other across differences and discover human connection. It might be between two friends or among many strangers. It might be on a park bench, in a classroom, in the workplace, at home, or online. Regardless of where you are or who you’re with, here are our favorite principles and tips!”

Shame, Safety and Moving Beyond Cancel Culture, The Ezra Klein Show

“When is cancellation merited or useful? When is it insufficient or harmful? And what other tools are available in those cases?”

Loretta J. Ross: “Don’t call people out – call them in”, TED Talk

‘We live in a call-out culture, says activist and scholar Loretta J. Ross. You’re probably familiar with it: the public shaming and blaming, on social media and in real life, of people who may have done wrong and are being held accountable. In this bold, actionable talk, Ross gives us a toolkit for starting productive conversations instead of fights — what she calls a “call-in culture” — and shares strategies that help challenge wrongdoing while still creating space for growth, forgiveness and maybe even an unexpected friend. “Fighting hate should be fun,” Ross says. “It’s being a hater that sucks.”’

How to talk to insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists, Nafees Hamid, CNN

“I’m a cognitive scientist who has been studying the drivers of political violence for the better part of a decade. My work has involved interviews, social network analysis, psychology experiments, and surveys of jihadists, white nationalists, and conspiracists. My colleagues and I also conducted the first-ever brain scan studies on jihadist supporters. Our findings point to one thing that ordinary people can do if they feel that someone they know might be getting radicalized: Stay connected.”

As we continue the collective work towards a just, inclusive and peaceful democracy, it is important to be able to understand and talk about the shared values and ideas that underpin it. We often use frames to help us make sense of these ideas and values, and we share stories to illustrate how these ideas and values might show up in everyday life. Narratives offer ways for us to package these stories and “provide a coherent view of the world based on our lived experience, our culture, and our education.” Narrative competency is the ability to collect and understand these narratives and share them in a way that can help make meaning of the world around us.

At the Horizons Project, we know that the narratives we use matter, especially during times of deep division. How we communicate can either invite or block collaboration; build or break down trust; uncover or bury shared values and goals. As agents of social change, we have our own cognitive biases that are based on our own stories and experiences. These biases influence how we and others perceive narratives, regardless of how they were intended. To develop narrative competency, it is important to start from a place of self-reflection, to explore our own biases so that we may be curious of other narratives and how we can engage with them. The purpose of developing narrative competency is not to change narratives we disagree with or prove them wrong. It is to better understand how they came into being and describe the current ecosystem. Rather than simplifying complex stories into “black or white” frames, an approach to narrative competency embraces complexity and nuance to better understand how different people make sense of the world.

Developing the competency to cultivate and share narrative frames of our country’s past, present and future is critical to inspiring and mobilizing people towards a society in which everyone feels a sense of belonging and can thrive. It will require curating insights from a diverse array of organizers, community and civic leaders, and activists representing different ideologies, geographies and backgrounds. At The Horizons Project, we are committed to leveraging existing platforms and sources of cultural influence to galvanize the larger ecosystem of social change around inclusive narratives that will help us form the broadest coalition possible to work towards a pluralistic, just and peaceful democracy.

RESOURCES

Interested in learning more? Check out these resources on Narrative Competency that are inspiring us right now.

Healing US democracy starts with understanding our values, norms, and narratives, The Horizons Project

“What are the common values that underpin US democracy? What is the “big story” we all share about how society should work and how we fit together as citizens? In the US today, with levels of toxic polarization astoundingly high, the narratives we use to make sense of the system and the sacred values we hold around democracy seem to be as divergent as ever. But by understanding these narratives and values, we can begin to rediscover how to respect different world views and commit to America’s future together. Experts shared some of their latest research and practice in a recent session on Democracy Narratives and Sacred Values co-convened by the Horizons Project with the Alliance for Peacebuilding for their Spring Series on Preventing and Reducing Conflict and Instability in the United States: Shaping What Comes Next.”

Engaging with Narratives of Peace, Toda Peace Institute 

“Narrative competency must be a fundamental aspect of our work as peacebuilders in the modern age. The term narrative is ubiquitous today and commonly used interchangeably with story. However, within the peacebuilding field there is currently a lack of understanding of the concept of narrative fundamentally as a cognitive framework that resides at the level of our unconscious minds, which allows human beings to make meaning of the world. While much has been written about how activists can address narrative change, peacebuilders have a special calling to engage with narratives in a way that is self-reflective, curious, seeks complexity and constructs meaning with others.”

Short Video on Restorative Advocacy & Narrative Engagement, Narratives and Civic Space Convening by OXFAM and the Ford Foundation 

“Julia Roig, in her segment, focuses on PartnersGlobal Engaging Narratives for Peace research and approach. She explains that social change agents must acknowledge their own cognitive biases and mental models. This affects how social change agents engage effectively with narrative change, and/or can further polarization and isolate potential allies by how issues are framed. She also explores how narrative engagement can contribute to Restorative Advocacy when our goal isn’t to change others’ narrative understanding or identity, but rather when we seek to “complexify” narratives, especially in the public sphere.”

A Call for Investment in Narrative Competency in Divided Times (Part One), Alliance Magazine 

“Narrative is a central and cutting-edge topic in a variety of well-established academic fields…  The study of narrative bridges the artificial divides between rationality and emotion or interests and identity that were once typical in the scientific literature and it offers important insights that need to be more widely embedded within the philanthropic ecosystem. To summarize a complicated topic: ‘narrative‘ is an abstract template for sensemaking, the central intersection of multiple, related stories that makes it possible for us to see the world in a meaningful way. Narrative is the lens through which human beings see the world and understand how it operates, and for whom it is the basis of political and moral decision making.”

How to Invest in Narrative Competency to Combat Toxic Polarization (Part Two), Alliance Magazine 

In Part One of this series, Horizons’ Chief Network Weaver, Julia Roig, argued the importance of investing in Narrative Competency. In Part Two, she and co-author Melanie Greenberg offer recommendations for how. “By using a cultural lens for programming, philanthropy can help overcome the oversimplification of narrative and identity arising out of deep polarization and can help sustain curiosity about the other.”

Narrative Power & Collective Action, Conversations with people working to change narratives for social good, Oxfam Part I and Part II 

“Narratives are a form of power that can mobilize and connect, as well as divide and isolate. Social, public or dominant narratives help to legitimize existing power relationships, prop them up or make them seem natural. As an anthology of perspectives this knowledge offering is one way to amplify different and diverse ways of knowing and doing narratives.”

