Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Growing a movement, part II: The return of in-person convenings

Joshua Graham Lynn of RepresentUs speaks at the American Democracy Summit

"This democracy is under threat and this democracy is under crisis," RepresentUs CEO Joshua Graham Lynn said at the American Democracy Summit. "Many issues ... many organizations ... many solutions ... one movement!”

Kai Byrd

Christen is a co-founder of the Inter-Movement Impact Project. He is also a lawyer, theologian, and senior officer in the Navy Reserve JAG Corps. All stated opinions are his own and do not represent the positions of the U.S. Department of Defense.

In September 2022, Debilyn Molineaux (then executive director of the Bridge Alliance and co-publisher of The Fulcrum) and I announced the return of in-person convenings and the inter-movement community building they would produce. Beginning with the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers Annual Summit that December, the wave of major in-person convenings has since grown into a tsunami.

While there were too many in-person convenings for all but the most intrepid travelers (the Braver Angels National Convention, the American Democracy Summit Annual, the National Conference on Citizenship to name just three), these events provided critical opportunities for relationships to be built across inter-movement neighborhoods and at the national, state and local levels.


The visionary thinking emanating from and through these convenings is also helping create the “operating system” for how the inter-movement community of democracy and civic-health-promoting movements unites, organizes and works together for collective impact.

Without a map, activists have been like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle trying to put themselves together without having the picture on the box and with individual pieces only being aware of the presence of the pieces in the pile immediately surrounding them. To further the imagery, Lukensmeyer and Leighninger have already identified more than 10,000 puzzle pieces. Once complete, the map will allow peers to connect with each other, bring together local collective impact efforts across regions and aid funders in identifying where to invest by measuring impact.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

With these examples only representing a fraction of the conference-generated, game-changing thinking, in-person gatherings are substantially furthering the emergence of the “broad-based, multistranded, prodemocracy movement” by building critical connections, developing a joint operating system, and increasing comprehension of who is actively participating.

The question now is: How can we be intentional about spreading, evolving, and organizing around these frameworks, efforts, and themes going forward?

Looking at in-person convenings from a pedagogical perspective, conveners of future in-person gatherings need to carry on and build on the themes and frameworks from prior convenings. Instead of viewing convenings as one-offs focused entirely on a specific field or group of attendees, convenings should be approached as a connected series of conversations that are aggregating to coalesce and prepare the inter-movement community for collective impact. This does not mean abandoning the uniqueness of the different convenings but instead is an argument for weaving together foundational ideas, themes and frameworks. The diversity of perspectives will be vital to coalescing and preparing the inter-movement community for opportunities to scale and to transform ideas into concrete action.

Future convenings should also ask questions like:

  • “What needs to happen for the many democracy and civic-health-promoting movements to become more like a beloved community defined by a cross-organizational ethic of care, a shared purpose, and proactive actions to support each other?”
  • “How can we organize, share power, work together, and relate to each other within and across movements in ways that reflect how we want American society and democracy to behave?”
  • “What does transpartisan organizing to transform a partisan system really look like?”

The key will then be to memorialize and amplify the best ideas, innovations and learnings of each convening (a virtual community platform for sharing and further evolving these ideas, innovations, and learnings is needed).

Through diverse in-person and virtual gatherings of democracy and civic-health-promoting people and organizations, Kleinfeild’s “pro-democracy movement” and a beloved community of practitioners can become more fully realized and matured. And as Dr. Luke Bretherton observes, “Our sense of the end we seek is already present in the meshwork of relations we participate in.”

If you are coordinating an upcoming in-person convening or are interested in facilitating conversations that further these efforts and themes at future convenings, please email me to continue the conversation.

Read More

America’s Liz Truss Problem

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

America’s Liz Truss Problem

America is having a Liz Truss moment. The problem is that America doesn’t have a Liz Truss solution.

Let me take you back to the fall of 2022 when the United Kingdom experienced its own version of political whiplash. In the span of seven weeks, no less than three Prime Ministers (and two monarchs, incidentally) tried to steer the British governmental ship. On September 6, Boris Johnson was forced to resign over a seemingly endless series of scandals. Enter Liz Truss. She lasted forty-nine days, until October 25, when she too was pushed out the black door of 10 Downing Street. Her blunder? Incompetence. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party’s third choice, then measured the drapes.

What most people remember of the Truss premiership is the Daily Star wager that a head of lettuce would last longer than Truss. The lettuce won. But Truss’ stint as Prime Minister—the shortest ever, I should note—holds some lessons for America today.

Keep ReadingShow less
Dictionary definition of tariff
Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
Devonyu/Getty Images

Trump's Tariff Chaos: Strategy or Stumble?

Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.

In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad
Getty Images, Richard Drury

Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad

WASHINGTON – Since his return to office in January, President Donald Trump has ushered in an era of enormous upheaval in the federal government: from dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development in early February to the recent announcement of extensive tariffs. But amid these sweeping changes, the quiet change in U.S. embassy policies is going largely unnoticed.

Since Trump’s inauguration, embassies have largely avoided drawing undue attention from the Oval Office. Under orders from Washington, they’ve avoided contact with the press and visiting Americans, and in at least one case, canceled a long-planned embassy appointment with visiting American students without explanation.

Keep ReadingShow less
Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

The following is reposted with permission from his Substack newsletter, The Art of Association.

I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.

Keep ReadingShow less