We've all heard that "children are our future," but few organizations have connected that sentiment to democracy building like Generation Citizen. Their CEO Elizabeth Clay Roy shares her passion for education, civics, and the power of "action civics" to build a better democracy in this episode of the How to Win Friends and Save The Republic podcast.
Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
As we gear up for one of the most pivotal elections in history, it’s clear that women are more politically inspired than ever. Following the announcement of Vice President Kamala Harris' candidacy, the percentage of women feeling politically inspired soared from 12 percent to 59 percent, according to a recent survey.
Yet, despite this surge in inspiration, the survey — conducted in June and September by She Should Run and CREDO Mobile — found that an astonishing 78 percent of women are still not considering running for office. This gap between inspiration and action is exactly what She Should Run’s latest initiative aims to address.
She Should Run is launching the “VOTE, AND” campaign to respond to the recent decline in women candidates, and aims to boost women’s political engagement beyond the ballot box. While women are tuning out of toxic political news, we know they continue to show up for their communities and themselves. She Should Run’s goal is to bridge the gap between the two and bring the political to the everyday. The campaign aims to inspire 10,000 women to take the first steps toward political leadership and connect the dots between their everyday actions and political ambitions in the future.
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VOTE, AND is launching with a diverse collection of digital resources to help women prepare for this election season and with an array of partners to connect women’s everyday actions with their political futures. Campaign activations include:
“This is a historic election, not only because we have the opportunity to see the first woman, the first Asian American, and only the second Black person to become president, but because of the profound impact it can have on the future of women’s political leadership. It is vital that we capitalize on the energy of this moment to motivate women beyond November,” said She Should Run founder and CEO Erin Loos Cutraro. “With VOTE, AND we can show women that their everyday actions are political, and meet them where they are on the topics and experiences they care about.”
While women are tuning out of toxic political news, we know they continue to show up for their communities and themselves. By combining core actions with education and curating examples of the many unexpected ways to engage women, She Should Run hopes to inspire a new generation of women leaders to take their first steps toward political leadership in the future.
Through digital resources, partnerships, and inspiring events, VOTE, AND brings women together and connects the dots between daily actions and potential political futures. From ballot evaluator tools to themed playlists, they offer engaging ways for women to explore their political potential. Women’s leadership is not just about breaking glass ceilings; it’s about using our collective power to make every community stronger.
With a historic election on the horizon, there’s no better time to show that women’s voices matter not just at the ballot box, but at every level of leadership. Let’s make sure that the energy of this election doesn’t end on Election Day. Let’s vote, and then let’s lead.
For more information, visit She Should Run.
Volunteers collect litter on Capitol Lake in Baton Rouge, La.
Plata is communications manager for Weave: The Social Fabric Project.
The Aspen Institute’s Weave: The Social Fabric Project tackles the problem of broken trust that has left Americans divided, lonely and in social gridlock. Weave connects and invests in grassroots leaders stepping up to weave a new, inclusive social fabric where they live. This is the fourth in an ongoing series telling the stories of community weavers from across the country.
In 2020, Marie Constantin was walking her dog around Capitol Lake in Baton Rouge, a peaceful bit of nature near the Louisiana capitol, when she realized the shoreline was covered in trash. “I stood there and I was almost paralyzed because it was more litter than I’ve ever seen in my life,” she says.
She didn’t stay paralyzed for long. The next day, she grabbed a trash picker and began cleaning the shore. At an age when others retire, the 68-year-old woman kept going back every day, eight to 10 hours a day. “Sometimes I would go on a kayak to pick up litter and look for the outfalls, the place where the trash was flowing from,” says Constantin.
A professional photographer, she began sharing her progress on Facebook.
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Little by little, neighbors started showing up. When a storm hit and thousands of pounds of trash flowed in, undoing much of the work they had accomplished over that year, more folks showed up to help. She estimates that up to 200 people have come out.
“We've picked up 26 tons of litter and four tons of tires,” says Constantin. “Businesses gave their employees time to volunteer. We had federal judges come out, we had little children come out. We had all kinds of people.” In the process, they’ve built friendships and a sense of community.
After cleaning up, a group often hangs out and shares a meal. Constantin’s social media posts capture the spirit. ”There's one photo where we created a human chain and dragged the bags up the hill, and you get a sense of the camaraderie,” she says.