The Role of Narrative in Managing Conflict and Supporting Peace, Institute for Integrated Transitions

“A helpful way to visualize narratives is as trees making up a narrative landscape. The roots contain a mix of facts, stories, and parables about a common collective past. These are the foundation for people’s political/moral views or their identity/history. The trunk is the central framing that grows from all or a bundle of these roots. The branches are the policy preferences, actions, and outcomes attached to the truck, which are resilient, but liable to change.”

How to Use Stories to Bring ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Together, Annie Neimand & Samantha Wright, Stanford Social Innovation Review

“Advocates often recycle the same type of stories to build a base of support, but this can create story fatigue among supporters and lose the opportunity to engage new ones. Choosing the right kind of story depends on your audience’s exposure to the issue and your opposition’s power. A familiar plot structure can help an audience understand complicated dynamics, but if they are familiar with the topic, an unexpected framing can make it feel new again. Issues with strong organized opposition pair better with stories that humanize or offer new insights.”

The Role of Narrative Change in Collective Action

This short webinar from the 2021 Collective Impact Action Summit is a Master Class on narrative change. Melody Barnes (Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions) interviewing Crystal Echo Hawk (IllumiNative) Rashad Robinson (Color of Change), and Nayantara Sen (Real Food Real Stories.)

“The metaphor actually begins with a story, the story as a single star in the night sky. If a story is like a star in the night sky, it is the singular unit of change….a narrative is like a constellation because it is a pattern of stars congregated together to create a mechanism that brings stories together as a whole, so then an individual story has more meaning when it sits within the narrative that you see as a constellation in the sky…There’s more to culture than just narrative but the critical thing to know is that you can’t change culture without changing narrative. We work on individual stars. We change the pattern that they sit within a constellation, and we change the cultural conditions or the galactic conditions…for what actually allows narratives to stick.” – Nayantara Sen

How America Fractured Into Four Parts, George Packer, The Atlantic

An essay exploring four dominant narratives in US that since the 1970s, emerged around four moral identities:

• “Free America,” which focuses on individual rights and freedom from government intervention and draws on elitist traditionalism and anti-communism.
• “Smart America,” which embraces capitalism, meritocracy, and globalism, but not patriotism.
• “Real America,” which encourages popular democracy, anti-intellectualism, and nationalism, and is primarily white.
• “Just America,” which is critical of institutional injustice and oppression, but has its own trappings.

Our Futures Now: Turning Imagination into Narrative Power, The Narrative Initiative 

This article describes how we can use imaginings of the future in narrative work. “Once we know the history, power and role of today’s dominant narratives we understand our present assumptions…then we can really name, describe and even map paths towards possible futures that aren’t dependent on today. That’s where this work gets exciting.” Márquez Rhyne, Program Manager at Transmedia Story at the University of Chicago

Keeping Democratic Ideals Alive During the Pandemic, Frameworks Institute 

“The way we talk about leaders, leadership, and institutions now sets the context for what comes next. We won’t revitalize democracy by leaving people to assume that politics is, and always will be, broken beyond repair. But if we remind people of our democratic ideals—and show how they connect to this crisis and our future beyond it—we can rebuild demand for leaders and systems that put people first. Framing advice: (1) Lift up democratic values; (2) Make the truth compelling and clear; (3) Show how issues and incidents are connected. Frameworks also has valuable materials on Shifting Mindsets and how we can think about advocacy in both the short and long term.”

The Larger Us Podcast with Karen Stenner on Why Some People Are Primed to Be Authoritarians

“The exploration of narrative and sense-making is informed by many disciplines, and Karen Stenner has spent years researching why some people seem to have a psychological predisposition towards authoritarianism on both the right and the left (in the right conditions,) which has led her to argue that “liberal democracy has now exceeded many people’s capacity to tolerate it.” The podcast interview discusses why support for authoritarianism is so widespread, what we can do about it, and what’s next in countries like the US where right wing populism has been surging.”

Changing the Narrative about Narrative: The Infrastructure Required to Build Narrative Power, Rashad Robinson, Nonprofit Quarterly 

“Narrative is now a big buzzword in the field of social change. That is more a testament to people wanting to understand narrative, however, than it is a testament to people actually understanding it. This paper presents a high-level outline of just some of the components of strategic thinking required to create the right story about narrative change within the progressive movement, with a focus on the components related to building the infrastructure we need to build what I call narrative power.”

Polarization is generally considered a necessary and healthy aspect of democratic societies. In his writing on social change work, Quaker activist and trainer George Lakey compares polarization to “a blacksmith’s forge,” one that heats up society and makes norms and institutions malleable and more susceptible to change.

Toxic polarization is categorically different and can often lead to destructive and violent engagement. A component of toxic polarization is affective polarization, which refers to when groups aren’t simply in disagreement with each other, but actively dislike and even dehumanize each other. Here, political outgroup members are seen to pose a threat not only to ideas and values, but to identities and social groups. Another component is perceptual polarization, which measures the degree to which we view the other side as extreme in comparison to our own. Thus, toxic polarization exists as a state of intense, chronic polarization – marked by high levels of loyalty to a person’s ingroup and contempt or even hate for outgroups.

Toxic polarization limits our ability to humanize and engage with political opponents. It influences where we live, the information we consume, who we hire, and even the health care decisions we make. While toxic polarization has caused increasing numbers of people to view the other side as an existential threat, it has also created chronic exhaustion among Americans. In toxically polarized societies, people tend to exaggerate the extent to which they disagree on policy issues. A recent project from Beyond Conflict found that Americans incorrectly believe that members of the other party dehumanize, dislike, and disagree with them about twice as much as they actually do. Citizens along the ideological spectrum believe we are more polarized than we are, which can exacerbate polarization and make us less willing to work together to solve problems. It also makes it more difficult to agree on the nature of the problems we face.

At The Horizons Project, we are exploring how different actors within the ecosystem of peacebuilding, social justice and democracy have different theories of change and priorities to engage with the topic of polarization which can cause tensions and prevent collaboration. The following is a summary of those points of tension, followed by a list of recommended resources.

