Defining the Democracy Movement: Richard Young

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's weekly interviews engage diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This series is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

The most recent interview of this series took place with Richard Young, the Executive Director of CivicLex, a nonprofit organization strengthening civic health in Lexington, Kentucky. In addition to leading important work in Lexington, Richard has become an evangelist for the importance of place-based democracy work, which has indisputably gained interest and attention following the 2024 general election.

CivicLex focuses on local issues in Lexington, Kentucky, such as promoting civics education, improving the local news infrastructure so that residents understand and engage with issues in Lexington, supporting community members in different forums to talk through political differences, and helping to shape public spaces like parks.

Richard’s perspective is that this local civic work is some of the most fundamental and foundational in improving our democracy. However, it is perhaps not always seen as typical pro-democracy work and is often not prioritized by funders or national organizations.

In the aftermath of the 2024 election, there seems to be a reckoning in how much of the democracy field has been focused on the federal level. Much of the focus seems to be on Trump, but the solutions may lie locally. Richard has been sounding the alarm on this issue for years.

I talked to Richard about his work in Lexington, his challenges with the entire framing of the pro-democracy field, and the importance of local civic health. I have found that it can be in vogue to say that the work needs to become more local without explaining how funders and practitioners can practically focus more on local infrastructure. So, I pushed Richard on that topic.

His main reflections included:

• Funders need to get out of their elite bubbles: Richard has some heavy-handed critiques for funders, hypothesizing why they might not value local work the same way they think about national endeavors. He admitted that some of this prioritization might stem from logistical realities that prevent smaller funding amounts from being given to local organizations.

Richard also noted that many funders may come from an elite bubble that prevents them from understanding work in localities. As he notes, “funders traditionally come from elite institutions. I think that elite institutions, particularly on the coasts, do not understand how national movements don't really appeal to people in the center of the country because they don't feel connected to their lives. I feel like folks that are coming from elite institutions.. get wrapped up in a little bit of a bubble.”

• Local work is about long-term membership: Richard made the point that many in the pro-democracy space are focused on short-term responsive work, and thinking about how to support movements. This is important, but local work is fundamentally about creating and maintaining durable constituencies and ensuring that individuals feel that they are members of a community. This is necessarily long-term.
  
  As Richard says, “We're trying to provide as many opportunities as frequently as we can for people to opt in at their own speed. Sometimes for some people that'll take a week. Sometimes it'll take a decade. Some people have been really, really burned by a system that in the past and in many ways in the present doesn't want to hear from them. What we're saying is like, hey, we want to help you get involved in the decisions that shape where you live and really try and pull it back to people's everyday lives.”

The pro-democracy space needs to listen more: Richard also chided the pro-democracy community for not listening enough to people on the ground, which may prevent people from becoming part of the larger movement. “I think the pro democracy space has a big lecturing problem. So, we all.. want to chide people into caring about this stuff. And that doesn't seem to be effective, right?

And so, I think, well, the alternative to that is like, why don't we do things that people want to be a part of? And so, for us, that means like trying to have fun events.” We could all stand to do more listening, rather than lecturing.

• Local news can provide an exemplar of how to support local democracy work: Funders and practitioners alike can focus on the complexity of determining winners and losers as a reason not to focus on pro-democracy work at the local level. With so many cities and towns in this country, prioritizing can seem overwhelming.

Richard notes the local news infrastructure as a potential exemplar. Indeed, in recent years, national and local funders alike have determined that the dearth of community-based news presents an existential challenge to our democracy. In turn, funders have founded pooled funds and driven attention to the problem. What if a similar approach were applied to local democracy?

As Richard says, “I think we see this emerging like rapidly in the local news space…which is thousands of light years beyond everyone else.. They have pressed forward (with) state-based chapters and regional chapters, and local chapters. They are really, clearly articulating arguments. They have place-based practitioners that they're investing in through local newsrooms. They're investing in intermediary infrastructure. They're investing in national infrastructure.

A bunch of funders got together and said, You know what, we really need to be investing in local news. Let's build the infrastructure to make it happen, and they're doing it.”

I appreciated Richard’s candid and hard-hitting reflections. In a moment when there seems to be more attention on local work, he has concrete thoughts about the importance of the long-term investment of locally based membership.

Scott Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is co-leading a trans-partisan effort to protect the basic parameters, rules, and institutions of the American republic. He is the co-founder of Generation Citizen, a national civics education organization.

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