Heidi: Hi, this is Heidi Burgess, and I'm here today with Caleb Christen and Vinay Orekondy.  I want to talk to them about their project, Better Together America, which they have founded when —maybe in the last year or so-- to try to work on spreading civic engagement and democracy work in local communities. Vinay, you want to tell us a little bit about your background? 

Vinay: For sure. Yeah. So I'm from Australia originally. I moved to the US about five years ago. I was involved in sort of law and politics for about 15 years in Australia. And when I moved here, I did the same thing. I got involved in electoral politics here, I sat the bar here, I was expecting to do similar things. But the toxicity of electoral politics almost immediately drove me into electoral reform work.  And that's how I found my way into the ranked-choice movement. And from there, through their coalitions activity is where I discovered the broader democracy and civic health space. And I realized, "Okay. We've got to work on electoral reform.  And we have the capacity in this movement to work on that community-building level as well. So yeah, so that's how I landed here.

Heidi: Great!  I want to talk to you later about comparing US to Australia because I've talked to a few other people about that. I'd be curious on your views. But that's not the  topic of right now. So Caleb?

Caleb:  So what's funny in listening to Vinay's backstory is how we both started off in a similar place. Not Australia. I'm from Wisconsin, but both as lawyers. And we both ended up in the same place, but we took slightly divergent paths to get here.  I spent most of my career in the military and served the country and the Constitution and ultimately democracy in that capacity. And then I took a little break and went to seminary and also business school. And the combination of all those things are what led me both to this space of recognizing that communities weren't thriving the way that they were intended to, and that it was our jobs to try to help fix them.  But then, ultimately, that all these individual efforts weren't the key to making that happen. But instead, we need to be able to work together and really look at systems change more holistically.

And so that led me to initially co-founding the InterMovement Impact Project with Walt Roberts, and then now leading me to this effort that we're talking about today with Better Together America.

Heidi: Great! Thank you.  I guess the first question I will throw out and anybody can answer it is, how did this project get started?

Caleb: So Heidi, as you may recall back, what, maybe a year and a half, two years ago now, we were convening the Local Intersections Working Group. And that was basically a place of a couple dozen leaders from across the entire nonpartisan democracy and civic health ecosystem were getting together to talk about how we can build connective tissue and organize for collective impact across the different movements or fields in the space. But we wanted to do it in a place-based way that isn't a bunch of national organizations just swooping in with savior complexes to save the day in a local community, but instead is how can we do it in a solidarity-based way that encourages and supports local communities all coming together to solve problems together.

And so that was kind of where the local democracy or local civic hubs concept was born from. And from there, a number of us were understandably very excited about the concept. And we all started doing stuff to support these local hubs that were just kind of organically forming, or in many cases, had already formed in various communities. And so at that point, we looked around and said, "Well, we want to be efficient.  We want to be more effective in the support that we're providing." And so we created Better Together America as a result, to try to coordinate our activities better and really put wind in the sails of the local hubs. And Vinay, can you take it from there?

Vinay: Yeah. And I can also add to it how I arrived at this project because it wasn't necessarily intending to land here to begin with. I started in the ranked choice voting movement. That's how I kind of came to this — in the capacity of Coalitions Director. And I noticed that our movement was not particularly well connected with other democracy and civic health movements. And they weren't particularly well connected with each other.  I was surprised by that, and started looking for opportunities to make those connections. And what Caleb and others were doing in that local intersections group was saying, first, how do we build those connections nationally, but more importantly, how do we build them locally? And that's what got me really excited, because with my ranked choice hat on, we were well underway of focusing on the local.  We said, "Look, this is where we're going to win on ranked-choice voting. It is from the local level and up." And what we came to realize over time was that it wasn't just a matter of thinking, "Okay, let's pull people together so we can leverage each other's resources on a local level." It became a much, much deeper project about addressing the absence of community.  About addressing the democratic deficit. And using these local nodes to do really powerful things that are missing in this country.

It just so happens that we're pulling together, by locality across the country, people who really think and care about democracy and civic health. So by pulling them together, there's all sorts of possibilities that can come and jump from that gathering of people by locality. But I'm sure we'll get into that more further.

Heidi: Great!  So tell me a little bit more about exactly what Better Together America does and how you do "support." Well, Maybe before we do that, I should find out more about what the local civic hubs do, and then you can explain how Better Together America supports that. So talk first about maybe where these civic hubs are developing, what they're doing. I'm sure there's differences in different places.