• Calls for “healing divisions” and unity are often criticized as not addressing the root causes of the problems we are facing as a nation (e.g., inequality, racism, etc.)
• Peacebuilders and bridge-builders who feel the need to maintain “neutrality” can be seen as propping up the status quo and not in solidarity with movement causes.
• Tactics of engaging the “exhausted middle” (where complexity of thought may still be flourishing) are criticized as a waste of time because the mythical moderate/independent voter is seen as “wishy washy.” Instead, activating the base is prioritized. Tactics of upping the outrage are therefore seen as needed to engage the base first, and then target people in the middle.
• Toxic polarization may be recognized as a problem across the board, but there is blame, defensiveness and othering (based on a lot of trauma on all sides) that drives us back to our ingroups and prevents intra-group self-reflection and dialogue around dehumanizing behavior and tactics.
• Many want to “focus on the future” as a way of finding common ground and coming together around shared values. This can be deeply troubling and hurtful for those who feel that we need to first recognize past injustices and harms and finally confront the painful history of white supremacy that continues to bleed into our present. Yet, the future-oriented framing can also be off-putting to those who don’t want change (or fear change) – so any call to “build back better” or for “democratic renewal” are met with resistance because of nostalgia for the way things were in a romanticized past.
• We struggle with lack of shared definitions of terms, and we don’t acknowledge that humans make sense of the world in different ways based on the multiple narrative streams flowing within the ecosystem. What does peace and peacebuilding mean? Is it finding calm and togetherness? What about “justice?” There are many negative connotations (or simple lack of understanding) of peace as a goal and/or peacebuilding as a tool.
• What does “democracy” mean and is it a shared goal for the US anymore? For example, while there is a big push for renewed civic culture and to embed the values of respectful dialogue, tolerance and empathy within society. Many hear these calls for “civility” with cynicism. They are more concerned about power imbalances around race and class and building power to overcome political enemies to push back against undemocratic forces. Others understand calls for “inclusive” democracy as only for liberals that seek to exclude more conservative perspectives.
• We have also acknowledged the existential dread that is flowing within our country, and we see how a different sense of urgency plays out in many of these debates. While many movements are working for those who feel a daily fear for their physical safety, this is juxtaposed with those who are also expressing fear of losing their way of life and/or feeling left behind in a changing society. Some don’t feel the same sense of urgency regarding the pace of change and/or have the luxury of not being as directly affected on a daily basis. This leads not only to a difference in tactics, but it can also cause resentment, distrust, and the inability to hear each other’s experience or find common cause.

Obviously, there is truth and need in all these various approaches and perspectives. Yet, until we name and wrestle with these tensions within the ecosystem, we won’t be able to deal effectively with our trauma, better hold space within ingroups, and lessen the criticism and resentment towards potential allies. New tools and conversations are necessary to rediscover our shared, higher-level goals of protecting our democracy and to prevent the very real threat of increasing levels of violent conflict. The Horizons team looks forward to working with its partners to explore and expand on the current research and tools available to manage polarization in a way that it promotes innovation and not toxicity.

RESOURCES

Interested in learning more? Check out ten resources on Good vs. Toxic Polarization that are inspiring us right now.

Good vs. Toxic Polarization: Insights from Activists and Peacebuilders, The Horizons Project

Polarizing narratives are key tools of nonviolent mobilization and social justice activism. But today, deep-seated polarization, exacerbated by a growing faction that rejects basic democratic norms and practices, threatens the foundations of our democracy. Differentiating between healthy and toxic polarization is vital among activists and peacebuilders to inform and align our strategies. What aspects of polarization are healthy and normal in a democratic society, and when can this polarization tip over into toxic conditions?

Review: Polarization: Understanding the Dynamics of Us Versus Them, Ilse Van den Berckt, Beyond the Horizon

“Bart Brandsma’s book at hand is a timely and precious contribution considering the time we live in. The book opens up the debate on how to manage divergent voices and preserve public order while respecting the democratic right of free speech and free articulation of thoughts. Declaring war on bigotry and dualistic (black-white) world view but at the same time taking into stock the need to address the societal reality, the author delves deep into minute dynamics of public debate, mechanics of argumentation and idiosyncrasies of human behavior.”

The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People, David Blankenhorn, American Interest 

“We can recognize the mindset of the polarizer, but how does the depolarizer understand conflict and try to make sense of the world? Here is an attempt to answer these questions, by way of proposing the seven habits of highly depolarizing people.”

Why we don’t need to meet in the middle – but we can’t allow political polarization to fester unchecked, Nathan Bomey, USA Today

“Bridge builders see solutions where the rest of us see problems. And they see nuance where the rest of us see caricature. Bridge builders are a rare species. And we have a lot to learn from them. But in writing this book, I spent nearly as much time deconstructing myths about the metaphorical process of bridge building than I did on elucidating the lessons bridge builders can teach us.”

America’s Divided Mind: Understanding the Psychology that Drives us Apart, Beyond Conflict

“New insights from brain and behavioral science explain how polarization is fueled by Americans’ misperceptions about each other. Learn more about the psychology that drives us apart, and how we can start to reverse it.”

Polarization & Migration, Bart Brandsma, Times of Migration Youtube

“We live in polarized times. Polarization is a dangerous process that, if unchecked, can eventually lead to civil war. To stop polarization, we first need to to understand it. This comic/animation is based on a model of polarization developed by Bart Brandsma. It explains the process of polarization and for example migration and what kind of journalism can help stop and reverse this process.”

The Way Out, Peter Coleman, Columbia University Press

“The way out of our current culture of contempt can be hard to see unless you know where to look. This book will show you. It offers insights from leading research on how deeply divided societies can and do change. It will suggest what you can do – the actions, skills and competencies that will help you navigate these times most effectively – as well as what to look for in groups and organizations in your community that are already at work making America more functional again.”

Poles Apart: Why People Turn Against Each Other, and How to Bring them Back Together, Alison Goldsworthy, Laura Osborn, and Alexandra Chesterfield, Random House

“In Poles Apart, an expert on polarisation, a behavioural scientist and a professional communicator explain why we are so prone to be drawn into rival, often deeply antagonistic factions. They explore the shaping force of our genetic make-up on our fundamental views and the nature of the influences that family, friends and peers exert. They pinpoint the economic and political triggers that tip people from healthy disagreement to dangerous hostility, and the part played by social media in spreading entrenched opinions. And they help us to understand why outlooks that can seem so bizarre and extreme to us seem so eminently sensible to those who hold them.”

Are We Overdoing Democracy?, The Exchange, New Hampshire Public Radio

In this podcast, Philosopher Robert Talisse describes the danger of bringing groups together based on their political identities to “dialogue” as reinforcing the prominence of our political identities and recommends instead that we focus on building community outside of our role in democracy, and instead create civic friendships.

Other great books on polarization 

“So many political and social issues turn into battlegrounds where people aggressively declare that they’re in the right, and that those who disagree are simply too dumb or misinformed to understand. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We all have the capacity to listen and empathize, and we can inspire others to do the same. So, to do your part in healing our divided social discourse, start by checking out the nine thought-provoking books.”

Unaddressed traumas pose significant challenges to building a healthy democratic society, exacerbating intra-group and inter-group conflicts and making it difficult to find common cause. Healing individual and group traumas is necessary to build effective movements and achieve sustainable peace. Trauma can take many forms in our society—it can come directly from a distressing event, be experienced over time from adversity (including chronic scarcity of essential resources) and/or be passed down through generations within communities where deep empathy and the recounting of direct traumatic experiences is common. Untreated trauma can lead to biological, cognitive and behavioral adaptations that affect social norms and group dynamics. In organizations, community groups, and social movements, untreated trauma can influence the movement’s norms and guiding principles, culture, and decision-making processes around strategies and tactics.

