Building the Public Square: Rich Harwood
December 21st, 2023
“We don't believe we can make a difference… but we ARE making a difference.”
Rich Harwood is the president and founder of The Harwood Institute, who just launched a campaign to reclaim the public square from the most divisive voices and build it into a place that can make hope real for all.
The public square is a noisy and messy place where society disagrees, argues, and also finds solutions. It’s through working out expectations, engaging in the work to be on the right path forward, and holding ourselves accountable to our goals that we engender hope. Acknowledging what has already been accomplished, no matter how small, both to yourself and others, makes the work visible to the community. Paying attention to the civic culture of communities is key to success.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Rich Harwood
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Rich Harwood Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
Something I keep coming back to as we explore the diverse and varied themes we tackle on this show, everything from labor unions to housing, from racism in democracy to shaping collective memory, is thinking about the commons and civil discourse. For me personally, brainstorming and being in dialogue on complicated issues, even disagreeing, is an opportunity to learn different perspectives, to change my mind, and to sharpen my thinking. This is why it's a hard pill to swallow, that so many voices are being silenced in this moment of division and media polarization.
Today we are going to think about building the public square with Rich Harwood, the president and founder of the Harwood Institute, where he has innovated and developed a new philosophy and practice of how communities can solve shared problems and change their civic culture. He's also the author of several books, most recently of Unleashed: A Proven Way Communities Can Spread Change and Make Hope Real for All.
Welcome, Rich. Thank you for joining us.
Rich Harwood: [00:01:36] Thanks for having me. It's so good to be with you.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:39] One of our favorite things on the podcast is to speak with citizen activists like you, people who roll up their sleeves and get engaged in the unglamorous work of building community. Tell us about how you got started. What motivated you?
Rich Harwood: [00:01:55] First, let me say I actually find this work incredibly glamorous. To do this work every day is inspiring to see people step forward, to see people be partners in creating their shared future, to see people regain a sense of both personal agency and shared agency in creating the world around them. So I got started in this work 35, 40 years ago for for really clear reasons. One, I'd worked on 20 political campaigns by the time I was 23. The last one, I was an aide to a presidential candidate.
And those campaigns, as much as I liked those candidates and supported them, those campaigns were about striking fear into people's hearts and winning at any cost. And as you and I and your listeners know, things have only gotten worse, not better, since that time. Second, I worked for a couple of nonprofits that I'm still in touch with, but I came to believe at that time, and I believe even more today, that there are too many organizations that are afraid to get dirt under their fingernails to do the hard work we need to do and frankly, live off the soft money and aren't producing the impact that we need to give people a real sense of hope in their lives and in their communities. Third, I'm a person of faith, and in all sorts of ways my faith calls me forward to do this work. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, when I was a child, I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 1960. That was a death sentence. My parents went on a death watch. Fortunately, my diagnosis changed over the next couple of decades numerous times. But I learned very early on as a kid what it feels like to have your dignity stripped from you, what it feels like to not have a voice, to believe or feel that you're not seen, to experiencing doctors and nurses routinely surrounding your hospital bed, all talking about you, but never talking with you. And the confluence of these four different factors prompted me at 27 to say that I believe that there was a better way forward, and to do so against all the advice of every single individual in my life, all the mentors I had, my parents, my friends, and being the rebellious individual that I am, it just motivated me even more to want to do this. And as hard as it has been and it has been enormously difficult, it was the best decision I ever made in my life.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:37] I'm really thankful that you're alive and you're doing this work, and you have been doing it for over 30 years and bringing your experiences to the table to strengthen our civic culture in this country. As you have just said, you're focused on creating the kind of civic culture where people can come together to gain real hope. And when you first founded the institute, over 30 years ago, you published “Citizens and Politics: A View from Main Street,” the first national study to uncover that Americans did NOT feel apathetic about politics, which was a common belief at the time, but instead held a deep sense of anger and disconnection. And two years ago, you published a report called “Civic Virus: Why Polarization is a Misdiagnosis.” Your finger really is on the pulse of American civic life. How has it evolved in these past 30 years?
