Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Meet the change leaders: Ken Powley

Ken Powley
Team Democracy

Nevins is co-publisher ofThe Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of theBridge Alliance Education Fund.

Ken Powley and Chris Newlon founded Team Democracy in early 2021. Its signature initiative is the nonpartisan Safe and Fair Election Pledge. The pledge is designed to create an important piece of common ground where Americans — including their elected representatives — can join together from opposite sides of the aisle in committing themselves to protecting the most essential guardrails of American democracy: safe and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power.


One of Team Democracy’s newer projects is the RAFT for America Challenge. Outfitters across the country offered pairs of participants, no matter what their differences, the opportunity to demonstrate that there is much more that unites us than divides us, and that we always do better by pulling together than by pulling apart. RAFT for America participants were treated to a transformative personal adventure in one of the most exciting and pristine places on earth!

Powley retired from a 46-year career at the helm of his whitewater rafting company to found Team Democracy. Powley brings a love of entrepreneurship and team building to his work in the nonprofit world, where, as he says, “I’ve come to think of democracy as being mainly a verb.” He and his wife, Penny, are proud parents of three. Of their six grandchildren, three called Kyiv, Ukraine, home until they were evacuated in the face of the Russian invasion. T

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Powley, who lives in Mountain Top, Pa., prefers smaller government, reasonably limited regulation and lower taxes.

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Powley for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of his democracy reform work:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Read More

Crowd Surfing Through Revolution
silhouette photo of man jumped off on top of people inside party hall
Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash

Crowd Surfing Through Revolution

Picture this: A person launches themselves into a crowd at a concert, and for a moment, everything hangs in the balance. Will they fall? Will they float? It all depends on countless hands moving in coordination, strangers united in a common purpose. Some push up while others stabilize, creating a dynamic, living system that defies gravity.

At this moment, we are all suspended between falling and flying, carried by a wave of global resistance that nobody controls but all can help shape. Think about what makes crowd surfing work. It's not just about the individual being carried – it's about the collective choreography happening beneath. With too much force in one direction, you fall. Not enough support in another, you crash. The magic happens in the balance.

Keep ReadingShow less
Threat Minimizes Compassion
Polarization and the politics of love
Polarization and the politics of love

Threat Minimizes Compassion

Threat minimizes compassion. This connection helps to explain two seemingly unrelated questions: Why do those who voted for President Trump seem not to publicly express much concern for the thousands of government workers fired since Inauguration Day? And why do liberals often seem not to talk as much about drug deaths as other issues like gun deaths?

The answers are multi-faceted, of course. This article will focus on one of many reasons: the potential victims of these actions and situations (government workers and drug users) are often directly or indirectly seen as threats by the other side, and it is hard to feel the pain of those who seem to threaten us. Institutions can also be threatening, based on the actions taken by people within those institutions.

Keep ReadingShow less
‘When People Spend Time Together, They Are Less Inclined To See Each Other As the Enemy’: ​A Conversation With Matt Grossmann

Picture of Matt Grossmann

‘When People Spend Time Together, They Are Less Inclined To See Each Other As the Enemy’: ​A Conversation With Matt Grossmann

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway famously observed that a character went broke in two ways: gradually, then suddenly. The same dynamic has been at work in American politics. For decades, the composition of our principal political parties has been slowly shifting, without a great deal of public attention. And then the 2024 presidential election happened, and it was suddenly obvious: the Democrats, traditionally the party of the working class, had become the party of educated elites.

Matt Grossmann has been a keen observer of this transition. A professor of political science at Michigan State University, Grossmann also directs the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and hosts the “Science of Politics” podcast for the Niskanen Center. With his co-author David A. Hopkins, Grossmann recently published Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, a book that documents a remarkable shift in American society. Since 1960, we have seen a massive expansion in the number of adult Americans earning college degrees—from roughly 7 percent of the population to nearly 40 percent.

Keep ReadingShow less