The battle between facts and lies, truth and untruth, is one of the most pressing issues democracies face.
Peter Pomerantsev, author and a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, joins The McCourtney Institute for Democracy's podcast, "Democracy Works," to discuss the scope of the problem and how to move forward.
The rhizome metaphor reminds us that we cannot simply rebuild hierarchical structures to generate change. Instead we must go subterranean to build our own learning networks.
If you imagine our civil society as an organism, one would think its reaction would be to try to reclaim its previously perceived stable state. However, in nature, many organisms are well-equipped to embrace new realities and adapt in order to persist. For our society, we need to support and guide social change that can progress our democracy into a new paradigm. We can do this by stepping back and building new relationships for the purpose of understanding across our differences and creating change together.
I study change processes as they occur through transformative learning networks. These loose- knit social networks prioritize learning from others. To move through complex crises and spawn new realities, the people who gravitate to these networks take risks by disrupting their usual social patterns to build new relationships and understanding across ideological, institutional and geographic boundaries. These networks can give way to new professional fields, new schools of thought and even new organizations. For example, the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network started as a group of individuals from different walks of life who all wanted to build community resilience in the face of wildfires; they just had different ideas about how to do it. Acknowledging that wildfire management is too complex for a single approach, they pooled their diversity of experiences and connections to innovate new solutions.
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We have all heard the phrase “the only constant in life is change,”attributed to ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Martin Luther King Jr. is credited with proclaiming, “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”Human communities have evolved with a set of evolutionary biases that enable us to ignore and resist change. A prime example is our collective ability to discount the very real evidence for and effects of climate change. We fail to notice all the pieces of change as they assemble themselves until we are surprised by the qualitatively different state in which we find ourselves.So here we are, stunned and unsure how to make the next move.
In the mighty rhizome, nature demonstrates for us why change may surprise us and how, while we cannot stop change, we may be able to guide the change we want to see in the future. If you have ever weeded a garden you know about rhizomes. Invasive weeds (like Japanese knotweed and giant horsetails) and pretty ones (like wild iris) are all subterranean organizers. Rhizomes have no beginning and no end, they are decentralized, they struggle and spread underground hidden from our view and occasionally surface into the sunlight in bombastic manifestations showing us an organism we forgot existed has only gained vigor while we were not paying attention.
Even though we cannot see most of the rhizome's biomass and activities, underground it gathers energy, branches, twists and turns, breaks through barriers, and expands its network until it is ready to show itself again. The rhizome is a prolific botanical metaphor used by French philosopher Deleuze and his social activist collaborator Guattari along with contemporary organizational philosophers and change scholars to understand the complexities of social change as non-linear, heterogenous, non-hierarchical and subterranean.
The rhizome metaphor reminds us that we cannot simply rebuild hierarchical structures to generate change. Instead we must go subterranean to build our own learning networks, create new bonds, branch out and break through the barriers that constrain us. Engaging in civic society, participating in new relationships and learning from those who are engaged across social and political spectrum can help us reconfigure our understanding of our possible futures and gather our collective strength until we are ready to emerge as something new.
Connecting across our differences is scary. Thanksgiving tables across the country last month were full of anxieties associated with communicating in spite of our differences. We may prefer our instinctual draw to familiar homogeneous social gatherings that reinforce our biases and to fall in line under hierarchical organizational structures that provide clear rules on how we must behave. But, if we take on the rhizomatic view, we can instead be comforted by the knowledge that change happens through subterranean activity and if we want to be part of that change we need to build uncomfortable connections so we can learn together and imagine a new future.
So take a risk, be disruptive and find new people who challenge your assumptions and build friendships that create conditions for you to learn new things. You never know — you may be starting a new social movement.
Risien is the director of transdisciplinary research at Oregon State University and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
Reading, Pennsylvania, can be a model for a path forward.
The stark divisions surrounding the recent presidential election are still with us, and will be for some time. The reason is clear: We have a crisis of belief in this country that goes much deeper than any single election.
So many people, especially young people, have lost faith in America. We have lost belief in our leaders, institutions and systems. Even in one another. Recent years have seen us roiled by debates over racial injustice, fatigued by wars, troubled by growing inequities and disparities, and worried about the very health of our democracy. We are awash in manufactured polarization, hatred and bigotry, mistrust, and a lack of hope.
I believe the recent election was yet another proof point of these prevailing conditions in society that have been deepening for the past few decades.
Where does this leave us? If we as a country, as communities and as individuals aim to meet this moment, I believe we must focus on what it actually will take to address this crisis of belief.