While the peacebuilding field’s efforts to mainstream trauma healing are well-documented (especially outside of the US), mainstreaming trauma-informed practices within the US social justice community are not always accessible due to distrust in historically racist systems, the overwhelming sense of urgency to prioritize collective action over individual restoration and an emphasis on shielding individuals from trauma triggers, which may prolong or worsen trauma responses. A deepened and collective understanding of trauma and approaches to trauma healing may help inform how activists, peacebuilders, bridge-builders, and democracy advocates do their work in a way that better supports sustainability and efficacy.

At The Horizons Project, we specifically seek to understand 1) the role that trauma plays in the strategic and tactical choices made by actors working within the larger ecosystem of social change, and 2) how trauma may influence others’ perceptions of certain tactics and behaviors. We are also exploring insights and tools for how practitioners across the ecosystem can create spaces for healing, empathy, and reducing tensions in a way that can contribute to the sustainability of their work.

*We would like to thank Michelle Barsa, Program Director at Beyond Conflict, for her thought leadership and contributions to this area of exploration as part of The Horizons Project research team.

RESOURCES

Interested in learning more? Check out ten resources on Trauma Healing that are inspiring us right now.

We need to build a movement that heals our nation’s traumas, Kazu Haga, Waging Nonviolence

“As a nation, we have never talked about the traumatic years of our collective childhood. Sure, in some small, hidden ways there were whispers of it. We would talk about it in activist spaces. Radicals would read books about it and have healing rituals. There would be murmurs and rumors spoken in progressive circles. But as a nation, we have never dove into it. And so the trauma that we all experienced got frozen and stuck.”

Homelessness, Poverty and the Brain: Mapping the Effects of Toxic Stress on Children, Perry Firth, Firesteel

“Children who are born to mothers who are homeless have low birth weight and require specialized care at four times the rate of their non-homeless peers. This, combined with the environmental stress of poverty and ongoing physical and emotional needs, means that as early as nine months, poverty-related achievement gaps show up, only to widen as children age. This early inequality then sets the stage for intergenerational poverty. Thus, deprivation during infancy and early childhood — when the brain is growing rapidly and aligning itself with the needs of its environment — can have powerful, negative, long-lasting effects.”

From Trauma to Transformative Futures: Four Dimensions, Interaction Institute for Social Change

This framework from the Interaction Institute for Social Change helps organizations, groups, and individuals consider how they might transition from trauma to reckoning to healing to transformative futures.

Trauma porn: Misguided ‘activism’ on social media harms more than it helps, Kiran Brar, The Butler Collegian

“With the Black Lives Matter movement gaining a sweeping amount of momentum the past couple of months, it is important to acknowledge what trauma porn [when people share graphic videos, usually of police brutality, on social media] is and the effects it may have on the Black community.”

The legacy of trauma, Tori DeAngelis, American Psychological Association 

“An emerging line of research is exploring how historical and cultural traumas affect survivors’ children for generations to come.”

Issue #50: Belonging and Transformative Resilience, Future of Belonging

Explore this conversation “with Ama Marston to discuss her book, Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World, and work focused on transformative resilience. [The] conversation focused on the mindset, solutions, and approaches for moving through crisis and trauma that transformative resilience offers, many of which align with fulfilling the need for belonging.”

We’re experiencing an empathy shortage, but we can fix it together, Jamil Zaki, TEDxMarin

“Being a psychologist studying empathy today is a little bit like being a climatologist studying the polar ice caps,” says psychology professor Jamil Zaki. That’s because according to research, our collective empathy is eroding. But there is good news: Empathy is a skill, it can be built, and he explains how he — and others — are doing just that.”

Trauma, Peacebuilding, and Development: An overview of key positions and critical questions, Mary Alice C. Clancy, Brandon Hamber, INCORE, University of Ulster

“This paper examines the methods academics and practitioners have advocated and utilised to deal with the trauma said to result from complex political emergencies, and how these methods relate to wider issues of peacebuilding and development.”

Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience: A Framework for Addressing and Preventing Community Trauma, Rachel David, Howard Pinderhughes and Myesha Wiliams, Prevention Institute

“This report offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding the relationship between community trauma and violence. Until now, there has been no basis for understanding how community trauma undermines both individual and community resilience, especially in communities highly impacted by violence, and what can be done about it. Funded by Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit in Northern California, and based on interviews with practitioners in communities with high rates of violence, the report outlines specific strategies to address and prevent community trauma—and foster resilience—using techniques from those living in affected areas.”

The Wellbeing Project

Discover the Project’s resources on wellbeing, including a free webinar series and a report on how a changemaker’s wellbeing influences their work.

What does it mean to challenge injustices and address societal harms in ways that strengthen social bonds and encourage longer-term healing? Restorative Movement Building is at the nexus of social justice and peacebuilding work. Individuals using restorative tools, approaches and mindsets are challenging injustice, building power and disrupting harmful systems in ways that promote healing, prioritize belonging and seek societal transformation.

Overall, this approach centers love, nonviolence and shared humanity as essential to transforming society in a way that works for everyone. At The Horizons Project, we see Restorative Movement Building as a central thread across all our areas of exploration. It can incorporate calling in and calling out strategies, create space for healing trauma, address toxic polarization through prioritizing relationships and provide a frame for a larger narrative focused on collective action while building belonging.

While activists, peacebuilders, and organizers have been working on social and economic justice, political violence prevention, and democracy strengthening issues for decades, they tend to work in siloes based on different approaches. At times, and especially in the short-term, these approaches can be in tension with one another. Social justice actors see a real urgency to raise awareness of injustices and address the power dynamics that uphold them to achieve transformational change. On the other hand, peacebuilders may seek a slower pace of change to make time for building relationships and encourage empathy and understanding so that no one gets left behind or inadvertently excluded as society progresses.

These different approaches can strengthen and reinforce one another in the long-term and make change more sustainable. The key challenge The Horizons Project is attempting to address is to help all these actors see themselves as operating within the larger ecosystem of social change working towards shared goals. Restorative practices help us to accept these tensions as normal and expected, so different groups can come together to learn and grow in their respective approaches (emergence) and determine who is best placed to take on specific roles/actions.

Restorative Movement-Building is a concept that the Horizons team is still exploring, scoping, and defining for ourselves. We are eager to engage with and learn from our partners in the process. Check back later for more information and resources as we embark on this journey together.

