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And of course, we’d love for you to join us at our briefing on Wednesday, September 11th at 12pm ET / 3pm PT to go deeper into both the report and the facilitation guide (password: Amend2076), which we developed so that partners and organizers can easily incorporate our strategic foresight processes into their work. We will also share more about our strategies and next steps, and answer any questions you might have. You can RSVP for the briefing here. Combined, our convenings in December and June have allowed us to co-create categories of necessary amendments and strategies to bring them about in partnership with the very individuals and organizations with the power to make that happen. Our task now––beyond ensuring that our diverse group of partners believe that constitutional reform is possible––is to equip them with the tools, resources, and strategies to enact that reform. We have begun conducting replications of the strategic foresight processes we introduced at our convenings for partners who want to bring future-oriented work and the possibility of constitutional reform to their organizations, coalitions, and communities. Some examples of this include: In May, we partnered with the POPVOX Foundation to convene experts and advocates in Congressional reform and folks working on the Hill to share their visions for a more effective, responsive, and representative legislative body. 25 participants––with expertise ranging from technology to space exploration to the modernization of Congress––gathered together at the US Capitol to propose innovations and insights for the future of the US Congress. You can learn more about what we accomplished together here. In July, we partnered with the Bertelsmann Foundation to run this process with their democracy fellows, thinking about changes needed within both the EU and the United States. We have also launched a year-long partnership with the Appleseed Network (which has centers across 18 U.S. states and Mexico working together to reduce poverty, combat discrimination, and advance the rule of law) using the strategic foresight process we developed to support them in identifying priorities and projects to strengthen the binational relationship to weather anticipated challenges over the next 50 years.
And finally, we have several other planned replications throughout this fall to support our partners in their strategic planning conversations, including during a staff retreat as well as helping a coalition of organizations in Louisiana navigate calls for a state-wide Constitutional convention. Please reach out if you are interested in bringing this type of process to your coalition or organization! You can find the facilitation guides here. Imagining 2076In May, we launched Imagining 2076 to meet the need for greater investment in the narrative environment that could drive buy-in for constitutional change. Democracy 2076, along with our partner, Harmony Labs, is conducting content analysis of effective democracy in popular media to measure the results against trends in declining public trust and optimism about the future over the last 25 years. By examining the impact of these portrayals of present and future on audience attitudes towards our political system and civic engagement, we can ensure we have the socio-cultural momentum and participation needed to bring about a better, more democratic future. We held a recent stakeholder briefing (password: XtE&6*=R) on the results of the first phase of our research and our next steps, which we are developing with input from Hollywood industry leaders in partnership with Bridge Entertainment Labs to ensure our research is as impactful and persuasive as possible. Orienting the Ecosystem Towards the FutureA core finding in the Imagining Better Futures report is the fact that the “future-oriented community seldom connects with the democracy community;” as a result, “America lags in experimenting with new forms of future-oriented governance models and thinking.” Democracy 2076 endeavors to straddle both the democracy and strategic futures ecosystems, forging pathways and building bridges to bring both communities into partnership with each other. We have spent much of our first year socializing the importance of long-term planning and future visioning work within the democracy movement and bringing pro-democracy ideas and models into future-looking programs to ensure that partners and funders understand the value of the other for their respective missions, and for our broader movements. In the past six months alone, this has ranged from presenting to academics and practitioners at the Harvard Kennedy Schol’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, civil society leaders, UN staff and member states preparing for the United Nations’s Summit of the Future, futurist practitioners at the School of International Futures, media and tech entrepreneurs at New Media Ventures, and various communities of pro-democracy funders and practitioners––including providing a future-oriented perspective in a conversation on civil rights with the Federalist Society. Just as our convenings and replications are bringing strategic foresight processes into the democracy space, so we hope that bringing democracy issues into futures-thinking spaces will support greater collaboration and innovation across the ideological and professional spectrum towards our shared goals. What’s Next: Pro-Democracy Political Coalitions in 2076And finally, with two of our strategic programs up and running, we are laying the groundwork for our initiatives to ensure future pro-democracy political parties. Historically, American political coalitions realign approximately every 30 years. We are currently living through a realignment that is almost complete, likely leading to a party with weak commitments for democracy for the next 30 years. We have an opportunity––with substantial and coordinated cross-sector interventions––to shape the next political realignment to ensure pro-democracy tenets are at the core of the next political realignment. In early 2025, in partnership with Horizon 2045, Democracy 2076 is planning to run a participatory strategic foresight process on the future of U.S. political parties to assess what issues may divide the parties, which voters are in each party, and whether the parties are pro-democracy or not. We will use this process to create an early warning system to identify where interventions could be useful to ensure that when opportunities to guide our next political realignment emerge, that we have the tools and resources needed to ensure pro-democracy future political coalitions. We are actively working to resource these efforts, so if you want to know more or have ideas of possible participants, please email me! As I said at the opening of our June convening: we are living in someone else’s 50 year timeline––it’s time to create our own. There is already a non-democratic, authoritarian 50-year vision of how to transform our Constitution that is being resourced and rolled out. We have a chance to build something different for our future, and to begin creating that today. Previous constitutional changes have come at pivotal periods in American history, when tensions have impelled the need for structural change, such as during Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and the Progressive Era. Constitutional change, cultural change, political party shifts––these forces are not hypotheticals. And the future we are barreling towards is not inevitable. The opportunity to make our positive visions a reality is there, provided we rise to meet it. Thank you for rising with us.
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