In this episode of the Politics in Question podcast, the team discusses David Shor's recent controversy-provoking advice for Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Woman walking, carrying a bag
Narratives matter more than we often admit. They shape how we imagine civil society, what we expect from it, how much legitimacy we grant it, and what role it plays in times when everything—politics, technology, conflicts, public perceptions—feels accelerated. Today, narratives are shifting at the global, regional, and national levels, revealing a deeper collective redefinition.
A Global Shift Is Deeper Than It Appears
At the global level, something fundamental is happening: the way civil society and development are described is changing. For decades, international cooperation was organized around a vertical and binary logic rooted in a colonial mindset, a model based on the idea that some actors “help” and others “receive help.” This framework shaped discourse, funding structures, institutional relationships, and expectations. It was never designed to be equitable, and its limitations go far beyond the current crisis.
Today, democratic, economic, environmental, and humanitarian crises are intertwined and make the inadequacy of this model impossible to ignore. But it is important to be clear: the system is not failing because of the crisis; it was flawed at its conception. The present context simply makes structural problems more visible.
This moment, then, is an opportunity. Not to adjust the old model, but to rethink it from the ground up: how it works, who decides, who defines success, and how responsibility is shared globally. The dominant narrative is moving toward interdependence, a perspective in which all societies contribute, build, and make decisions, and in which proximity to communities, local legitimacy, and long-term trust matter more than financial leverage or bureaucratic compliance.
This shift is also visible in language. Terms like beneficiaries, which reduce people to passive recipients, are giving way to words like actors, communities, and partners, which recognize agency, history, and collective identity. As such, language is not cosmetic; it helps reorganize the architecture of the system.
Changing narratives is a key component to real transformation around redistributing power and ensuring that decisions are made closer to those affected. It also necessitates that legitimacy be grounded in presence, consistency, and lived experience rather than in external indicators.
Identity, Contestation, and Creativity in Latin American Narratives
The Latin American region reveals a landscape where narratives about civil society are marked by political tension, historical inequalities, and new digital actors who are competing for attention and legitimacy.
One of the strongest dynamics impacting the success or failure of narratives is polarization. In many countries, civil society has become entangled in an environment where any public intervention is interpreted through rigid partisan lenses. For many people, suspicion is now part of everyday life. There is suspicion surrounding financing, political ties, and international alliances. In this climate, it is difficult to communicate complexity or to build broad public trust.
At the same time, the region has seen the rise of highly organized actors—some using traditional media, others deeply digital—who craft their own narratives and compete for cultural influence. The public debate is no longer framed simply as “civil society vs. government” but as a multifaceted arena where movements, platforms, and networks compete for legitimacy.
Technology accelerates these tensions. Social media has become a central arena where misinformation spreads quickly, stereotypes are reinforced, emotions outrun evidence, and algorithms reward outrage and ignore nuance.
These circumstances push civil society organizations to not only rethink how to communicate but also to reconsider how to reach diverse audiences without sacrificing depth.
In contrast to these challenges, a powerful idea has emerged: the most compelling narratives in Latin America come from within its territory. They come from everyday stories of communities organizing, resisting, creating, and experimenting:
Born from lived experience, these narratives are often more impactful than top-down, formal messaging.
Latin America is home to extraordinary narrative creativity. The region blends cultural heritage, innovation, and collective action in ways that produce new forms of storytelling and participation. This creativity not only generates solutions but also generates meaning.
The Argentine Lens
Nationally, Argentina presents yet another layer of this global–regional phenomenon.
Civil society often oscillates between two opposing stereotypes:
Both flatten the complexity of the work, which involves professionalism, planning, data analysis, policy advocacy, accountability, and strategic management.
News media play an ambivalent role. On the one hand, they are drawn to conflict and controversy; on the other, they increasingly rely on civil society for reliable data, territorial insight, and contextual analysis. This creates an opening: civil society can become a trusted reference in a context marked by widespread institutional distrust.
Digitally, organizations face a rapidly evolving environment. Algorithms move fast, misinformation circulates effortlessly, new platforms emerge constantly, and artificial intelligence reshapes how audiences engage with information. Many groups with strong digital strategies already dominate the conversation and are pushing civil society to adapt while preserving accuracy and integrity.
Communication is not an accessory but it is part of institutional work. Explaining what organizations do, why they do it, and what impact they generate strengthens social trust, connects with supporters, and helps counter harmful stereotypes.
Connecting the Three Levels
When the global, regional, and national perspectives are viewed together, several shared insights emerge:
Civil society is living through a moment of narrative re-writing — one that carries responsibility and possibility. The challenge is not to invent something entirely new but to recognize what has always been there: communities, shared experiences, collective strength, and the capacity to create futures even in the midst of uncertainty.