Reading, Pennsylvania, a community I’ve been working with for over three years, provides a window into this challenge.
Some 10 years ago, a New York Times cover story declared Reading the poorest community in the United States. Once a predominantly white town, today it is nearly 70 percent Latino. For both the Trump and Harris campaigns, the community held deep significance as a Latino stronghold in a key battleground state.
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Each campaign held rallies there to activate potential voters. Both made promises as to how they’d serve the community if they were elected. Both, in my estimation, failed to see Reading for what it really is.
Where they saw people as voters, I see people as community members. Where they saw possible campaign donors, I see people's everyday contributions to the life of their community. Where they saw divisions to exploit, I see people coming together amid their real differences. Where they saw the opportunity to use poverty and working class struggle as a political football, I see people trying to support one another to improve their individual and shared lives. Where they saw a broken educational system, I see the community coming together to make education the entire community’s business.
After the election, I naturally thought of Reading. In fact, I visited the community just days later to release what The Harwood Institute calls a “ripple effect report.” This report documents the systemic change the people of Reading have created in just a few short years through our work together.
Reading is on the move at a time when so many communities feel stuck. Consider the following:
Contrary to conventional wisdom, change in Reading started small and grew over time. It was led by everyday folks who care deeply about the place they call home. Ultimately, Reading is proving that we can create a more promising future and restore our belief in one another by forging a new civic path.
So yes, we have a crisis of belief on our hands. But we also have communities like Reading that are demonstrating that there is a better way forward. That there is a real alternative to our current divisive politics. That we can believe in something again. And that we can spread this belief from the local up to the national level.
More empty promises from politicians is not the answer to what ails us today. The answer will come from our local communities.
Harwood is president and founder of The Harwood Institute. This is the latest entry in his series based on the "Enough. Time to Build.” campaign, which calls on community leaders and active citizens to step forward and build together.
"Show the Way" by folk singer David Wilcox is a gift to this moment.
I’ve spent nearly five decades encouraging citizens to move from debilitating despair to engaged activism. During all of this time, whenever I needed a break or a little inspiration, I turned to music, something I think more and more of us need these days. So it was a special treat to rediscover “Show the Way,” a song by folk singer David Wilcox and a particular gift to this moment. It begins:
“You say you see no hope.
You say you see no reason we should dream
that the world would ever change.
You say that love is foolish to believe
‘cause there'll always be some crazy
with an army or a knife
to wake you from your daydream,
put the fear back in your life”
Too many of us see no hope and feel the fear creeping back into our lives.
I heard warnings of that fear and hopelessness at the 2024 Miami Book Fair. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni spoke about his book “The Age of Grievance” and his concern about “our nation’s change from a fundamental optimism to a fundamental pessimism” and bemoaned “our love of simple answers that absolve us of any responsibility.”
Eddie Glaude Jr. — Princeton professor, MSNBC panelist and author of “We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For” — warned that President-election Donald Trump “gives a permission structure for folks to hate and blame others for their condition.” Journalist and author of “We Are Home” Ray Suarez cautioned that “President-elect Trump is offering recycled hatred from the earliest time in our country” and worried that “threats are so huge that we’ll make room for cruelty.”
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But along with the authors’ deep concern were their calls to forge a better way. Bruni encouraged “civil discussion” and cited “the need to find common ground and seek compromise.” Glaude said that “for democracy to work we must become better people.” And Suarez’s own podcast, “On Shifting Ground,” aims to “give us hope for human resilience.”
In “Show the Way,” the songwriter’s relief from the bleakness comes in the chorus and points to the grounding that all great spiritual and political leaders offer:
“Look, if someone wrote a play
just to glorify what's stronger than hate
would they not arrange the stage
to look as if the hero came too late?
He's almost in defeat,
it's looking like the evil side will win
so on the edge of every seat
from the moment that the whole thing begins.
It is love who mixed the mortar
and it's love who stacked these stones
and it's love who made the stage here
although it looks like we're alone
in this scene, set in shadows,
like the night is here to stay
there is evil cast around us
but it's love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way”
Wasn’t the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “It’s love that wrote the play” when, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality”?
And didn’t King offer further clarity on what each of us can do to contribute to this ultimate reality when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that”?
But this leaves us with the question, “How?”
Organizations that work to deliver transformational advocacy lead with love and train us to reach across the aisle. They 1) start with bringing people together and forming them into local chapters so we’re not working alone, 2) train us to become effective activists and 3) encourage us to have breakthroughs, to do things as activists we never thought we could do. They treat us as the powerful people that we are.