Vinay: Yeah. Do you want to go ahead with that? And then I can talk about where we think it's headed.

Caleb: Actually, maybe to counter, would you mind starting with laying out the concept to what they are, and then I'll talk about them?

Vinay: Can do.  So, to get to where the hubs are, which hubs are around and what they're doing, I think it's important for us to lay out the kind of theory of hubs. As Caleb has pointed out, and as we've said a couple of times, is that this movement has been quite siloed until quite recently. And it's not by design. It's just that each part of it was its own movement, whether it be electoral reform, or bridging, or participatory democracy, or any of that.  And I suppose democracy was just the thing that you acted upon. There wasn't necessarily a thought, "Okay, we need this sort of unified civic health and democracy space." But what we thought is, "Okay. Well, if we're pulling these groups together by locality, then ultimately what does it look like in practice?"  So we've spoken about community building. So that obviously means building social connections and stronger connections amongst the participants, among the members of these various organizations. But it also means finding a kind of a structural workflow between these different parts. So for example, how does civic participation and volunteerism relate to bridging? How does bridging relate to participatory democracy? How does participatory democracy relate to campaigns?

And in fact, what we realized, is that that order that I laid it out seems to be quite a logical sequence. You start the idea of it's being almost a journey from a starting point. where you've had no prior engagement with politics (and that's many people in our space, right?) Many people who have just become incredibly concerned with the state of democracy, who've never done anything political,  joining at one of these various entry points, and other entry points, which I haven't mentioned.

So what we're trying to do is stitch these together into a kind of a sequential flow. Anyone can start anywhere. That's fine. But what you could see is that civic participation work, it's a relatively straightforward ask. It's a low lift. You can engage a lot of people through that. Bridging is a more complex ask because you're asking people to challenge their emotions and their points of view.  Engaging in deliberative policy type discussions, harder still. And then you have to engage with not only a civilized and fair discussion, but engage with the information and policy questions as well. And then comes the question of what do you do with these recommendations? And that's when it becomes important to act on them. Whether it be advocacy or some other community-based solution. It does not necessarily have to be advocacy. And that is a big ask because that's a leadership development process, in general. So what we see is the hubs kind of constituting many of those elements. There's other elements I haven't mentioned that fall in the space, like the reinvigoration of local media. And they fall within that too. So a local hub, in its perfect form, would have all of these elements and would  be able to house all these different parts in a kind of a sequential flow.

However, we're not there yet, clearly. So what we've started with is that any one of those points is a starting point for a hub. If you, in your locality, are working on reinvigorating local journalism, but want to support the wider ecosystem in your area, you can be a hub. If you're working on ranked choice voting, but want to support the wider ecosystem in your area, you can be a hub.

The point is that you take your initial starting point and grow out to build an ecosystem which brings all the different parts together into that flow. So that's kind of what hubs are working towards. But also, that's where their starting points are. Their starting points are very, very different, but they are all working towards that broadly unified vision. But their pathways are really quite wildly different. Caleb, is there anything else you want me to add to that?

Caleb:  No, that's perfect. I'd love to build off that. So we're currently connected with about roughly a dozen or so local hubs as well as some state roundtables, which are roughly the state equivalent. And they're all at different phases in the evolution or maturation process of the hubs. And so I think how I would summarize what Vinay was saying is there's kind of three basic phases that they might be in. And one is this kind of building the collaborative, connective tissue in the local area between the organizations. So that's helping potential members sense make why they might want to work together and then having some sort of consistent get-together where they can build relationships and get to know each other. And so most of the hubs that we're connected with are in that general phase of getting the collective together, getting the critical mass of energy for them moving on to the other phases. And I would say, and I think Vinay alluded to this, is it's not in a linear way. It just so happens that most of them are starting with trying to build the nucleus of local organizations.

Heidi: Let me stop you there for a second because I'm curious. Is this something that's happening organically in these communities, or is this something that you're encouraging?  Because it strikes me that getting people to stop focusing on their own little silo and reach out isn't natural. And people don't tend to do that unless somehow or other, they figure out that it's worth their while.

Vinay: Yeah. We're encouraging it to happen. I think, really, but there are people who are seeing the larger vision faster than others. That's just how movements ae built.  And they're the people who are building out our hubs. Either they're people who have started with this kind of broader approach, or often they were doing one part of it, but felt this itch that they needed to do more. Like what they were doing wasn't quite enough by itself. So that's where it's beginning. Yeah. Sorry. Caleb, please continue. 