This article was originally published as part of Resilience & Resistance, a Charles F. Kettering Foundation blog series that features the insights of thought leaders and practitioners who are working to expand and support inclusive democracies around the globe.
What will American democracy look like in 2035? The Democracy Architects Council empowers young leaders to help design the future of U.S. democracy.
What will American democracy look like in 2035?
That question is too often left to pundits, politicians, or institutions invested in preserving the status quo. The Democracy Architects program is built on a different premise: that the people who will inherit our democracy should help design its future.
Today, The Bridge Alliance and Civics Unplugged are proud to announce the launch of the Democracy Architects Council, a one-year, paid opportunity for eight visionary young leaders to imagine, define, and help build the next era of American democracy.
Democracy Architects is not another fellowship focused on résumés or rhetoric. It is a working council—energized, inclusive, and unapologetically ambitious—designed to move beyond diagnosis toward action. Together, the eight Democracy Architects will co-create an actionable playbook for democratic renewal, grounded in evidence, lived experience, and cross-sector collaboration.
The Democracy Architects Council will bring together leaders ages 18 to 28 from diverse sectors, regions, cultures, and backgrounds. Selected for both their demonstrated impact and their commitment to a bold democratic future, council members will serve as thought leaders representing their respective sectors, from civic engagement and public service to media, technology, education, and beyond.
Over the course of a year, Democracy Architects will work individually and collectively to articulate a vision for American democracy in 2035 and beyond. They will track emerging trends, convene roundtables with stakeholders, translate dialogue into concrete recommendations, and share their insights widely through essays, commentary, and reports published in The Fulcrum.
Their work will not exist in a vacuum. Democracy Architects will connect storytelling to moments of democratic renewal already underway, including major reform conversations and public events such as the Bridge Alliance and the National Academy of Public Administration’s Fellows for Democracy and Public Service initiative.
Each Democracy Architect will receive a $10,000 annual honorarium, paid monthly, in recognition of the time, expertise, and leadership this work requires. Council members will also receive:
In return, Democracy Architects will commit approximately 20 hours per month to the role, including writing sector-focused essays, facilitating stakeholder roundtables, cultivating relationships, and collaborating on a final Democracy Architects report to be released at the end of the year.
The Democracy Architects Council is, at its core, a wager—a belief that the future of American democracy depends on trusting young leaders not just to participate, but to lead.
These architects of democracy will chart their own path forward in dialogue with those who have walked before them, forging a bridge between legacy and possibility. Their charge is not to protect democracy as it is, but to help shape what it must become.
The inaugural cohort of Democracy Architects will be announced in late January 2026, with the first convening scheduled for late February.
At a moment when cynicism about democracy runs deep, Democracy Architects offers something rare: not just critique, but creation. These young architects of democracy will chart their own path toward America’s tomorrow, in dialogue with those who have walked before them, forging a bridge between legacy and possibility.
Kristina Becvar is Senior Advisor to the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. She previously served as the Executive Director of the Bridge Alliance,
A deCOALonize protest against coal held in 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya.
After crucial global progress toward tackling the climate crisis in recent years, we are re-entering an era where powerful industrial nations are again resorting to military force to control fossil fuel reserves as both a key aim and lever of geopolitical power.
The United States’ illegal military intervention on January 3 in Venezuela, a colonialist power play for the country’s vast oil reserves, is among the latest outcomes of the dangerous pivot away from global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Days after its military incursion in Venezuela, the U.S. became the first nation in the world to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty ratified by Congress in 1992 that seeks to limit the amount of climate pollution in the atmosphere.
For climate philanthropists, these moments must be a wake-up call. It is time for philanthropy to accelerate and deepen investments in activists, coalitions, and movements. Around the world, they are fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground and working to build and scale the clean, renewable energy systems centered on human rights principles required to overcome the climate crisis.
Over the past year, climate scientists have been sounding the alarm that our planet is on track, at least temporarily, to overshoot a 1.5 °C rise in the world’s temperature – the target set by the Paris Agreement beyond which the world will experience far more catastrophic impacts of climate change and ecosystem collapse. If we don’t accelerate efforts to phase out fossil fuels and advance a just energy transition, not only will our planet suffer, but the pursuit for boundless extraction of fossil fuels will continue to dictate geopolitical relations and spur further aggression toward sovereign nations.
Philanthropy has an obligation to scale up flexible and long-term funding for the solutions we know are needed to ensure a just energy transition. Our sector has both the means and the reach to play a catalytic role in making that vision a reality. As a funder, I’ve seen such philanthropy empower grassroots climate activists and movements across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, pushing back against further oil and coal expansion in their countries.
