Dear friends,

As we rapidly move towards November’s general election, many of us working to ensure the continuity of liberal democracy will spend the next six months focused on electoral politics with the urgent need to protect elections from the authoritarian threat. But combatting short-term threats only takes us so far.

Launch of Imagining 2076

Democracy 2076 was founded on the reality that our movement also needs a long-term strategy to address the root causes that have led us to this point. This requires understanding not just the necessary constitutional changes to ensure our government is sufficient to meet the needs of the 21st century, but expanding the political imagination of the possibility of those changes. Our politics and our culture go hand in hand––our governmental systems are only as strong as the people operating within them (and vice versa).

To that end, we are excited to announce that––with the generous support of the Democracy Communications Collaborative––we are launching our second major workstream: Imagining 2076.

Nearly half of Americans receive their civic information outside of traditional education and news media. Only 59% of Americans reported taking a civics education class in high school in 2021. This coincides with decreasing trust in traditional news media: 38% of Americans said they often or sometimes avoid the news in 2022 with only 42% saying they trust most news most of the time. Entertainment media, therefore, plays an essential role in developing Americans' understanding of whether, and how, our civic institutions are a place of cooperative problem-solving or a vehicle of division and self-aggrandizement.

The key mandate of Imagining 2076 is simple: how do depictions of democracy and the future in film and television impact audience attitudes towards government and civic engagement? In partnership with Harmony Labs, a non-profit media research organization, we will develop methodologies to code and quantify various depictions of government (from authoritarian to democratic) and depictions of the future (from protopian to dystopian), and to test their impact on audiences’ attitudes about democracy, hope for the future, and desire to participate in democracy. Let us know here if you have ideas for TV shows or movies that you think should be included as part of our sample set!

This work is also in natural partnership with our other project conceiving and advocating for A Constitution for 2076 (for a refresher on this work, see this piece published by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation on the presentation I gave at their International Workshop on Reimagining Democracy in December). 

The window of possibilities for reform––and the belief that a functioning democracy is actually attainable––is only as wide as our cultural imagination. And that imagination is nourished not at the ballot box, but in popular media. We saw this play out firsthand at our December convening, where people frequently relied on narratives from popular culture––such as Mad Max, House of Cards, or the Hunger Games––as reference points for an imagined political future. If we want a democracy that is effective, responsive, and representative where people have agency to shape what government does, we need stories that help us imagine what that could look like. 

A Constitution for 2076 in June

We're excited to reconvene the participants from our December convening in June alongside national networks and organizations working in the three areas of amendments that participants identified as the most important in any scenario of the future: UBI/guaranteed rights, Congressional structural reform, and electoral reform. If you have ideas for organizations that you should make sure to join us in June as we align our strategies and build a longer-term strategy, please respond to this email directly and let us know! 

Congress2076 in May

Leading up to the convening, we are also partnering with POPVOX Foundation, a non-profit supporting innovating in government and civic engagement, to host Congress2076 on May 13th in Washington D.C. to bring together the community working and thinking about Congressional reform to contribute their ideas ahead of our gathering in June. This will allow us to invite the existing national Congressional reform community into the conversation with the more state-based organizers that we gathered in December who identified Congressional structural reform as a priority over the next 50 years. You can find ways to participate in that gathering here. You can also learn more about the process from the facilitation guide here (password: Amend2076). Feel free to reach out about partnering with us to bring this process to your coalition or organization! 

If it feels like there are a lot of moving parts and strategies all focused on building a broad coalition of organizers, scholars, artists, and futurists to create a movement to amend the Constitution, well, it’s because there are. Our democracy demands that. And Democracy 2076 will rise to the challenge.

With gratitude for your ongoing support and excitement for all to come,

Aditi