Caleb: And I would add maybe it's a both-and because there are also some great examples where it was happening well before we got involved. So I'm thinking of, say, Cheer in Silver Spring, which is an organization that was doing a lot of this collaborative cross or boundary spanning type work already in their local community in Maryland. And I'm sure there are many, many other examples.

I just moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and I'm already finding that there's other similar things here. The Valley Interfaith Alliance has already engaged with more than 1,000 different local dialogues to help identify what the community's priorities are. And so there's examples like this that already exist that we're not connected with, but we want to be connected with and supporting. So, that's why I think I would say both-and —these things can organically happen and probably are in many places that we don't know about. But where we do know about them, it's not so much that we're specifically planting, or piloting things.  It's more so that we're talking about the concepts and people get excited about it and raise their hands and say, "I want to get involved and I want to do this."

Vinay: Yeah. And I just want to add a couple of things. First is that we're quite close to having a lot more hubs because there are some national organizations that we've been talking to that realize that they've got part of the pie and they're interested in getting their members to engage with the whole pie. And we'll announce it publicly when that happens, but it's accelerating quite quickly, which is exciting.

The second thing is that our theory is that the movement already exists.  Our role is to stitch it together. It's not to build. Eventually, we'll have to do some building. And maybe that's a bit of a simplistic take. But primarily, we're viewing it through this lens of our job is to stitch and connect.  And we'll eventually start finding places where there's no civic health organizing of any sort in the locality. That's when we'll build. But there's a lot of work to do before we exhaust all those existing possibilities.

Heidi: So Caleb mentioned Silver Springs and Harrisonburg a little bit. Give me some more examples of hubs that are doing different things. What are you seeing around the country?

Caleb: Yeah, a few good examples come to mind. And Vinay, I would love for you to talk about DC in a second here too.  I alluded to that they kind of have started in different phases. So the ones that are trying to build that critical mass of energy, many of them are you know working on that. So they're not necessarily doing things I can point to and say, for example, "Oh, they just did this campaign together with their community and solve this problem." But there are a couple, I think, really interesting examples such as Akron, Ohio, or perhaps Montrose, Colorado. In Akron and Montrose, instead of starting with the more traditional building the hub itself, they started with more of the deliberative working with the community to help the community identify what its needs, goals, and priorities are.

Ted Wetzel in Akron is a great example of this. He's been leaning hard into using Poli.is to help, again, the community identify what it wants to focus on. And similarly, in Montrose, Colorado, they started with actually a pretty extensive series of citizen assemblies. And that was where the community, I believe, initially started off saying that childcare was their biggest issue, and then they've since identified others that they want to work on. So then they are in a position where they said, "Okay, now we need the support of a hub to help the community move forward on it," while the community is also wanting to work together to solve those challenges. So I think those are a couple of interesting ones. And DC is also a great example. I'd love for you to speak to, Vinay.

Vinay:  Yeah. In DC, Caleb and I started the "Democracy Drinks" a couple of years ago, and they've been running for about a year and a half now, I'd say.  And just once a month, pulling people in the democracy, civic health space to just connect them to each other in a social setting. And it has that sort of DC vibe about it. Some great networks have come about through it.  And now there's a lot of cross-promotion that occurs in that space. But now a leadership team for the hub has sort of emerged out of that. And what they're looking to do is plan their next steps. And the next step that's looking most likely is around how do we get deliberative democracy going in the city.

There are a couple of groups around that do sort of one-off things or they might do a dialogue here on one topic or a dialogue there on another topic. The idea was, why don't we pull them together, see if we can coordinate and do them around the same time on the same topic. We can scale it, invite local media, and then that data becomes usable, as well.

We could also, in the process, find other organizations in the area that are either doing this, or interested in doing this. So the idea is essentially scaling and normalizing deliberative democracy, which is probably actually a broader point I wanted to make. That is, the understanding that there are many activities that a hub can do. But deliberative democratic practices are kind of the anchor point around a lot of which this revolves.

And it's a good way of helping understand what a hub is, because there's a whole lot of community-building activity we can do, that's required for a deliberative process to even function. As I mentioned earlier, you've got to do bridging. You've got to get people thinking civics is important, and civic participation is important. You've got to be engaged more broadly. You've got to have local media involvement. At the same time, following the deliberative practice, you've got to actually take action too. Otherwise, it is a meaningless activity.