RESOURCES

Interested in learning more? Check out ten resources on Restorative Movement Building that are inspiring us right now.

Healing Resistance: A Conversation with Author Kazu Haga, The Horizons Project

“Nonviolence is a cornerstone of activism and radical change, but less attention has been given to the restorative power of nonviolent resistance. In this recent Horizons Project event, Senior Advisor Maria J. Stephan interviewed author and Kingian nonviolence practitioner Kazu Haga on his book, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. The event publicly launched the Horizons Project.”

Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm, Kazu Haga, Parallax Press

“Activists and change agents, restorative justice practitioners, faith leaders, and anybody engaged in social progress and shifting society will find this mindful approach to nonviolent action indispensable. Nonviolence was once considered the highest form of activism and radical change. And yet its basic truth, its restorative power, has been forgotten. In Healing Resistance, leading trainer Kazu Haga blazingly reclaims the energy and assertiveness of nonviolent practice and shows that a principled approach to nonviolence is the way to transform not only unjust systems but broken relationships.”

The Relational Work of Systems Change, Katherine Milligan, Juanita Zerda and John Kania, Stanford Social Innovation Review

“Sometimes we lose sight of a simple truth about systems: They are made up of people. Despite all of the frameworks and tools at our disposal and all of our learning as a field of practice, purely technical, rational approaches to systems change will not make much of a dent in shifting power or altering our most deeply held beliefs. If most collective impact efforts fall short of supporting people to change in fundamentally consciousness-altering ways, then, the system they are a part of will not significantly change either.”

The Three Horizons of innovation and culture change, Daniel Christian Wahl, Activate the Future

“‘Three Horizons thinking’ is an effective method for making sense of and facilitating cultural transformation and exploring innovation and wise action in the face of uncertainty and not-knowing.”

This graphic is not in the book chapter this excerpt is taken from. Source: H3Uni

Why coalition building isn’t about the coalition: Listening, leading, and making change happen, Nick Martlew, Mobilisation Lab

“Think of any campaign success you’ve seen or been involved in. I would wager good money (and as Yorkshireman I don’t say that lightly) that it wasn’t achieved by one actor alone: it was collective action that brought about change. Now think of when collective action becomes the worst form of coalition building, sacrificing ambition and wasting time. For the people whose rights we’re fighting for, that’s unacceptable. It’s also avoidable.”

Making Change: What Works, The Institute for Public Policy Research

“Movements change the world. Throughout history, loosely organized networks of individuals and organizations have sought changes to societies – and won. From the abolitionist struggle and campaigns for voting rights to #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, the impact of movements can be seen everywhere. Over the last year, IPPR and the Runnymede Trust have sought to understand what we can learn from movements that have made change – as well as those who have fallen short – for our efforts to create change today.”

Collaborating with the Enemy, Adam Kahane, Harold Jarche

“When two or more parties get together to address a problematic situation, they ask themselves a series of questions to understand their options. First they determine if they can change the situation. If so, can they effect change unilaterally, in which case they can force their solution. If they cannot change the situation, then they have two unilateral decisions possible: adapt to what has been forced on them, or exit the situation if possible. If they can change the situation but cannot effect change unilaterally,” then new options open.

Synergizing Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding Guide and Online Course, United States Institute of Peace

“The Synergizing Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding (SNAP) guide provides a strategic framework for activists, peacebuilders, and organizers working to transform violent conflict and advance a just peace. It demonstrates how nonviolent action and peacebuilding approaches can be used together synergistically to mobilize communities, address power imbalances and conflict drivers, and support inclusive, participatory peace processes.”

Organizing Tools from Liberating Structures

“This website offers an alternative way to approach and design how people learn and work together. It provides a menu of thirty-three “Liberating Structures” to replace or complement conventional meeting and engagement practices.”

Trainings from East Point Peace Academy

With trainings on healthy conflict engagement, Kingian nonviolence, and vulnerability, East Point Peace Academy provides diverse opportunities to build up your restorative resistance practice.

Movement Ecology: Self-Paced Course, Ayni School

“This self-paced mini course on Movement Ecology is an introduction to understanding the many different strategies that arise when we are faced with creating social change.”

The Horizons Project is partnering with Rotary International to explore how to embed concepts and practices of forgiveness, accountability, and societal healing within Rotary clubs and their partners around the world.Forgiveness is often described as a very courageous act that allows the forgiver to take control and make the difficult choice to let go of animosity and ill-will towards a perpetrator without condoning the act of injustice itself. It can be a powerful tool for the individual journey towards transformation and self-healing. Yet, when an injustice or violent act affects more than one person and/or is part of an ongoing system that is perpetrating harm, forgiveness alone can be inadequate to meet the larger need for group, community, and/or societal healing.Some social changemakers take issue with the term and practice of forgiveness due to the lack of accountability needed for the individual forgiveness process to occur. Without accountability, how can the wrongdoer learn from their mistakes so that they don’t cause further pain and suffering? If a larger group of people or system is responsible, how will an individual act of forgiveness serve others in a community or society who may encounter the same injustice? While forgiveness alone can be a powerful, spiritual act, it can sometimes overlook larger, systemic issues and injustices at play that perpetuate ongoing harm or trauma, even after the individual act of forgiveness takes place.

Trauma or harm can take many forms in society—it can come directly from a distressing event, be experienced over time from adversity (including chronic scarcity of essential resources) and/or be passed down through generations within communities where deep empathy and the recounting of direct traumatic experiences is common. Untreated trauma can lead to biological, cognitive and behavioral adaptations that affect social norms and group dynamics. In organizations and community groups, untreated trauma can influence the group’s norms, guiding principles, culture, and ability to make change together. However, when trauma is adequately addressed and treated, it can allow individuals and a larger society to take steps towards healing—to center love, find compassion and restore broken relationships.

The ways of addressing forgiveness, accountability, and trauma are often siloed in practice, with each field developing its own approaches and tools that can make it difficult to integrate for practical application. As a community-rooted organization, whose members “see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change” and seek to “provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace,” Rotarians are well-situated to help make these connections with the appropriate tools and resources.

RESOURCES

Videos

Why It Is So Hard to Forgive, Dr. Jim Dincalci, The Forgiveness Foundation

In this short video, Dr. Dincalci provides an overview of forgiveness, myths about forgiveness, and why it can be beneficial for individual processes for transformation and self-healing. More resources from Dr. Dincalci can be found here.

Kazu Haga on Beloved Community, Kazu Haga, The Horizons Project

Haga discusses the challenge of building the beloved community, especially when it comes to including people who are not easy to love. Listening to their story may allow us to replace harbored resentment and anger—not to condone the action—but to find compassion through understanding.

