Mastermind Alumni Network Member and close friend of the Bridge Alliance, Heidi Kim, talks about what real diversity efforts look like and the importance of relationships. This clip is from an exclusive series of JODIE (Justice, Opportunity, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity) webinars hosted by Bridge Alliance. This series is centered on encouraging and equipping leaders/organizations in the democracy field towards expansion of diverse, inclusive and equitable practices. Heidi begins the conversation by answering the question, "How do you help people understand what diversity, equity and inclusion is?
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Learning to make a difference between elections
Nov 20, 2024
This is part of a series focused on better understanding transformational advocacy — citizens awakening to their power.
For most Americans this election has brought exhaustion, divisiveness and, for many, fear and deep pain. After the election Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic: “Americans must stay engaged and make their voices heard at every turn.” And Liz Cheney tweeted, “Citizens across this country … must now be the guardrails of democracy.”
But most Americans still wonder how, and even if, they can make a difference between elections. What are the options? 1) Protesting? Important, but usually not the long game. 2) Signing email form letters, which only 3 percent of Congressional staffers say is highly effective? Just gestures. 3) Taking a two-year nap until the next election? Sadly, the preferred route for many. But few Americans know about option 4: transformational advocacy, which helps you change an issue and changes you in the process.
If transformational advocacy can have an impact on issues we care about and on our own souls, why do so few of us engage?
Let’s be honest — almost everyone shies away from advocacy as a way to make a difference. We donate to climate change organizations, but we don’t meet with a member of Congress or write a letter to the editor. We donate to groups working to end gun violence, anti-hunger organizations, groups dedicated to racial justice and many others, but we don’t become advocates on those issues beyond signing an online petition or going to an occasional rally. Why? Because most of us see advocacy as too hard or too frustrating, too complicated or too partisan, too dirty or too time-consuming, too ineffective or too costly.
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But what if that’s all wrong? What if deep engagement dissolves discouragement and can actually bring joy? What if you can become an advocate for a cause you care about and feel fulfilled, not frustrated? And what if engaging as an advocate is essential to protecting our democracy?
It is essential, but we’re constantly receiving the wrong signals from people who should know better.
In a 2023 Salon interview, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor said, “Few people can meaningfully participate in national politics beyond voting (this is just as true of political scientists as it is of regular folks).” Really? We should just hang up our hats? No thank you!
“People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves,” said Bill O’Keefe, executive vice president of mission, mobilization and advocacy at Catholic Relief Services. With that realization, in 2019 CRS launched a program to develop chapters that would deeply engage their members in transformational advocacy and fundraising. CRS wanted to support their members in doing much more than just voting and signing petitions.
During President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, chapter members began working to pass the Global Child Thrive Act, a bill that would require the administration to integrate early childhood development techniques into all child-focused international aid programs — activities like reading and singing to children, playing with colorful objects and providing better nutrition. The simple things we do to help our own children and grandchildren thrive would make a world of difference for children globally, especially those living in refugee camps and in other difficult circumstances.
At the end of a grueling campaign, one CRS volunteer shared how she felt when her House member, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), spoke during passage of the bill in 2020:
“When [we met with the congressman in 2019 to ask him to introduce the bill], I was a nervous wreck. It was my first time truly advocating ... and I wanted to get it right ... [but] seeing him speak today [on the House floor] and knowing that he actually listened, learned and worked for something that meant so much to the people he represents has given me renewed hope in the future of our government. I feel privileged to be a part of this experience.”
The Global Child Thrive Act passed with veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate as part of the much larger National Defense Authorization Act. The bill was vetoed by Trump, but the veto was overridden by Congress, and the bill became law on Jan. 1, 2021.
Most Americans still wonder how, and even if, they can make a difference between elections. It’s time for nonprofits to offer transformational advocacy and help us save our democracy.
Daley-Harris is the author of “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy” and the founder of RESULTS and Civic Courage.
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Racism is such a touchy topic that many U.S. educators avoid it – we are college professors who tackled that challenge head on
Nov 19, 2024
It is not easy to teach about race in today’s political and social climate.