So we've thought of it almost in phases as like the pre-deliberative phase and the post-deliberative phase. So that's what I mean by deliberative practice being the anchor that kind of holds it all together. All the activities are critical, though, to be clear. They're all critical parts of it. Otherwise, it wouldn't function in that final vision.

Heidi: So you use two terms that I want to explore further. First one is deliberative democracy. I'm not sure everybody who's watching this understands what that means. So can you explain a little bit more?

Vinay: Yeah, sure. Let me distinguish it from how we normally speak about democracy, which is representative democracy. That is, we go out, and  the extent of our participation is we go vote. Maybe we engage in some advocacy, and if we're really engaged, we'll write letters or make phone calls to our representative. And that's "democracy."

Obviously, we're experiencing some serious problems in the country.  And around the world. So what deliberative democracy is, is it is like saying, "Well, look, if you want rule of the people, then that means maybe we've got to bring it back to people," right? So the deliberative part refers to the deliberations, the discussions that occur. So if we're bringing people together to solve problems, in a discursive manner, that doesn't mean you have to solve everything by consensus. You can vote as a group. But ideally, you've talked things out. In many cases, when deliberative democracy occurs, things do get resolved by consensus or by large majorities.

In those settings, it's important to note that you should bring in expertise from multiple perspectives.  It's a lot like a jury. And I think that's a good model for people to think about. It's very much like a jury, but instead of deciding someone's guilt or innocence, you're taking a collective position on a policy question, whether it be local or international or everything in between.

Heidi: So how then, let's say that you've got a local group who makes a decision about, say, housing issues in their community.  But it's just presumably a small group of citizens and how they get involved is something we might talk about. But what I'm wondering now is how is that decision implemented? What gives them the authority or the power to actually act on whatever decision they come up with?

Vinay: Sure. Before I answer that, Caleb, was there something you wanted to add to the previous thing?

Caleb: Yeah.  I just wanted to mention real quickly on the deliberative question Heidi asked.  There are a whole range of activities that deliberation could look like. So on one end of the spectrum, you have Braver Angels Town Halls, which are fairly informal and low effort to put together. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have more citizen assemblies and more formal, much more in-depth type activities. So just wanted to mention that there is a range.

Heidi: And I guess the question I just asked is thinking more about the higher end of that spectrum, the citizens' assemblies or something similar to that.

Vinay: Yeah. I think I can answer it for both, actually. I think that the more formalized your method becomes, the more critical it becomes for it to be accurately representative of the community.  And we've factored that in when thinking about hubs is that as hubs develop, they need to be engaged with every sector of their defined community. Because otherwise, you could just have the same people showing up. It might not be diverse either by age, or ethnicity, or socioeconomics. And that can be a problem. The Citizens Assembly folks, I've got to give them a lot of credit. They've thought about many of these problems in advance.  So they were thinking, "Okay, socioeconomics is an issue. That's why it's important to pay people for their time."  And that's why a lot of them are pushing for the formalization of an assembly so that like a jury, you can take time off of work. And they've thought about questions like childcare. Some assemblies in Europe have had childcare available.  

So I think that the more power it gains, the more important it is that these needs are taken care of, so that it is truly representative.  Now, you can kind of think of it as a sliding scale, because ultimately, there are people who talk about government by assembly, but we're not talking about that.  I think we would talk about its relationship with representative democracy.  And representatives, whenever they hear about assemblies, they love the concept. They say, "This makes my job easy."  Even the small version of people coming together and having a living room conversation, they love that too. Because the people who participated go back and talk to their neighbors. And so it creates a network effect. So it's all good, even from the lowest level.

So on the most minimal level, I wouldn't say that they have authority to act. Rather, it's input. And it's also a source of potential advocacy or action, in the way that existing groups already do. Like you might have a group that cares about water in a locality. Even if they're not the majority, they will still engage in advocacy and action. What this process does, anything from the living room conversation through to the full-blown assembly, is that it tries to take that process and democratize it.  It tries to get people involved who were not previously involved. And it gives people a really low lift pathway into democratic practice. And in doing so, it gives us a way to practice building civic muscle broadly, but within that locality.

Our dream would be that within the locality, it's just normal to engage in some level of participatory dialogue around issues. And that's what I experienced when I lived in Burlington, Vermont. It's just normal to do it there,. You just say, "Oh, it's time for this dialogue," and you just jump on a Zoom call. It was during the pandemic.

Heidi: You know, that's interesting. The pandemic lowered the bar a lot.

Vinay: Right. So that's how I see how this happening is that it's a process of steady normalization, steady, increasingly representative, and also building relationships with representatives at the same time.