The group noticed much of the litter flowing to the lake was single-use items, like chip bags and drinking cups. They traced those to trash trucks that were spilling small litter into the streets, where it washed into storm drains that led to the lake. They petitioned, marched and contacted the media, forcing the company responsible for trash pickup to spend several million dollars upgrading its truck fleet.
Now, the group is petitioning the city to implement a stormwater management system, which Constantin knows is an uphill battle that might take years. To coordinate these efforts, Constantin founded the Louisiana Stormwater Coalition. Now that people are connected and realize they can create change, anything feels possible. And she says neighbors are starting new projects to strengthen their community.
To see more stories like this, subscribe to Weave’s weekly newsletter.
Larnell is an associate professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois Chicago and a public voices fellow through The OpEd Project.
Mathematics — whatever your experience in school, you are likely to have developed a strong opinion. It’s quite possible you’ve been turned off for years; math tends to do that to some people.
Now that the new academic year is underway, from K-12 schools through higher education, it is timely and critical to rethink the labels many assign to learners with — and especially without — a demonstrable affinity for mathematical skills.
For many, math is at the top of the academic pyramid (bested or paralleled only by reading). Math is a notorious school gatekeeper, and many in professional and academic circlesroutinely use mathematical achievement as a credential for societal attainment and mobility.
A variety of labels justify and reinforce math's heightened status and signal which individuals and groups are mathematically worthy — terms like gifted, low or high, advanced, remedial, basic and more.
To put it differently, math is used to sift and sort people and opportunities. One of the more glaringly consequential places in this mathematics pipeline wheremany experience such labeling and gatekeeping is the transition to college.
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During the past 20 years, I have studied the phenomenon of mathematics remediation, primarily at large, four-year universities in the Midwest. My research focuses on how students experience these courses and the impact on how they view mathematics and themselves as mathematics learners.
Remediation has a long history, beginning with Latin tutoring at Harvard College for incoming students (then exclusively white men) during the 1600s. The first remedial mathematics courses were offered at the University of Wisconsin in 1849.
Fast forward to the 1970s. Following the expansion of higher education, remedial mathematics courses became a mainstay of entry-level coursework at two- and four-year institutions.
Although the numbers vary by year, region and institution type, it’s estimated that between 20 percent and 30 percent of all students entering four-year universities in the United States are placed in developmental mathematics courses. In two-year colleges, this range rises to 30 percent to 60 percent. This represents a significant swath of the college-going population — thousands of students yearly.
Research has long indicated that students from racially marginalized groups are disproportionately placed in these courses. In my own research, I ask, “What does it feel like to negotiate the ‘developmental’ or ‘remedial’ label?”
Despite the focus at times on the negative stigma associated with these courses, many see developmental mathematics courses as equity-oriented levers that broaden access to higher education. In some ways, they do.
But for far too many students, developmental math courses become a hurdle — and in many four-year institutions, they do not count toward graduation. Still they are required, and are sometimes a considerable cost for students who repeat the course multiple times.
So it is critical to support more students with strengthened coursework as they reach college.
Multiple reform efforts recently have shifted the landscape of mathematics remediation. California has been a national leader in this push, with recent legislation that seeks to establish more viable pathways for students to complete their degrees.
What may seem to be an even more radical idea is that in developmental mathematics courses that often meet more frequently than typical undergraduate courses, educators use the time to focus not only on mathematical content and skills but also disposition.
According to a groundbreaking National Research Council Report from 2001, along with focusing on concept and procedural development, an important point of focus in mathematics education needs to be the development of a productive disposition, or the habitual inclination to see mathematics as something useful and worthwhile to know and do.
It is important to prepare educators to spend time talking with students about what mathematics means for them. Instead of punishing students with procedures, it is perhaps best to work toward a mathematics education that finally adds up and create a mathematics-learning experience that attends to and includes the whole person in the equation.
UCLA quarterback Chase Griffin is hosting the 2024 Virtual All Star Engaged Athlete meeting on Oct 8.
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The Team is excited to invite you, your teams and your colleagues to the 2024 Virtual All Star Engaged Athlete meeting on Oct 8.
This national nonpartisan event, featuring college athletes, coaches and administrators, is designed to celebrate and expand the unique impact that athletes can have on campuses and communities across America.