Rich Harwood: [00:05:35] You know, it's really interesting. We have had the benefit and the good fortune of being supported to go back out into the country every 4 or 5
years to replicate that report, “Citizens and Politics.” And the trend line is so clear. In 1990, when we released “Citizens and Politics,” people were mad as hell about politics, about politicians, about the news media, about special interests, about money in politics. Essentially, they felt as though someone had taken over their home and kicked them out. And if you look at the trend line over the next 30, 40 years, what you see is increasingly that it's less and less about politics and more and more about us, about the kinds of culture we're creating in this country, about our relationship to one another, about our sense or lack of a sense of shared humanity in this country, about our reliance and belief and even idolatry of consumerism and materialism in this country that has squeezed out the relationships between and among us that create meaning and purpose in our lives together. And so when I first did that report, it was about politics and anger. When we just released “Civic Virus,” it was about something has gone terribly wrong in our country. We have separated and segregated from ourselves and one another. We're kind of in a fight or flight mode. I know I've read about your own background, and you don't believe that polarization is what's really ailing us. It's something much deeper. I agree with you. It is something much deeper. There is an anxiety and a fear of one another that has permeated our lives and pushed us into a very natural human response, which is either I'm going to flee because I'm so fearful and anxious of the other, or I'm going to come out swinging and try to win at any cost. And that's where we are today.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:38] Now, to combat the civic virus, as you call it, you've now embarked on a campaign to build the public square. And I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing here. So in your mind, what is the public square? What's it all about?
Rich Harwood: [00:07:57] I think the public square is where we create our shared lives together, and I believe that what that requires is an enabling environment, an ecosystem, if you will. If you look at how forests develop, trees operate independently, but they're highly interdependent. They talk to each other, they nourish one another, they send each other signals, and it's all kind of hidden from us. Well, communities have a similar kind of ecosystem made up of norms and the networks by which we learn and share things together by leaders who operate at different levels of society, of organizations who span boundaries and bring us together to get things done, of a sense of shared purpose that we create together, of the narratives or stories we tell each
other. We need a robust civic infrastructure where we can come together not to create harmony in the pejorative sense of like, we're all going to like each other, we're all going to get along. It's going to be utopia. It's sit around a circle and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. That's not how we work through tensions. We need a robust public square where we talk to one another, where we argue and debate with one another, where we try to sort things out together and where, frankly, we're going to disagree on a whole heck of a lot of stuff. But where we try to figure out what can we agree on so that we can get moving and create a better life for people. So for me, the public square is a noisy place, a messy place, a place filled with innovation and creativity, a place with uncertainty and ambiguity, a place that needs us. It needs all of us so that we can make a go of it as a society together.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:47] Definitely, we need to do it together. There's no path forward if it's just one of us, you know, or a handful of us. But really it has to be a joint effort. So you just also gave us an overview of the evolution of civic life in the last 30 years. And what have you learned over the last 30 years, and specifically as the deterioration of our civic life has continued, that is informing your campaign today? What I'm really asking is, what are you doing now that you haven't done before?
Rich Harwood: [00:10:19] Or what are we doing with greater intentionality that we thought we were doing before? You know, when I started the institute 35 years ago, I didn't have an answer. What I had were eight questions, and I put those eight questions up on a whiteboard. And over the next 30, 35 years, we kept exploring that and our work kept evolving. It never remained static. We never believe we came to the answer. But here's one insight I have come to in these 35 years, and that we do with much greater intentionality today than we ever have in the past, and that is that we need to pay special attention to the civic culture of our communities, because it is the civic culture that enables us to come together and do the things that you and I are just talking about. That creates the space for people to engage with one another, where we grow leaders who we actually trust and believe are authentic and have credibility. It's our civic culture that makes the way for organizations that have their heads up and are turned outward toward the community, because they believe their job is to bring people together across dividing lines and points of acrimony, to figure out how we can marshal our shared resources to act together. It's our civic culture that we're actually struggling with the most in the United States of America today. And that is about our shared
norms. What norms will help shape and animate the ways in which we believe are important to engage in something called public life together? Is it simply to win at any cost? Is it to keep passing along misinformation? Is it to call each others names and cast aspersions at one another? Is it to tell lies about what one another have done? But those are the norms that increasingly are taking over our public square today, or at least are pushing people of good faith out of the public square. So yes, pay attention to program strategies and initiatives. But if you really want your community to thrive, if you want people to feel a sense of agency in your community, feel a sense of civic confidence together. If you want to grow and engender real civic faith in your community and hope, then you've got to pay attention to your civic culture.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:43] We're taking a short break and we'll be back with Rich in a moment. But first. I want to tell you about a fellow democracy Group podcast that I think you'll enjoy, called How Do We Fix It? Big newsrooms have investigative journalists. How Do We Fix It? is solutions journalism. Every week, Richard Davies and Jim Meigs invite expert guests to discuss their ideas about how to make the world a better place. The podcast is playful, informal, and still at times very serious. From democracy and politics, to our cultural and personal divides, How Do We Fix It? considers practical, constructive solutions aimed at bringing us a bit closer together, not further apart. Listen now on the Democracy Group's website or wherever you get your podcasts.