Heidi: You made an analogy that you sort of talked past, but it struck me as curious when you made the analogy to a jury. And I thought to myself, "Yeah, but the way you get people on a jury is you're called. And if you don't show up, you can conceivably be arrested." But whenever you get that little postcard in the mail that says you've been called for a jury, most of us groan. Turns out the one I was on was really interesting. I'm glad I did it. But it's not something that people do enthusiastically. And I'm sure there aren't very many places that are doing calls for citizens' assemblies the same way. So making it, as you said, in Burlington, people think this is just a normal way of behaving. That's great, but can't be common!

Vinay: It's not, which is why the cultural element of this is critical. It's not enough to just build a structure, whether it be conversations or assemblies. It's not enough. What matters is the community that feeds into it. Because you could have things that nobody shows up to. Or you could have things that are not representative, or are only representative of those who can afford to be there.  All those problems I outlined earlier. That's all bad. It's still better than our current system, but it would still not be good. That's why so much of what a civic hub is, is community-building. That's why we've incorporated bridging. It's why we're incorporating civic participation. It's why we're incorporating many other elements that will help that process of normalizing participation. And the social element is critical. And we are encouraging strongly, as these hubs develop, think about how you can build community.

And I want to say, this is an opportunity. Like the loneliness crisis is massive in this country. So we have a massive opportunity to counter that with these civic hubs. 

Caleb: And along those lines, it is an act of reimagining democracy. And so everything that Vinay just described with the very participatory, deliberative type processes, it's practicing democracy. And over time, hopefully, it's building the muscle memory for it, almost to the point that it's really getting injected into the DNA of communities. That's not an overnight thing.  But eventually, the hope is that it will become normalized, similar to what Vinay talked about in Vermont or probably other places as well. 

Vinay: Yeah. And just to give an example of that, we just have to look within our own movements. We see bridging folk are often itching, saying, "Okay, what's the next thing? How can I do this?" And once people get in the practice of it, and same as when I was in the ranked choice movement, I saw, "Okay, we've won on ranked-choice voting. Okay, let's pivot to the next issue."  Once you build that muscle, people want to keep using that muscle. And so if we pull them together, and they're using that muscle together, that's really powerful. And it will have an effect on the surrounding area.

Heidi: The thing that I find myself thinking about is that I worked with a professor years ago who was studying what got people involved in various campaigns and mobilization. And he found out it was largely social, and people did it because it was fun.  And I was also thinking about Vinay's talking about the DC get-togethers. If you can make this fun, you're a lot more likely to get people involved. And I think, particularly on the bridging side, people are afraid of it, because talking to somebody who disagrees with you is not, to most people, fun, at least not initially.  So, if you can lower the barriers and somehow or other—I don't know, provide food and drinks, perhaps — make it fun, it might be something that would catch on and become more part of the DNA than it might otherwise. Just ideas that were floating through my head.

Caleb: Totally agree. And I would just add on to that. I think there are components here of the "join or die" type concepts where there's the fun, but then there's also this need for belonging. And this offers opportunities for people to belong to something. And  when you combine the fun and the belonging, I think there's real power there.

Heidi::And belong to something positive as opposed to negative.

Vinay: Yeah. And I would add that there are organizations in our space who not only agree with what you've said, they actually are doing it. They focus even on the pre-bridging aspect of it of like, "Let's just get people together and socialize with food and drink," and then move them into more complex things. So it's already happening. It's now just about stitching the parts together.

Caleb: Yeah. And I would love to call out those organizations for the great stuff they're doing. More Perfect Union is one. I think Mormon Women for Ethical Government is another great example. Yeah, super exciting that this is already happening.

Heidi: I've vaguely heard of More Perfect Union, but don't know much about it. Who are they? What are they doing?

Caleb: So More Perfect Union, there are a few similarly titled names, but this is the one with the positive right in front of it. And it's a veteran-led organization that is more or less a community-building structure. So they have brickyards, which are essentially chapters in, I believe, 31 communities across the country. And they get together to have bridging conversations over food and drink. And it's super fun. And you build relationships. And then it is now even more leaning into how can it be a kind of stepping-off point for engaged local people. Not all veterans. Veterans are just in leadership positions. But how can it be a stepping-off point to participants going on to do other things, whether it's related to advocacy campaigns or other things in the community. Vinay, did I capture that?

Vinay: Yeah. And I think one of the other elements that they're very big on is that civic participation element, acts of service, things like that.