But most nonprofits don’t even take the first step. They fail at starting new chapters, or they avoid the challenge altogether, because they see their members as incapable and not really committed.
I find former Citizens’ Climate Lobby Executive Director Mark Reynolds’ approach to starting a chapter to be particularly inspiring:
“Before I go to a city to start a CCL Chapter, I decide that I am going to fall in love with them before I get there. So, when I arrive, I try to find evidence in them and in the environment about why I will never be the same from having spent time with them.”
There will be a lot of challenging and exciting work in the next few years. That makes it all the more important to find an organization that understands and operates from the realization that “In this darkness love will show the way.”
Daley-Harris is the author of “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy” and the founder of RESULTS and Civic Courage. This is part of a series focused on better understanding transformational advocacy: citizens awakening to their power.
In August 2019 I wrote: “Diverse people must be in every room where decisions are made.” Co-author Debilyn Molineaux and I explained that diversity and opportunity in regard to race/ethnicity, sex/gender, social identity, religion, ideology would be an operating system for the Bridge Alliance — and, we believed, for the nation as a whole.
A lot has happened since 2019.
After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the nation erupted in protest with renewed demands for justice and reform. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was placed at the forefront of academic and corporate policies.
And now, after the election of 2024, attitudes toward DEI appear to have turned 180 degrees. As we head into 2025, DEI has been rejected by a vast portion of the American electorate and thus many claim there is a mandate for members of Congress and the president of the United States to turn back the clock on diversity, equity and inclusion.
This thinking is not new. Almost a year ago, I wrote:
“Diversity, equity and inclusion are words that excite passion on all sides of the political spectrum. Yet as so often happens when passions are aroused, the possibility of having a meaningful discussion with any semblance of the critical thinking required to understand the complexity of the subject is virtually impossible.”
In that writing, I quoted an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled “DEI Spells Death for the Idea of a University,” in which writer Matthew Spalding made this statement:
“Diversity is no longer a term to describe the breadth of our differences but a demand to flatter and grant privileges to purportedly oppressed identity groups. Equity assigns desirable positions based on race, sex and sexual orientation rather than character, competence and merit. Inclusion now means creating a social environment where identity groups are celebrated while those who disagree are maligned.”
Rather than speak in sound bites — as will certainly happen as politicians try to take advantage of the perceived mandate to end DEI — it is more important than ever for those on the left and the right to open their minds to the complexities of diversity in colleges, universities, workplaces, our communities and our lives.
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In the coming months, The Fulcrum will reexamine the complexities of DEI. We must ask ourselves if diversity means a granting of privileges to those who are not deserving or whether it means an equality of opportunity so that our nation can merely live into the diversity that is America. As politicians will use fear to appeal to the hearts and minds of Americans, The Fulcrum will instead lead through deep inquiry and analysis
The results of the election offer an opportunity for DEI proponents to deeply reflect on the mistakes that have been made with respect to DEI thinking and policy. We will call on both proponents and opponents of DEI to have deep discussions as to what equity really means asking questions like:
Should equity assign desirable positions based on race, sex and sexual orientation rather than character, competence and merit? Or should the term equity simply mean bringing fairness and justice to institutions and the workplace by providing equality of opportunity? Or something else?
Our inquiry will ask whether DEI advocates used the term inclusion, either consciously or unconsciously, to accept a cancel culture that celebrated identity groups while maligning those who disagreed with these policies or were not a part of these groups. We fully understand that many politicians have used “cancel culture” and “woke” as red herrings to divert attention from the complex issues facing a diverse nation, but this doesn’t preclude opening our minds to a discussion on how to define equity as an operating system and not as a quota.
The issues facing our nation are far too serious to be left to the seekers of political advantage. We realize that addressing the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion is complex. We understand that in the world of today’s politics it is easier for the politicians on both sides to use fearful and hateful rhetoric to rally their constituencies. This is why, as a nation, we must face the issues that have divided us for over 200 years. We must understand that this messy and frustrating process of democracy will only work if We the People rise above the politics of division and separation.
It is our responsibility as citizens and citizen leaders to rise above this infighting and demagoguery. Our national challenges and problems are earnest, urgent and serious. Thomas Jefferson recognized that democracy was born from discourse and discussion, and that such resulting discussion would be replete with differing perspectives and opinions.
For our Republic to survive ideological and power differences, we must lead with inquiry, and move from inquiry to shared truth.
The Fulcrum understands that one of the greatest challenges facing Americans is to live up to our nation’s motto of E pluribus unum — Out of many, one.
Please join us in the coming months as we explore pluralism through deep inquiry and analysis.
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