And now let's return to my conversation with Rich Harwood.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:40] So let's talk about your campaign. How does it fit in? What are you aiming to do with the campaign?
Rich Harwood: [00:13:46] Well, the campaign came from listening to people and what community leaders and active citizens and citizen change agents kept saying to me is, "I'm so tired, I'm so worn out. I'm so frustrated. I thought that after the death of George Floyd, after our politics, after Covid, we would find a new path forward." And they tell me over and over again that when they thought their work would get a bit easier, they came to realize that the work was just beginning. Inequities and disparities in our country have grown. They haven't diminished. Mistrust is more pervasive. It hasn't shrunk. Hope is in short supply in our country. It's not abundant. And so they're exhausted. And at the same time, the loudest and most divisive voices have moved into the center of the
public square. And you know what I say to folks all the time is the loudest and most divisive voices in our country. Like all voices have a right to be heard. They do not have a right to dominate. And so we face a fundamental choice in this country. Will we surrender the public square to the loudest, most divisive voices, or will we reclaim the public square from them? And I believe we have to reclaim it. And so this campaign, first and foremost is to say enough-- enough hatred and bigotry in this country, enough fear, enough division, enough surrendering the public square to the loudest, the most divisive voices. Put your foot down. It's enough. The second part of this is it's time to build together. There is something we can do together. So this campaign is about first saying to people, we see you, we know you're tired. We know you're frustrated. We know you're ready to give up in some cases. Don't. Not now. Second, you believe there isn't a path forward. Or even if you do believe there's a path forward, you're fearful that you're going to have to go it by yourself. And so this campaign is about giving you some of the small steps forward that will enable you to realize that it is possible to move forward together and to make a difference together.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:00] I know that people are super scared to be exposed and cancelled for the things that they say and do. It feels like no matter what you do, somebody is going to say you're doing it wrong. And building the public square is a really big endeavor. And you just said that there are small things. So what's the first thing we should be doing? What's the first step in your mind?
Rich Harwood: [00:16:23] Actually, I could give you four really quick steps that people could take that are very practical. And people all across the country in our work are using every day. We call them the four mantras action, right.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:34] Let's do the first one. Let's do one by one.
Rich Harwood: [00:16:36] The first one is we need to turn outward toward each other. The work we need to do needs to be shared, and in order to do it, we need to turn outward toward each other, to see and hear one another, to afford each other and uphold each other's dignity. Fundamentally, it requires that we change our orientation or posture from being inward looking, which most of us are right now because we're so hunkered down and stressed out and anxious to being a posture or orientation of being turned outward, that's a mindset. And then listening for their aspirations that come from
their gut and project out and connect with other people. And what we find is when we can understand our shared aspirations, we can feel connected to one another, and that can create a new frame for public discourse moving forward about what we can actually act on together. So that's the first step.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:26] Yeah, I like the shared aspirations part. I have said in the past that it's much easier to pursue a common goal than to necessarily suss out what we can agree on right in this moment, because there may be very little, depending on who you are. You know, sometimes if you're in community -- of course it's easier if you're all, let's say, parents at the same school, it's much easier to find common ground. But if you have diverse voices in a community, as one does, obviously then you might have different perspectives from where you start, but you may want to go to the same spot you know and have shared goals. Yeah.
Rich Harwood: [00:18:01] That's right. And the other thing, as you know well, is that we often misread agreement about what is wrong with agreement about what we seek to achieve together.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:13] Hmm. Yeah.