One hundred and sixty years after the United States abolished slavery, racial differences continue to spark pervasive misunderstanding, engender social separation and drive political and economic disparities. American educators are naturally intimidated and, at times, discouraged by the huge task before them.
Yet race and racism are key components of American history. Understanding this history illuminates central aspects of American identity for students.
We are university faculty members – one Black, one white – who decided to tackle this topic head on.
Following the rash of police killings of unarmed Black Americans in 2014 and 2015 that inspired the Black Lives Matter protests, we began collaborating on a unique effort at the University of Missouri, where we both taught at the time, to heal our campus and society using the tools of education.
The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, had enormous reverberations at Mizzou. It spurred walkouts and protests, and ultimately the resignation of the university’s president.
Yet we knew the memory and lessons of this event could too soon fade into the past.
Race and the American story
American history is punctuated by recurrent cycles of racial injustice, response and forgetfulness.
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The American Revolution inspired a wave of abolitionist fervor – even Thomas Jefferson vehemently condemned slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself.” Then the political and economic concerns of white Americans eclipsed the issue for decades.
This cycle repeated itself after the Civil War ended slavery in the U.S. in 1865.
Reconstruction efforts in the South were incredibly successful in securing social and political equality for the freedmen. Then came the backlash: the rise of the racist and violent Ku Klux Klan in 1865, followed by the federal government’s political compromises with the South and the withdrawal of federal troops. Justice was delayed another century.
As documented in our new book, “Race and the American Story,” the course we created at Mizzou was a conscious effort to halt this vicious cycle of forgetfulness and apathy.
The Race and the American Story course launched in 2017 with the aim of bringing white and Black students and faculty together in the same classrooms to have honest conversations about issues of race in American history. It combines a focus on historical documents and music with an emphasis on small group discussion.
Students are regularly surprised by how directly the historical texts we assign relate to their own experiences as 21st-century Americans.
Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July speech – in which Douglass, who escaped slavery, wonders what patriotism means to Black Americans – reads to them like a Black Lives Matter manifesto. They are amazed that Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, predicted that the civil rights struggle would be even more difficult than abolition of legal slavery.
Students share these reactions and other insights with each other, rather than responding to the professor. By engaging in a common learning process about race and humanity, our students become friends – through and because of their differences, not despite them.
Music also serves as a shared touchstone – if not always a common ground – between white and Black Americans.
In one assignment, our students create an annotated playlist of songs that deal with the topic of race. We spend a class period or two listening to this music. Students explain why they chose particular songs, and then everyone reacts to that track.
Students who have recently read and discussed Ida Wells’ report on lynching in the South, for example, may hear similar themes in Billie Holiday’s iconic performance of “Strange Fruit.”
As students get to know each other on a personal level through their shared love of music, they may not even notice that profound learning about race and difference is also happening.
In many ways, the course design hinges on the fact that we are so different from each other, both as academics and as people.
When one professor is a Black female ethnomusicologist and the other is a white male political theorist, students can expect an eclectic blend of disciplinary knowledge and lived experiences. We learned about race and the American story through very different lenses, and we leverage our own experience and knowledge to make students feel more comfortable sharing theirs.
We invite our students to begin examining issues of race in American history from multiple entry points and from cultural perspectives that can speak powerfully to both Black and white Americans.
K-12 race education is lacking
We believe many U.S. students haven’t gotten a satisfactory education on issues of race for a long time.
Most elementary, middle school and high school students over the past 50 years have received some version of what we call the “Mount Rushmore” narrative of American history.
It goes something like this: A few great white men, plus Martin Luther King, Jr., did great things for America, a country that has had its problems in the past but is always getting better and better.
This version of history emphasizes progress and minimizes the gravity of past and present injustices against African Americans.
In recent years, this K-12 situation has worsened. In the place of unthinking Mount Rushmore-ism, U.S. schools now sit at two extreme poles.
On one side, some schools have begun instituting curricula inspired by Howard Zinn’s 1980 book “A People’s History of the U.S..” Zinn’s text surfaces the stories of people overlooked by most historical accounts, from the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 to the 1960s California farm workers’ movement led by Cesar Chavez.