Heidi: Then the other word you said a while ago, you said two words that I wanted to expand upon. The other word was "scale." And we've been talking around this a lot, but maybe talk a little bit more directly at it. One of the assertions that I've been making for many years is dialogues are great, but they don't scale because you can have a transformative experience with the 20 people who are in the room, and then they go home. And it's back to the same old toxic polarization that they've been living in before, and the experience of the dialogue tends to go away. But it sounds like your hubs are working on scaling, so that that problem isn't as much of a problem. True?

Vinay: We're addressing that yes, we're well aware of that problem. And that's why, from early on, we've been wanting to address that. The main way I think we're addressing it is by saying how can dialogue become action, for a couple of reasons. One is that — let's use political polarization as our example here—it's not the only form, but it's a major form. You may be depolarized, but then the next step is forming a shared identity, in your locality or whatever it is. And I think that's how you have the strength, the continuous relationship over time to push back against those forces that you mentioned. You need to continue to be present in a continuous, shared relationship. And how do you do that? By doing things together. So that's the core of the theory here. It is shared identity through shared action and shared problem-solving. Now, shared action and shared problem-solving has an enormous ripple effect. Because people see actions. Media can report on action. Of course, they can report on dialogue too, but they're more excited by action. So that's why we think that that would lead to scale within the community level.

Now, the other thing we're trying to do about scale is by doing this across the country. The goal is to have, eventually, hubs everywhere. There's no limit to where there are hubs. And they are networked with each other. Because the other potential flaw in this model, if we didn't network them, is you could put all this effort into setting up a hub that is reliant on one person doing a lot, or something similar. Every hub will have its idiosyncrasies. And it might have some problems. And then without external support or help, it would struggle. And I think that it can feel like, "Okay, well, great. We've got our community together, but the country as a whole is a wreck." But what if you had lots and lots of these hubs networked with each other, sharing ideas with each other, boosting each other's morale, that's exciting. That's the power to act and think locally and have a national or a potentially even greater impact. So that's the other way we're looking at scale.

And there's other things you can do once you have that level of scale. If they're coming up with policy recommendations, what if they were sharing policy ideas amongst this network? So there's huge possibilities that can come out of this.

Heidi: And I'm assuming Better Together America is trying to build that network, correct?

Vinay: Yes, we are. But the most important thing is the hubs. So that's our focal point. And we are working on —my role is mostly national— but we see national partnerships as a way to support the hubs. That's the point. And then eventually, there'll be more infrastructure that needs to be built or more likely sewed in. There's actually groups that are kind of doing what I just described, but they're not fully sewed in yet.

Heidi: So what are you doing to support the hubs?

Caleb: So along those lines, and this relates back to your last question as well, we have set up a learning cohort for all the people that are building these hubs.  That's a direct offering that brings them in together to exchange lessons learned, best ideas. And so, to me, a big component of all this work is learning and information sharing. And so, a lot of it is experimental. There's no one-size-fits-all model. One thing that works really well in one community might not work in another. But at the same time, creating these linkages enables the learning, the different ideas, to get passed along. And so between the learning cohort, we also are curating a resource center that is, again, collecting all the latest and greatest ideas and concepts and innovations, as well as trying to capture the different kind of journeys in the hub's life. So that future hub builders can kind of see how others have experientially gone through the process. And so those are all really important pieces of that learning infrastructure.

But to go back to the scaling question, I would offer that there's kind of a circular effect here as well. And so Vinay's doing great work in identifying partners, especially at the national level, who are willing to offer support to local efforts where maybe they have a gap in capability or expertise in something. But it's not entirely one-sided. While the focus is on the hubs, the really kind of cool movement-building aspect of it is both that the hubs are getting connected, but that there is also an information channel between the different localities, state, national organizations, and that information is getting passed around.  So as more and more hubs come online, it creates for the whole movement greater sensing capabilities of what's going on in different communities, what's working in different communities, what they care about, what they're focusing on. And that can enable and empower the whole movement to be able to adjust, to seize on opportunities, to avoid potential pitfalls. And so there is this very circular dynamic of support and mutual benefit.

Heidi: Seems like the hubs could provide linkages so that people would have somebody to call on if they're running into a stumbling block and they don't know how to get past it. If there's a network of people that they can call and say, "Hey, any ideas what I should do about this," that could be really powerful.