International Forgiveness Institute Training Videos

The International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) has compiled a library of training videos and podcasts that discuss strategies and approaches individuals may explore on forgiveness. The videos and curriculum are targeted towards education professionals, counselors, psychotherapists, families, and other peacebuilding practitioners.

Loretta J. Ross: “Don’t call people out – call them in”, TED Talk

‘We live in a call-out culture, says activist and scholar Loretta J. Ross. You’re probably familiar with it: the public shaming and blaming, on social media and in real life, of people who may have done wrong and are being held accountable. In this bold, actionable talk, Ross gives us a toolkit for starting productive conversations instead of fights — what she calls a “call-in culture” — and shares strategies that help challenge wrongdoing while still creating space for growth, forgiveness and maybe even an unexpected friend. “Fighting hate should be fun,” Ross says. “It’s being a hater that sucks.”’

Articles

What Other Cultures Can Teach Us About Forgiveness, William Park, BBC Future

“Forgiving someone else can have a positive effect on your life, but exactly how you forgive someone depends on where in the world you are from.”

Reflections on Accountability and Forgiveness: Part 1, Stefanie Krasnow and Rami Nijjar

“This blog [explores] the perspective of those who have been hurt and ways that different perspectives of forgiveness and accountability can help or hinder their healing process.”

Reflections on Accountability and Forgiveness: Part 2, Stefanie Krasnow and Rami Nijjar

“This blog [explores] the role [that] accountability and forgiveness have in creating healing and repair when we are in the role of having done harm.”

The Necessity of Forgiveness – and Accountability: Matthew 18:21-35, Leah D. Schade, EcoPreacher, Patheos

“The parable about the Unforgiving Servant shows us that forgiveness is essential – but so is accountability…And I’d like to imagine that our church can think deeply about what it means to be in relationship with each other, with those who exercise power, and with those who have had their power stripped from them. Because theology does matter.  How we read the Bible does matter. It is literally a matter of life and death. And the church needs to proclaim God’s radical forgiveness and divine mercy, as well as the surety of God’s accountability and justice.”

When Forgiveness Isn’t Enough, Andrea Jongbloed, Relevant Magazine

“Forgiveness involves ceasing to feel resentment towards someone. Reconciliation involves the restoring of a relationship, something that can be difficult to do (and something that can’t or shouldn’t happen in some situations).” In this article, Jongbloed discusses the benefits and hard work of going beyond forgiveness—to reconciliation. She quotes Bishop Desmond Tutu in describing why reconciliation is worthwhile, despite the pain: ‘”Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are,” he says. “It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.”’

We need to build a movement that heals our nation’s traumas, Kazu Haga, Waging Nonviolence

“As a nation, we have never talked about the traumatic years of our collective childhood. Sure, in some small, hidden ways there were whispers of it. We would talk about it in activist spaces. Radicals would read books about it and have healing rituals. There would be murmurs and rumors spoken in progressive circles. But as a nation, we have never dove into it. And so the trauma that we all experienced got frozen and stuck.”

Issue #50: Belonging and Transformative Resilience, Future of Belonging

Explore this conversation “with Ama Marston to discuss her book, Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World, and work focused on transformative resilience. [The] conversation focused on the mindset, solutions, and approaches for moving through crisis and trauma that transformative resilience offers, many of which align with fulfilling the need for belonging.”

Podcasts

Shame, Safety and Moving Beyond Cancel Culture, The Ezra Klein Show

“When is cancellation merited or useful? When is it insufficient or harmful? And what other tools are available in those cases?”

The Limits of Forgiveness, In this Vox Conversations podcast, philosopher Lucy Allais reflects on human nature, concepts of power, and the limits of forgiveness. From her perspective as a South African living in the US, she discusses the contours of forgiveness as a political tool to move forward as a polarized democracy.

Tools

Resources from The Forgiveness Foundation, The Forgiveness Foundation

Check out these books, trainings, group discussion guides and therapy resources on forgiveness from The Forgiveness Foundation based on Dr. Jim Dincalci’s work. They “utilize a comprehensive approach – incorporating psychological, sociological, educational and other aspects” to help individuals through the forgiveness process.

The Art of Forgiveness, Frederic Luskin, Ph.D.

“One of the most challenging tasks we face in life is how to remain peaceful when something frustrates us. Not getting what we want is one of the main challenges to dealing with illness, abandonment, dishonesty, or any other difficulties that humans experience. Most of us never fully accept that life often does not give us what we want. We often react with outrage or offense when a normal, but difficult, life experience emerges. Most of us will make the situation worse by insisting and complaining that the specific difficulty is wrong instead of focusing our energy on how to best deal with the situation.” This article discusses several stages/approaches for granting forgiveness.

From Trauma to Transformative Futures: Four Dimensions, Interaction Institute for Social Change

This framework from the Interaction Institute for Social Change helps organizations, groups, and individuals consider how they might transition from trauma to reckoning to healing to transformative futures.

Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience: A Framework for Addressing and Preventing Community Trauma, Rachel David, Howard Pinderhughes and Myesha Wiliams, Prevention Institute

“This report offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding the relationship between community trauma and violence. Until now, there has been no basis for understanding how community trauma undermines both individual and community resilience, especially in communities highly impacted by violence, and what can be done about it. Funded by Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit in Northern California and based on interviews with practitioners in communities with high rates of violence, the report outlines specific strategies to address and prevent community trauma—and foster resilience—using techniques from those living in affected areas.”

#ListenFirst Conversations Complete Guide, #Listen First

“A #ListenFirst conversation is any conversation that helps us see each other across differences and discover human connection. It might be between two friends or among many strangers. It might be on a park bench, in a classroom, in the workplace, at home, or online. Regardless of where you are or who you’re with, here are our favorite principles and tips!”

Calling In and Calling Out Guide, Harvard University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

“In fostering spaces of inclusion and belonging, it is important to recognize, name, and address when individuals or groups with marginalized identities are experiencing harm, such as bias or discrimination. The concepts of “calling out” or “calling in” have become popular ways of thinking about how to bring attention to this type of harm. Knowing the difference between these concepts can help us reflect, then act, in the ways we feel will best promote constructive change. This guide is a continuously evolving document that we plan to improve over time.”

How do we think and talk about the future? This is one of the tension points Horizons has identified within the social change ecosystem: our different feelings about, and relationships to the future that can impact the way we approach our work and our partnerships.

Many want to “focus on the future” as a way of finding common ground and coming together around shared values. This can be deeply troubling and hurtful for those who feel that we need to first recognize past injustices and harms and finally confront the painful history of white supremacy that continues to bleed into our present. Yet, the future-oriented framing can also be off-putting to those who don’t want change (or fear change) – so any call to “build back better” or for “democratic renewal” are met with resistance because of nostalgia for the way things were in a romanticized past.