Curricula based on Zinn’s work – for example, California’s ethnic studies program – complement and counterbalance the Mount Rushmore narrative. But they tend to downplay or reject the founding principles of the U.S. and the understanding of humanity that gave rise to the American political tradition itself.
Meanwhile, many states and school systems have adopted textbooks and curricula that emphasize the country’s fundamental goodness, omitting or neglecting historical racial injustices. Florida and Oklahoma have even enacted laws that some teachers interpret as prohibiting the teaching of slavery and historical racism.
Trapped between these two extremes are many educators so fearful of saying the wrong thing that they simply avoid the subject of race altogether.
Race and the American story: A bigger project
Some colleges do a little better. Black Studies programs may balance out the Mount Rushmore narrative with not just Zinn’s “untold stories” model but also the works of Black historians like Carter G. Woodson and Darlene Clark Hine.
Yet many American higher education institutions still teach Mount Rushmore in some courses and Zinn in others, contending that this approach provides “intellectual diversity.” We see this as a recipe for incoherence and confusion.
The successful course we co-designed at Mizzou demonstrates that colleges can tackle race in a thoughtful, nuanced way that builds bridges. We find that students are hungry to learn in this way. They regularly express gratitude for the opportunity to talk about race in ways they didn’t think was possible in higher education today.
After “Race and the American Story” launched in 2017, faculty members at other universities began to get in touch. They wanted to coordinate their efforts to teach honestly and productively about race with ours. In 2019, we hosted our first annual symposium for these faculty members and their students. We have since hosted many more events and conversations with professors, community members and students nationwide.
Our approach gives students and citizens a kind of “North Star” to orient race relations in the U.S. – one based on deep historical knowledge, a commitment to justice and a disposition toward genuine cross-racial conversation.
Mutual understanding doesn’t appear out of thin air, but educators can teach it.
Seagrave is an associate professor of civic and economic thought and leadership at Arizona State University. Shonekan is a professor and dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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We can’t lose the 'American' part of American education
Nov 18, 2024
Schools and communities across our nation are kicking off their celebrations of American Education Week today.
We all should take time to honor the millions of teachers, administrators and support professionals who devote themselves to our children’s education and well-being.
But American Education Week should also be an opportunity for honest conversation about the purpose of American education.
Are we resourcing our schools to deliver on their civic missions — or are we slowly removing the “American” from American education?
It is more than 20 years since the Carnegie Corp. of New York and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University released their much-discussed report,The Civic Mission of Schools.
The authors rightly concluded “that individuals do not automatically become free and responsible citizens but must be educated for citizenship.”
That is just common sense. It is also common sense that American public schools, overseen by American municipalities and paid for by American tax dollars, should be teaching students more about … well, America.
What does it mean to be an American? What are the principles and core values uniting us? And what are our rights and responsibilities as citizens?
But too many students are not getting enough of this education, and it is becoming a serious frustration within American communities and among teachers who stand ready to do the work.
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At the Bill of Rights Institute, we work with more than 77,000 civics and history teachers who reach about 7.7 million students per year. These teachers and students have been the victims of the decades-long deemphasis of civics in American schools.
According toresearch funded by the National Science Foundation, elementary school students may be receiving as little as 16 minutes a week of social studies education. Some states still do not have a civic education requirement, and those that do often wedge a small amount of civics into other social studies courses.
As one Michigan teacher told us, social studies classes like civics are “the first to lose time” in the overall school curriculum.
The results of de-emphasizing civic education are apparent and frightening.
Only 22 percent of eighth graders scored proficient or above in thelast National Assessment of Educational Progress testing.
Young people today areless proud of being Americans than previous generations — andresearch by YouGov found only 57 percent of millennials believe the Declaration of Independence protects freedom and equality better than the Communist Manifesto.
These results seem almost inevitable when we deprioritize civics and remove much of the “American” from American education.
Teaching civics needs to be central to the mission of our schools. Our schools rightly place great emphasis on subjects like science, technology, engineering and math. But civics needs to be on at least equal footing.