Vinay: I'd love to give an example. Let's say there's a local group that's focused on the deliberative side, and they decide, "Okay, we want to do some electoral reform work. Ranked choice voting seems to have momentum and make sense. But we don't know anything about advocacy or ranked choice voting even, really. So that's the moment where you'd call Rank the Vote. And we would help that hub, that burgeoning hub, and say, like, "Hey, there's a community here that wants to get set up. Can you please help them out?" And it's in Rank the Vote's interest for that to happen, so they'll make that happen. And that's the same for anything. Any of these different parts of the movement. All of them are starting usually in one place, one section of it, but are wanting to do more. But they don't all have the capacity to do it. So, that local to national connection is really quite central as well.

And another element of it is that it gets more complex later when we get into the deliberative side. I won't go into that. But one of the big things we're noticing is that because it's this new exploding movement with a lot of new activists and new people, is that we need to build out a capacity. And I don't think we've extensively thought about that as a movement yet. Are we good at fundraising? Are we good at communications? Are we good at various other skills?

Those bits exist within the movement.  They often do exist. But they're siloed to their particular area, which makes sense. That's how they developed. So a lot of what we're also trying to do is expand out that existing national skills training or learning cohort around a particular area and expand it out to the whole movement. And so that will help both nationally and locally. And there's a whole lot more.

But one last thing is that I don't think Caleb did justice to the amazing work he's doing in building out the resource center. It is built on this similar theory that everything that we need is out there already, but it's not centrally collated because we have been historically siloed. So what the resource center is doing is stitching it all together. So there is a one-stop shop. It's not about creation of materials. That's like a last resort. The goal is to find what's already out there and then people who are entering the space new can go there and find what they need. And so we want as many partners as possible for that. And if your organization, for anyone who's listening, wants to contribute to the Resource Center, Caleb is your guy.

Heidi: So let me ask two questions. One is, how can people get in touch with Caleb? Should we just put your email address in the transcript, or is there a better way to do it?

Caleb: Please do. (It is caleb@bettertogetheramerica.org). We'll also pass along the about-to-be-published website, which will have our contact info on it as well. (We'll add this link as soon as it becomes available. --HB)

Heidi: Great! So the next question, and maybe that's what you were referring to, is where is this resource center? How do people access it?

Caleb: I wish we were having this conversation like a week from now, and I say "Here's the exact link." But we'll pass it on to you to hopefully include in what you put out. I'll just say as a general statement, for anyone who's interested in the meantime, even if it's not up, we all of the resources that we currently have are still available. They are just not on the website yet. So if anyone is — and maybe this is a greater pitch, if anyone is interested in starting a hub in your locality, I really want you to know that we're here to help. So if you reach out to either of us, we'll get you full access to the Resource Center. We'll get you plugged into a learning cohort where you can learn with other folks doing similar things. We have a list of mentors and advisors who are available. We're about to start a joint fundraising campaign. So the message is, "You're not alone. There's a whole wave of energy behind you to support you if you're interested in jumping into this really exciting work."

Heidi: That's great. Is this Resource Center different from the Resource Center that Duncan's Building with NCDD? It is.

Caleb: Are you referring to the Commons Library?

Heidi: I don't know what I'm referring to. Duncan Autrey has been talking about building a resource center with NCDD that I have a feeling is mostly on dialogue and deliberation because that's what NCDD does. So that's all I know.

Caleb: So Duncan Autrey is amazing. He's also a member of the Better Together America team, and he is in all places at all times and in all things. So he is working with NCDD on a practitioner mobilization to pull different facilitators and mediators into this space and get them activated and meaningfully engaged in their local communities. So that's one of the things. But then the library he's working on with is through the Shift Family Foundation, but then the Horizons Project more directly.  And that's confusingly titled, I believe, the Democracy Resource Hub. And it is a library. For these purposes, it's a library that is not specific to the civic hubs that we're describing here. It's more of a comprehensive library for all things related to the democracy and civic health space as opposed to what we are doing.

Heidi: Okay. So I was confused about that. 

Caleb: The Resource Center that we're curating is designed to give very specific resources and tools for people that are trying to build hubs in their communities.

Heidi: Great. So what else should people know about this? One of the things that strikes me is that I hear a lot when people ask me what we're doing and we tell them, and they kind of throw up their hands and say, "Everything's so messed up. Why do you even bother?" There's no point. How do you get people excited about this thinking that, really, there is reason to do this?  It can make a difference.