Narrative competency, imagination skills and futures literacy offer powerful insights to help explore our relationship to the future while not dismissing the importance of truth-telling and historical memory as a way of moving forward together. The Horizons team has compiled the following resources (by no means complete):

Who is the target audience to shepherd this narrative work for the future? Thinking beyond campaigners and communications specialists, many actors within movements (including a broad array of partners and allies) can help digest, embody and infuse futures narratives throughout many streams of work. This awesome resource at Reframe, outlines concepts of narrative infrastructure and power-building. Somewhat of an adjacent concept is this thoughtful critique of traditional audience segmentation in strategic communications that highlights the fact that people are complex and often don’t fit into any one category.

An important aspect of futures work, is to explore our relationship with fear and how to recognize that in bridging to our future, we must address why some are also fearful about the future – fear of change, status threat, etc.  For example, in some recent analysis of narratives of the future , we might expect to be confronting a growing need for escapism. This provides an opportunity and challenge if we are asking people to get more active in creating this new shared future. There is also great power in emergent narratives, i.e. asking with curiosity and openness ”so what now?”

If this is a moment of large societal transformation – a moment to build a bigger we – then resources from the UK project, Larger Us, can be helpful. The real nugget will be getting from here to there; i.e. how to organize and shepherd a collective “change management” process for societal transformation. As we engage with narratives, it’s particularly interesting to be conscious of how messaging and campaigns rooted in the urgency of the now feed into the narratives of the future that we want to create (and are not working at cross-purposes).  These resources offer insights and examples of the deep work of transformation: storytelling for systems change.

Opportunities to create new shared identities based on the values we want to live in the future are very exciting when co-created in community with others.  This article has a lot of resources from global examples, with a particularly resonant point about co-creation:

Solidarity in Narratives, Narratives for Solidarity “Humans tend to assemble mutually reinforcing stories in order to establish common sense and construct shared beliefs or truths about people, places, communities, cultures and their understandings of rights and social justice.  Narrative work is about changing what is ‘known’ about a group of people, or about a situation. It is, however, not about ‘convincing’ people; rather about building new and different relationships and understanding. Co-constructing narratives can be a key way to connect with different constituencies and build solidarity across groups, including those that didn’t start out with the same perspective or agreement. It is as much about story-listening as storytelling. And the stories continue to be written…”

As you may work in community to define specific values together for the future, this worksheet by the Narrative Initiative was put together for exactly that purpose.

The role that each of us has to play in our collective transformation is one of the most important messages about imagining the future where we create a sense of possibility and a sense of abundance. We want to try not to feel so constricted, but open and expansive to possibilities. This resource on deep narrative change from Ruth Taylor in the UK is a really wonderful compendium on the transformational potential of “deep narrative” change (beyond any one issue or one campaign).

The following list includes just a few of the many other resources on imagination and futures:

• Imagination Infrastructure, what do we mean? by Olivia Oldham: “The imagination is defined by Yusoff & Gabrys (2011) as a way “of seeing, sensing, thinking, dreaming” that creates “the conditions for material interventions in, and political sensibilities of the world.” It is a “site of interplay between the material and the perceptual — a site for framing, contesting, bringing into being.” Imagination is thus a transformative practice which has the capacity to cultivate and foster alternatives to social, political, cultural and economic conditions; it is a prerequisite for changing the world for the better.”
• Check out these beautiful imagination cards from Mariame Kaba and others.
• This is a super scientific take on the human brain’s power of imagination by Philip Ball that you may find inspiring: “Imagination isn’t just a spillover from our problem-solving prowess. It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do.”
• The Center for Story-Based Strategy are doing some really cool stuff on manifesting our radical imagination: The future is us!
• UNESCO is a leader in developing a global movement on Futures Literacy. You can check out their toolkit that has some helpful resources on changing our relationship to the future.
• A Better World Ahead Means Shaping Emerging Narratives Now by Kristin Grimm
• More in Common’s hopeful narrative project, The Endless Sea
• Imagining the Future is Just Another Form of Memory by Julie Beck
• This is an overview of different feelings about the future by Matt Golding with some great framing advice and links to other resources.
• Are we bridging or breaking the future? The Stories We Tell Will Create the Future We Inhabit by john a. powell
• The Omidyar Foundation put together a beautiful resource on Portals to Beautiful Futures.
• Future Narratives, a project co-funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ programme, has a resource on narratives for the future that is tied to the UNESCO project, but also has some other links – like this game on playing with potential futures.
• This is a wonderful metaphor of the corridor and the lamp by Ours for The Making that is kind of cool for thinking about the future, and where we are able to put our focus.
• The Long Time Project has many creative resources and a network “focused on finding new ways to help us care about the long-term future.”
• Moral Imagination helps “to facilitate collective imagining to empower people to create shared imaginings of the future.” They have developed the Story of the Impossible Train as an exercise in moral imagining, a body of work developed by a growing network of storytellers, facilitators and narrative medicine practitioners.

Happy imagining!

This overview was created after a convening of organizations and networks who are endeavoring to map the larger “ecosystem of social change,” including social justice, bridge-building, and democracy organizations, practitioners, and organizers. This is not an exhaustive list of mapping efforts but rather a working document that we intend to periodically update as we learn of more efforts and seek to make sense of the diverse lenses they provide to our understanding of the ecosystem. If you have a map or know of a map that is not listed below but should be please email us at [email protected].