In Thailand, for example, after the Thai government announced plans in 2014 to build a coal-fired power plant in Krabi, we supported the activist groups Save Andaman Network and the Centre for Ecological Awareness Building to organize thousands of residents on nearby Koh Lanta. For eight years, this grassroots movement demonstrated across the region and in Bangkok. Local hotels hung anti-coal signs and recruited tourist testimonials against coal. They eventually helped to shape new narratives on the need for renewable energy systems that protect the basis of life. In 2022, Thailand’s Ministry of Energy relented and cancelled plans for the power plant.
In Kenya, we supported similar efforts of a coalition of activist groups called deCOALonize. They had been fighting the development of a coal-fired plant on the country’s northern coast. If completed, the plant would have been a grave threat to air quality and vital ecosystems, like marine life and mangroves, on which the region relies. The Lamu islands are also home to East Africa’s oldest Swahili settlement – a UNESCO Heritage Site. It took nine years of organizing, protesting, advocacy, and public interest litigation, but last October, a high court in Kenya permanently blocked the power plant from being built.
Several of our partners from Mesoamerica and elsewhere around the world also attended the COP30 in Belem, Brazil, in November. There, they added to the powerful chorus of social movement voices calling for governments around the world to commit to phasing out fossil fuels in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of reigning in the global temperature increase.
Activists have the most decisive role in this crisis, but philanthropy must amplify its message. The fight for climate justice is an existential one, and it can only be enriched by aligned and deepened philanthropic investment. As President Trump will continue to demonstrate, fossil fuels will keep driving wealthy, authoritarian, and imperialist regimes toward military aggression and wars against sovereign nations. By urgently investing in social justice movements, philanthropy can empower grassroots leaders to promote renewable energy systems that transcend the logic of domination and extraction, and that will bring us toward a safer and more sustainable future.
Payal Patel works at the American Jewish World Service and is the director of their grantmaking and programmatic work on Land, Water and Climate Justice. AJWS is a human rights grantmaking and advocacy organization that supports activists and movements across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed another author.
Dozens of people attend a rally in lower Manhattan across from Federal Plaza to demand an end to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE ) deployments following the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week on January 10, 2026, in New York City.
With each passing day, more chaos and confusion envelop us as a nation: from battles in local communities over Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the burning of synagogues to attempted cuts in childcare support.
I tend to find people reacting in one of two ways. Retreating, even unplugging entirely from the media and the public square. Or getting fired up and looking to take action.
It is this second group I want to address for the moment. In this group, I see too many of us reaching for easy answers. The impulse is understandable. Many of us want to do something–-anything!—to feel like we’re making a difference. But this impulse can lead us astray.
For starters, many people are investing their attention and hopes in the upcoming midterms. “If we just elect my candidate, then everything will get better.” But will they really? No doubt, voting matters and can lead to productive change. But let’s face reality: No election—or individual politician—can fix what ails us. The system itself is broken.
Others are rushing to join bridge-building and depolarization efforts. These are important, too. But I fear we may convince ourselves they are an end in themselves. I’m convinced no amount of “talk” or “civility” will produce the results we need.
Let’s tell the truth. There is no quick fix to the challenges we face in our communities and the nation. We have real work to do. The good news: it’s doable.
Getting on a new trajectory of hope requires addressing something deeper—much deeper—than just electing a new politician or talking through our differences. Over nearly 40 years of working deeply in communities across all 50 states, I’ve come to learn that civic culture is the biggest predictor of whether a community moves forward. The lack of a strong, working civic culture is why our country is at an impasse. We cannot move forward without forging new ways for people to interact, work together, and get things done.
Reviving civic culture is our central task today.
I’ve seen firsthand what it takes to revive civic culture and put communities on a more hopeful trajectory. I’ve worked everywhere from Flint, MI, after they lost tens of thousands of auto jobs, to Newtown, CT, in the aftermath of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, to Reading, PA, once declared the poorest community in America, where our work to restore their civic culture unleashed transformational, systemic education change.
Across all those experiences and more, I’ve learned that reviving and strengthening our civic culture starts with:
This all requires that we build together and take action that addresses what matters to people in their daily lives. When we do this, we restore our sense of belief that we can actually get things done together—not as Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, but as Americans.
This work must start locally. That’s where the bedrock of society has always existed, and it is where such change can realistically occur. As our history proves, it is the diligent, one-step-at-a-time efforts that grow out of our local communities that have the power to transform our nation—oftentimes at the very moment when political progress feels most elusive.
To make good on the promise and potential that still exists all across this land, we must commit ourselves to reviving our civic culture and building together. Let’s get going.
Rich Harwood is the president and founder of The Harwood Institute.