Caleb: My immediate response is, as a country, we have delegated a lot of problem-solving to, especially, the federal government, but institutions as a whole. And we've centered ourselves on issues, very polarizing issues. So what this is offering, and a reason why it's a place to refocus our energies, is it's focusing on communities and that we have the power to solve our problems. So we don't have to entirely rely on politicians and elected officials. We can still work with them. And it's not to say that they're not important in their own right. But that together, I guess it's in our name, but together, we can solve problems. And there's excitement in that. There's also very real, and in some ways, unrealized potential there that we're tapping into. Vinay, why don't you help me out?

Vinay: Yeah. I mean, actually, I'll be touching on very similar themes. The first is that when people say "you know, it's all pointless," I'll say, "Well, let's look at what's dysfunctional and sidestep that."  Because actually, the whole model is built on sidestepping that which is dysfunctional. It doesn't mean this is going to be easy. Rebuilding community, as a concept, is hard! The process of destruction started in the Industrial Revolution. So it's not going to be easy; it's going to be a challenge. But it's a vital one. And I think that there's a critical mass now. There's this urgency, this feeling that "something has to give." And I believe that this is, actually, despite being a big challenge, it is actually the easiest way forward. Because people want it. 

The second thing I'd add is that what I've been saying again and again is that this movement already exists. It just needs to be stitched together.  When you look at the numbers of people already involved in this kind of activity, if you add up all the members of this space. it's millions of people. But does it look like a movement of millions?  Not yet. But it can be. And it can be much more.

Because what we're talking about is multiplying those efforts, like finding a way to bring those existing millions together, and then multiplying their efforts.  So there's enormous mathematically provable potential here. And, as I said, there's no obstacle to it, no feasible obstacle, except us. We just have to decide to do it or decide to get together. What are we asking? We're asking, literally, for people just to get together. It's not reliant on funding. I mean, funding helps, obviously, but it's not reliant on funding. People can just get together. It's not reliant on a politician. It's not reliant on the outcome of an election. It's just people deciding to get together, and realizing that they are doing so at scale. Our job is just to kind of help them see that you're not the only ones doing this, — there's lots of other people doing this and that it can lead to tangible action.

Caleb: And I would like to add two other terms that are near and dear to my heart, and that's "resiliency" and "preparedness." And to build off of what Vinay was just saying, we don't know what the future holds, but if we're looking entirely at national elections, we're already seeing political violence. There's a fair chance that 2025 will turn into a bit of a dumpster fire. That's why we're taking this opportunity to build community resilience, to be prepared for whatever comes. And the best mechanism for doing that is at the community level.

Heidi: Totally agree. And the one thing that you haven't mentioned, that I think is really important, is making this movement visible, which is why we're doing this, and why we're doing what we're doing with Beyond Intractability. I think all of the folks that I talk to who say "it's all impossible" say so because they haven't seen what you guys are doing. They haven't seen these hubs. Even if they exist in their community, if those activities aren't well enough publicized and people don't get involved, then there's a sense of hopelessness. But if we can make it clear how big this is, how effective it is, and what the potential is, then we can turn the despair scenario on its head and really start getting people to think differently about what democracy is and how it works and what their role in it is.  So I find that really exciting and something that needs to be done.

So let me go back to what I asked before, put it in a different way. Is there something I missed asking you that I should have asked? Or something you want to tell our watchers that you haven't told?

Vinay: Simply, from my end, is that now's the time to get involved. We would love to have you involved. And if you want to start a hub, please reach out to us. If you you're a national organization who wants to support hubs or you want your local organizations to be involved in this, please reach out to us. Because our goal is to help this movement and help everyone in it. And even if you don't think you can do it, if that seems like too big a lift or whatever, there's so, so many ways to be involved in this. Countless infinite ways. So, if it's just interesting and you don't know how you want to be involved, please reach out to us as well. We'll find a way.

Heidi: Great!

Caleb: And if you're a funder, sustainable funding for the hubs, while not required, as Vinay said, is very helpful for putting wind in their sails. So, I'm also happy to talk more about that, as anyone has the energy.

Heidi: That's great. Well, this is really exciting. It's way bigger than it was when I was going to the "Local Intersections" meetings that Caleb was running. It's really grown. It seems to me that this is the only answer that I see to the national dysfunction. I don't see that changing anytime soon. So trying to work from the bottom up and get people working together to make their local lives better strikes me as an obvious, very important answer. So I very much applaud what you're doing. And thank you very much for that and for talking to us today.

Caleb: Thank you, Heidi. It's been a pleasure and appreciate your support with everything.

Heidi: All right. Great.

Vinay: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.