It’s Time for a New American Agenda

America is once again gripped by multiple political and societal crises. Most days in our local communities and in our wider public lives it can feel like we’re living through dizzying confusion, chaos, and division.

Acrimonious partisanship only deepens in Washington, DC, and our state capitols. Renewed calls for a third party are heating up, while Democrats plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to understand voters better, as if they had just discovered some new civilization. It’s like we’re collectively stuck in the Tower of Babel, unable to understand one another and what we share in common.

Yet when I engage with Americans of all political persuasions and backgrounds, I am struck by what we do hold in common. From the food bank employee in small-town Connecticut to the business owner in Northern California, to the librarian in suburban Florida, to the philanthropic leader in North Carolina, and everyday Americans all across this nation, the aspirations I hear people articulate form something akin to a new American agenda. Not a political party platform. Not a new think-tank treatise. Not a recipe for mass resistance. Not an excuse to stay on the sidelines or simply disengage altogether.

This is something fundamentally different and more hopeful. The Americans I meet want a new agenda. One that calls us to greatness. One that involves:

• Acknowledging our past and telling the truth about it, knowing that American history is complex and multifaceted
• Ensuring basic needs like food, housing, and safety are met in ways that bring us together rather than being used as political wedges
• Focusing on concerns people are ready to work on, and which require shared action in our local communities, such as education and youth opportunities, senior care, affordable housing, loneliness and mental health, and belonging, among other things
• Safeguarding our most cherished civic assets, like libraries, museums, and public media
• Making our communities and the country work for all of us, not just some of us
• Finding ways to come together, even amid our real differences, to become builders, doers, creators, and innovators again

We have lost sight of the pursuit of this kind of greatness amid the distracting power of our toxic politics. With no meaningful alternative, we find ourselves held hostage, unable to move forward.

Meanwhile, our societal challenges continue to grow: a loss of control and agency in our civic lives, widespread mistrust, and too much hatred and bigotry. Furthermore, many of us can no longer discuss certain topics with one another, especially with our close friends and family. We live and work in fragmented and siloed ways. Our civic culture is atrophied, making it much harder to accomplish things together.

The trend lines on all these pain points date back decades. They aren’t new. But they are accelerating. And they are amplified. Meanwhile, the issues people care deeply about—and which animate the agenda I outlined above—get pushed aside.

Moreover, no national or statewide legislation alone can address these issues. They demand local action. People intuitively know that. It’s why I’m traveling the country this year on a civic campaign to show community after community how getting on a new civic path can help us reclaim these issues from a political frame and instead focus on what matters to people in their daily lives. This new civic path—not more divisive politics—is a practical and more hopeful way to activate this new American agenda, repair our broken civic culture, and restore our belief in one another and our nation.

In just the past month, I’ve visited a booming suburb in Florida, one of the poorest communities in North Carolina, a working-class community in Connecticut, one of the most diverse communities in all of New England, and multiple communities across Northern California, where literal militias still exist. I’m heading to Selma, AL, and communities throughout Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio over the coming weeks.

Whenever I make the case for a new civic path and what it takes to create one, I receive the same response. Overwhelming relief. Hope. A new sense of possibility.

After an event in Redding, CA, one community leader told me, “Finally, someone is telling the truth about what we’re up against and how change will happen today.” In Florida, a retiree opened Q&A after my speech by noting, “Your talk is the only thing that’s given me hope recently.” I hear these sentiments too frequently to count.

People are responding to something here: An alternative message delivered by a nonpolitical messenger. It taps into a deep-seated, transcendent yearning to be part of something larger than ourselves, to work for the common good, and to create a new trajectory of hope.

Part of why I believe this new civic path also resonates so deeply is that it lays claim to what we are for, not just rages about what we are against. It calls for more than engaging in bridge building, devising new political strategies, or holding focus groups with disaffected voters. It’s not about being Republicans or Democrats. Hell, it isn’t even about being Americans. It is, at its most basic level, about being human and relating to one another.

People desire a human solution to the very human challenges we face today. They want action that brings us together, gets us moving in a more positive direction, and restores our belief in one another and our nation. Lord knows they aren’t finding these answers in our divisive politics. However, they can be seen when enough of us come together to forge a new civic path. This is how we can deliver on a new American agenda.

Rich Harwood is the president and founder of The Harwood Institute.