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.
- Rachel Kleinfeld’s call to build “ a broad-based, multistranded, prodemocracy movement around a positive vision concretized in locally rooted action ” – while not presented at these events – was a popular topic of discussion and has ultimately become the foundational framework for the inter-movement community.
- Similarly, Scot Nakagawa and James Mumm of the 22nd Century Initiative developed a collective impact strategy for “blocking” authoritarianism and “building a multiracial pluralistic democracy.” After conversations expanded to include a third “B” – bridging – my teammate Walter Roberts expanded the framework to: “Bridging our differences, strategies, and efforts to block authoritarianism and build a multiracial pluralistic democracy.” The “3 B’s” now offer a vision for the range of movements to see themselves as part of the pro-democracy movement that Kleinfeld described.
- In many ways, the American Democracy Summit then added the punctuation by similarly calling for the many efforts to coalesce into one meta movement. This theme was exemplified by Represent.US CEO Joshua Graham Lynn’s rousing speech, in which he declared, “ This democracy is under threat and this democracy is under crisis. Many issues ... many organizations ... many solutions ... one movement! ”
- The recent Future of Citizenship Conference included a major step toward that “one movement” vision. Carolyn Lukensmeyer, a longtime leader in the deliberative democracy field, and Matt Leighninger, director of the National Civic League’s Center for Democracy Innovation, rolled out a preview of a game-changing “Healthy Democracy” ecosystem map that will provide a visual representation of the “constellation of organizations working to strengthen democracy in America.”
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.
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.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.