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Common Ground Solutions

Partisanship is at an all-time high, and it's holding our nation back. On issues like health care, immigration, debt, and taxes, our political discourse has become so divisive that we cannot find the path to compromise and agreement. But there must be a place in the middle where we can meet, work together, and get something done to improve the lives of Americans. Common Ground Solutions has big goals: to increase civic engagement; improve the quality of political discourse; highlight real-world stories of people working together across political lines; and forge moderate, commonsense solutions to our biggest challenges. We believe that the power to govern is not a prize to be won, but a responsibility to be used wisely and preserved for generations to come. The first step toward fulfilling that responsibility is finding common ground.


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Reclassifying Faith?: Inside the Department of War’s Revision to Its List of Religions
man holding his hands on open book
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Reclassifying Faith?: Inside the Department of War’s Revision to Its List of Religions

This nonpartisan policy brief, written by an ACE fellow, is republished by The Fulcrum as part of our partnership with the Alliance for Civic Engagement and our NextGen initiative — elevating student voices, strengthening civic education, and helping readers better understand democracy and public policy.

How Are Religions Recognized in the U.S. Military?

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The All-America City of San Antonio Collaborates to Address Teen Pregnancy and Other Issues
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Photo by Vanessa on Unsplash

The All-America City of San Antonio Collaborates to Address Teen Pregnancy and Other Issues

San Antonio, TX, has been working to reduce teen pregnancy for over two decades, making considerable progress through collaborations among the city, county, nonprofit organizations, and the University of Texas. A nine-time All-America City, one of San Antonio’s key community collaborations, SA 2020, harnessed civic muscle to create and achieve dozens of measurable goals, including a significant reduction in teen pregnancy.

The San Antonio Teen Pregnancy Collaborative (SATPPC) was formed in 2010 in response to news that Bexar County had one of the highest rates of teen births in the United States. The SATPPC brought together an impressive list of cross-sector organizations, including public entities, community-based organizations, and faith-based and secular institutions. The group’s overall goal was to reduce the Bexar County teen birth rate among females ages 15 to 19 by 15% by 2020, and it exceeded this goal even before that date.

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Anti-gerrymandering sign

Anti-gerrymandering sign

Bill Clark/Getty Images

Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting for Politicians or Their Consultants to Fix Gerrymandering

2018, a nonprofit worker in Michigan named Katie Fahey posted a message online asking if anyone else was tired of politicians drawing their own districts. She had no campaign experience and no political base.

Within two years, the ballot initiative she built, called Voters Not Politicians, had written an independent redistricting commission into the Michigan constitution. Hollywood eventually made a documentary about it, Slay the Dragon, which is a fairly accurate description of what she had actually done.

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