Democracy Strengthening

• Bridge Alliance: Bridge Alliance created their Democracy Field Overview which combines civic engagement, electoral reform, policy and issues work of the many unique organizations and funders working within the political and civic reform sectors. It is a useful tool for those in the democracy field to learn about complementary work.
• Citizen Connect: Citizen Connect is a website with many organizations from the bridging field & democracy spaces – a place where ordinary citizens can go to find out what’s going on and how to get engaged. The website currently has 600+ organizations and has the potential to become a coordinating space for larger ecosystem efforts.
• Critical Connections Forum: CCF sought to get to know the democracy landscape (including 300+ different organizations). CCF sought to get to know the democracy landscape, and includes 300+ different organizations. They identified several areas in which to dig deeper: Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT), bridging, bottom-up political organizing, and participatory governance. They are making sense of the democracy “movement of movements” and identifying where critical connections have not yet been made. They have connected with others through the Co-Intelligence Institute. They’re largely focused on building baseline maps of the current state of relationships of organizations. Caleb from CCF authored Organizing for collective impact: The making of a mass pro-democracy movement which drew on this map.
• Democracy Funders Network: The Democracy Funders Network (DFN) is a cross-ideological learning and action community that helps new and existing funders better understand and respond to the long-term challenges facing U.S. democracy. DFN takes a big-picture view of the challenges facing American democracy and the approaches to solving them. They believe that rather than one silver bullet that will enable American democracy to thrive over the next fifty years and beyond, many approaches are necessary to sustain democracy over the long-term. In addition to working with their diverse network of partners, they frequently release resources such as: “Preventing & Addressing Political Violence in 2022,” “A Funder’s Guide to Combatting Disinformation,” and “Non-Partisan Pooled Funds: Elections Edition.” Visit https://www.democracyfundersnetwork.org to learn more.
• FixUS: FixUS has developed their Landscape Review to curate the many existing organizations devoted to improving the state of US democracy through political, economic, cultural, and other changes.
• Mapping American Social Movements: This project produces and displays free interactive maps showing the historical geography of dozens of social movements that have influenced American life and politics since the late 19th century, including radical movements, civil rights movements, labor movements, women’s movements, and more. This project allows us to see where social movements were active and where not, helping us better understand patterns of influence and endurance.
• SNF Agora Institute: Mapping the Modern Agora integrates big data on civil society organizations to map the modern agora at scale. Specifically, it creates a comprehensive map of the civic life in US communities, develops a more coherent classification scheme for civil society, and develops new lines of research and inquiry that can emerge from creating a picture of the whole. They aspire to map not only the geographic aspects of civil society, but also the digital ones. And they hope is that this can become a tool for researchers and practitioners to better understand, make sense of, and invest in strengthening civic spaces in modern democracies.
• Uphold Our Democracy: Uphold Our Democracy is currently mapping the US democracy space to inform next steps and a future strategy for the informal coalition that came together in 2020. They are looking at mapping the bridgers, social justice movement leaders, people working on democracy reform efforts, and then folks in the litigation space. They’ve also identified two periphery groups: funders and other the core members of the Uphold Our Democracy Coalition, as it was initially convened. Uphold did work on an initial mapping of organizations and training resources in 2020 that is publicly available here. Relatedly, there is the Global Democracy Coalition. This coalition is run by International Idea and Counterpart International and is very focused on The Summit for Democracy.

Nonviolent Action Campaigns

• Crowd Counting Consortium: The CCC has been tracking nonviolent protest activity across the US since January 2017 (demonstrations, rallies, including things like campaign rallies, strikes and other labor actions and nonviolent direct actions.) It’s a large database of geo-coded events including information such as participating organizations, crowd size, participant claims, protest reasons, protester tactics, police and counter protester responses, and issue tags. Data is publicly available via a GitHub repository where compiled versions of the data are updated on a weekly basis. It’s attempting to make available data sets that scholars can use to identify and analyze causes and consequences of trends within the United States. CCC has also worked with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
• The Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO): The NAVCO Data Project is a multi-level data collection effort that catalogues major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns seeking government overthrows or territorial independence around the globe from 1900–2014.

Polarization/Bridgebuilding

• Divided We Fall: Divided We Fall has created an ecosystem map of the bridge-building community as part of their Framework for the Bridge Building Ecosystem. They see this effort as a potential first step toward growing participation and collaboration across this ecosystem. This guide contains over 200 organizations that work on at least one of the following topics: Dialogue and Engagement, Youth and University, Advocacy and Research, Media and Journalism, and Technology.

Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation

• Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth: RJOY is engaged with a few mapping initiatives, particularly focused on truth telling, racial healing, and reparations initiatives in the United States. Much of their work is focused on how to weave these networks, identifying those who are under the radar or on the margins and those who are at the center of the work. Based on their connections, RJOY seeks to bring folks closer together to build relationships. By really centering their work on relationships, they seek to support the sustainability of the network to be able to weave itself. These efforts have led to the extension of the Iowa City Truth Telling Commission and a few other initiatives.
• The Bridging Divides Initiative: In partnership with the Truth Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Movement BDI has mapped TRHT Movement Organizations and Transitional Justice Initiatives in the United States, overlaying some of those members with local government-led TRHT initiatives (collected by the New England School of Law), and/or with some other efforts affiliated with George Mason University’s Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation.

Violence Prevention/De-Escalation

• Over Zero: Over Zero has been mapping groups that are focused on preventing and addressing political violence (many of whom don’t do that as their primary purpose but are playing a major role). They interviewed 50+ civil society groups in the US (state and national) and 12 international experts with experience in over 120 countries to develop this map and observed several different forums and roundtables over time. The team is in the process of finalizing a write-up and visuals.
• Peace Direct: Peace Direct’s primary purpose for mapping is to recognize local peace builders who are oftentimes doing work but are simply not recognized. On Martin Luther King Day in 2019 they mapped US peacebuilding. They have mapped about 200 racial justice efforts across this country—though some call it different things (e.g., “legal defense,” “water protection,” “peacebuilding with a racial focus,” or leaving out the word “peace” all together). Their primary audience are local organizations, and they seek to build networks through their Local Action Fund (LAF).
• The Bridging Divides Initiative: The Bridging Divides Initiative started as a mapping effort to try and understand both risk and resilience at a local level and make connections between them. BDI worked with ACLED to start their US-based coding, and they have a visualization of that data, also overlapping with some of the organizational data they compile. They often combine other types of event data around political violence and demonstrations, including about 12 different indicators to look at risk at a county level (specifically risk of political violence and democratic disruption.) This is displayed on a heatmap of the US and updated every two months. They collaborate with the Carter Center and some researchers at GW on this effort. They also work with Thought Partnerships Hub.One of their initial (and now dormant) efforts was a map of organizations that do bridging work that is available on their website. This bridging map serves as a template to show a lot of other different bridging efforts. In the last year they also started looking at threats and harassment of local officials together with the Anti-Defamation League and now the National League of Cities. They are planning to be able to share some initial details on that as early as October. Because of the sensitivity of the information, this data would be available by request-only. They developed a de-escalation directory, organizations that are offering de-escalation or bystander intervention training and/or Training of Trainers.

Violent Extremism

• The Southern Poverty Law Center: The SPLC has mapped hate across the US and the maps can be filtered by ideology and state. The data is also available for download. Additionally, SPLC has mapped Confederate monuments and has done snapshots like a map shows flyers and banners that have been displayed by far right hate groups. The Western States Center is a key partner of the SPLC.
• The Khalifa Ihler Institute: has mapped the Proud Boys and hate in general. Their founder Bjørn Ihler has been involved in a number of mapping initiatives. Specifically, he’s collaborated with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation to create Antifascist Europe to monitor the development and transnational networks of far-right and right-wing populist parties as well as white supremacist, neo-Nazi and fascist groups.