With an important election approaching, The Team is redoubling efforts between now and Election Day to amplify its message through civic initiatives like #AllVoteNoPlay andby teaming up with Pizza to the Polls, HeadCount, Athletes Unlimited, the Social Change Fund, More Than A Vote, the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition and ALL IN , among many others.
In 2022, The Team's All Star meeting gathered over 2,000 athletes around the country to learn from luminaries such as NBA great Stephen Curry, former Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Hosted by UCLA quarterback Chase Griffin, this year's event will again feature student athletes interviewing sports icons and influencers such as NCAA President Charlie Baker, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, WNBA all-star Natasha Cloud of the Phoenix Mercury and many more.
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The Team, which partners on programs with the Bridge Alliance (publisher of The Fulcrum), is making a difference as nearly 600,000 student athletes across the country are overlooked by most traditional civics programs, and yet these people are often some of the most powerful voices and influential leaders on their campuses. College athletics provides an opportunity to develop great teammates, inspire tomorrow’s leaders and empower athletes to shape the future. The Team is there to engage and involve student athletes from across the country to be civic leaders.
The Team is led by Joe Kennedy, a former collegiate basketball player and coach who served as a special assistant for the Office of Public Engagement at the White House. In September 2022, Kennedy became the first executive director of All Vote No Play. During the 2020 election cycle, he connected with Stanford’s associate head men’s basketball coach, Eric Reveno, and they became a major force leading a new college athletics movement to expand student-athlete voter registration and create civic resources for coaches and teams.
Kennedy is working towards a future where all student athletes and athletic departments establish civic engagement as a priority:
“More than 500,000 student athletes are largely overlooked by most traditional civics programs, and yet, these athletes are often some of the most powerful voices and influential leaders on their campuses. We are building energy around the importance of athletes, coaches, and administrators becoming more engaged citizens. We offer tools and resources to help them shape the future they want to create.”
Register here. And The Team is willing to send you free pizza if you have a watch party. Sign up for pizza by Sept 27.
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
It’s been almost five years since the Bridge Alliance, an organization that I co-founded, held its 2019 annual summit, attended by over 200 political and social change agents/leaders. The theme was strengthening democracy and evolving into the multicultural, pluralistic society that our founders envisioned but could not enact.
In preparation for the summit, we turned to pop culture to build the connection between participants who didn't know each other and who represented diverse backgrounds and opinions. We did so by crafting an agenda based on two songs from the Broadway show “Hamilton” — "My Shot" and "The Room Where It Happens."
These two songs embodied the political situation we found ourselves in five years ago and still do today. Those in the room felt the fierce urgency of that time coupled with the empowerment to make a difference in the nation, and the world, for the betterment of all.
Our country needs more inspiration today as we celebrate National Civics Day. The observance commemorates the date the Federalist Papers, which convincingly made the case for ratification of the Constitution, were first published on Oct. 27, 1787.
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The Federalist Papers were penned by three of the biggest political figures of the day — Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (although they published their writings anonymously).
In 1787, the trio was trying to convince the states to accept the Constitution. Right now, it’s critical that we convince our fellow citizens of the importance of voting. And many pop culture stars are doing just that, including Taylor Swift, who urged her followers to vote while endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 12.
“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most,” she wrote on Instagram.
And the cast of "Hamilton" has reengaged, re-writing one of Lin-Manuel Miranda's classic songs into a stirring tribute to democracy. Listen to this incredible song, “The Election of 2024,” and you’ll surely agree that it is time to “party at the polls.”
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Let this wonderful song spark our collective imagination of a people that embraces our diversity as the operating system of our nation. Despite our many frailties, America is exceptional because from the outset its citizens saw themselves as participants in an experiment that would have implications for all of mankind. Our task is far from complete, so tell your friends it’s time to party to the polls and make a difference for America
The video ends by directing viewers to a pair of organizations working hard to get people to vote.
VoteRiders is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with a mission to ensure that all citizens are able to exercise their freedom to vote. VoteRiders informs and helps citizens to secure their voter ID as well as inspires and supports organizations, local volunteers, and communities to sustain voter ID education and assistance efforts. When We All Vote is a leading national, nonpartisan initiative created by Michelle Obama with a mission to change the culture around voting and to increase participation in each and every election by helping to close the race and age gap.
You too can join the party by spreading the message.