Most students, after all, do not become engineers or software developers. But every single student will need to function as a citizen within their communities and our nation.
Every student needs to understand the responsibilities of citizenship, and our nation’s founding principles like freedom, equality and justice.
Every student needs to know their rights, and how to advocate for themselves and others.
And every student should understand how our government functions so they can fully participate in our democracy.
Anything less is a disservice that disenfranchises our young people.
This American Education Week, let’s make a commitment to put the “American” back in American education. Get involved in your local school district and advocate for civic education across all grades, K-12.
Our schools truly can become great centers for civic learning. In fact, they must be.
Bobb is president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advances civic and history education.
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A new hill to take: How veterans can lead America’s fight for unity
Nov 18, 2024
As America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came to a close, thousands of courageous men and women who risked their lives fighting for years to protect our country and our way of life began coming home and transitioning into civilian life. For so many of them, that transition left a gaping hole.
Just a few weeks earlier, they had been a critical part of operations vital to national security. Decisions they made under fire had life and death implications for their brothers and sisters fighting to their left and right in the heat of battle. These were missions they carried out to keep their families and all Americans safe without any expectation of recognition or thanks.
Arriving back home, their days seem empty in comparison. For many, the most important decision they now must make may be which of 12 brands of cereal on the grocery shelf they will choose or what to wear to work the next day. Ordinary daily life is a shock. Something is missing.
That something is having a purpose.
America is more divided than we have been since the Civil War, and political violence is on the rise. Politicians and media celebrities work to dehumanize the other side, and social media platforms fan the flames to drive clicks, views and revenue. We have been sorted into echo chambers where we seldom encounter other Americans who don’t think like us, act like us or look like us. Trust has been significantly eroded to be replaced by fear – not because of some horrific crime we have committed against one another, but because of perceptions we have of other Americans as our politics has become more and more partisan.
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Veterans can play a strong role in creating the trust America needs. Veterans are one of the most trusted institutions in America. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans trust the military “a great deal or quite a lot,” compared to Congress coming in at a staggeringly low 9 percent. Veterans hold a special place in American society. They are trusted on both the left and the right of the political divide in America; and therein lies the opportunity.
Our brave men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan need a new hill to climb, and there is no greater hill to climb right now than to help unite the country across our political divide. Our veterans fought to defend American democracy overseas, and now we need them to do one more tour and fight for it again here at home. Veterans can be our greatest asset in this historically divisive time.
I am one of those veterans who returned home from the wars with a gaping hole inside me, aching for purpose and meaning. As a result, I foundedMore Perfect Union, an organization and movement that could tap into the lessons we had learned downrange in combat to help unite the country that we all love and fought so hard to protect.
Many of those lessons we learned while serving are still applicable to this new mission. In highly fragile regions, we were tasked with building trust among warring tribes in a village to prevent the infiltration of violent extremist organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS. We formed those bonds of trust using classic counterinsurgency tactics and hard-won lessons learned from two decades of asymmetric warfare.
We learned how to map out communities to understand the real power dynamics within a community and across rival factions. We learned how to earn the trust of power brokers within each of those factions. We brought them together around a common project for the greater good of the community and region These projects were varied, like a large-scale farming cooperative, building a school ,or repairing basic infrastructure like roads and bridges to ensure trade routes stay open and communities maintain access to markets.
Through these tactics, we were able to form strong bonds of trust among these warring factions to keep out extremist groups looking to exploit the weaknesses of isolation and division.
As veterans come home from foreign wars, we are returning to a situation that seems shockingly all too familiar. We see two rival factions separated and exploited by the most extreme voices in our society. It’s time to use our battle-tested lessons here at home — restoring unity and hope to prevent those extreme voices from tearing us apart. In the wake of a particularly contentious election, veterans can help turn down the temperature in communities across the country — reminding all of us that we are not Republicans and we are not Democrats. We are Americans.
We have one more mission to ask of our veterans. They can help us find a new patriotism in this important moment. They can help us remember that there is so much more that unites us than divides us. Veterans can help us find common ground, and then lead us beyond that to higher ground.
Harriman is founder and president of +More Perfect Union.
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