Category: Articles
Organizing Under Political Stress: Structural Clarity Before Engagement Is a Governance Imperative
Governing Claim When urgency-driven national engagement meets place-based ecosystems managing the lived consequences of democratic decisions, risk is redistributed asymmetrically. If that redistribution is not understood and calibrated in advance,...
History, Resistance and Democracy: Reflections on Visiting the Phoenix Indian School
Members of the Growers Guild recently came together in Phoenix, Arizona. While there, they visited the Phoenix Indian School, which was established in 1891 as a boarding school for American Indian children...
Facilitating a Big Tent: Critical Connections for Pro-Democracy Organizing
As we enter the second year of the current administration in the United States, calls for coming together to collaborate across siloes within the pro-democracy sector are louder than ever....
ICE Violence and the Struggle to Make Meaning:
What Narrative Power Is Doing in Minnesota, and Beyond By Eleonore Wesserle The murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by ICE in Minnesota were not an anomaly or...
U.S. Catholics are facing an authoritarian threat. The church has been here before.
The Catholic Church in the United States today is facing a crucial test. How will the church lead under what the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat calls an “imperial...
Block, Bridge, and Build: A Framework to Forge a More Democratic Future
We are living through a period of upheaval. In this world of uncertainty, one thing is clear: The need for coordinated, collective action is urgent. Recently, the people at Convergence Magazine developed a...
When Loyalties Shift: Americans’ Growing Noncooperation with Federal Abuses of Power
Evidence shows that an increasing number of Americans from all walks of life and from various economic sectors and political identities disapprove of — and are refusing to accept —...
Fascism and Isolation vs. Democracy and Interconnection: The Narrative Antidote to Authoritarianism
By Mónica Roa, PuentesOne way to understand our time is as a battleground of intense narrative disputes. On one side, the climate emergency, the impact of artificial intelligence on employment,...
Reimagining Masculinity: Reevaluating the Aspirations of All Boys and Men in the Fight for Democracy
Across philanthropic, academic, and policy landscapes, a growing national discourse is emerging around the well-being of men and boys. What was once seen as a peripheral concern is now gaining...
From Interconnection to a “Larger Us”: Expanding Circles of Identity, Care, and Solidarity (Part II)
By Mónica Roa, Puentes In the first part of this blog, I explored how the narrative of interconnection can serve as an antidote to authoritarianism by challenging fear-based stories that...