Rich Harwood: [00:18:15] And in a lot of the communities that we work with, there is agreement about what's wrong. But they haven't taken the time to articulate what kind of agreement might there be about what we want to create together, moving forward. And I think that's where the action is.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:32] That's where the action is. So tell us about a mantra about how to get the action done.
Rich Harwood: [00:18:38] Well. So that leads to the second one, which is we got to get in motion. What we find over and over again is that folks in communities get caught in planning mode, planning endlessly and endlessly and endlessly. Part of that is because they believe they've been taught that we need to have these grand plans. The other, though, is that planning is a way to soothe your anxiety and your fear and not have to step out. So the second mantra is get in motion. And the reason why getting in motion is so important is because it's only by getting in motion that we can realize that we can
actually start to do things together. Maybe it's that by getting in motion, we realize that we each have gifts and talents and innate resources that we never really saw before. They were invisible to us, and all of a sudden, by getting in motion, we begin to to realize and discover that we have a sense of personal and here's importantly, shared agency in creating things together. And so this getting in motion that we found is the faster we can get folks in motion, the more change they create and the more sense of possibility and hope they engender within themselves and others.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:52] So what's a good example for getting in motion?
Rich Harwood: [00:19:55] We're working with a group on early childhood education in Reading, Pennsylvania. They believed that the problem was a supply side problem. They needed more early childhood centers. When they started to use our work by turning outward and engaging people, they realized this was a community that was once all white and now is 65% Latino. They began to discover that folks in their community didn't have a tradition of early childhood education. They didn't trust the folks who were providing it. They didn't know how to navigate the systems. They relied on grandparents and older children in the family to provide early childhood. So the problem wasn't a supply side problem. The problem was a demand side problem. But by continuing to stay in planning mode on the supply side, they were not making a dent in the problem. They were not even moving. They were just creating more PowerPoint slides. But to the credit of the leaders of this group and the folks that they were working with in the community, they made a 180 pivot and said, well, we're going to have to deal with some things on the supply side. But until we start to authentically engage people in this community, which gets back to civic culture, by the way, we're not going to make a dent on this. So we better get in motion, start engaging people in the community, start meeting them where they are, start finding out what they value, and start engaging them in ways around early childhood that fit their values, their culture, their customs, their heritage, their history, and their language in ways that matter to them.
Mila Atmos: [00:21:35] That's a great example. Now, I know that another one of your mantras is to start small and then build up from there. And I'm hoping you can give us an example to kind of illustrate how that works.
Rich Harwood: [00:21:48] First, let me just frame this by saying our inclination is to start the most comprehensive, complex way possible. When I went to graduate school, that's what I was taught to do. And those initiatives typically stall out in communities. They fail. It creates frustration, cynicism, and lost hope. So how about if we tried a different approach? How about if we started small with the intent that we want to grow over time, that we want to catalyze and unleash a chain reaction that takes root and grows and spreads over time like a positive contagion. So here's a really quick example Clark County, Kentucky. Rural area, like many places, suffered from a whole lot of divisions around religion. Children going to Blue Ribbon schools, but feeling abandoned divisions around faith. But they also faced an opioid and meth and fentanyl crisis like a lot of communities. And they tried all sorts of comprehensive solutions to that problem, but nothing ever really seemed to work. So two women, they weren't nurses or physicians or physician's assistants, were sitting in church one day and heard about a conference in another town about how to deal with this challenge. And they went to it, and they came home from that conference and they said, you know, one of the things that we learned was that when people go to the emergency room, when they overdose, they're detoxed, and then the thrown right back out on the street. And so the problem starts all over again. They said, how about if we created coaches? This exists in a lot of communities, but they created this themselves. That's what's important. They said, what if we created coaches made up of people who are in recovery themselves, who met folks who overdosed in the emergency room because the folks who go to the emergency room not only are thrown back on the street, but they feel negatively judged by society. So now they not only are back on the street, but they're filled with shame, which, as you know, doesn't help anyone move forward. So they created these coaches who met folks at the emergency room. That was their first step. That's all they knew. And it worked. But here's what they discovered. By starting small and growing big, they said, well, when people leave the emergency room, what happens to them? Well, we need to follow them out of the emergency room. When we do that, what then needs to happen? Well, actually, people recover not simply because of medical care, but primarily because of social networks and other support systems. So how do we help people create these social networks and support systems? Then they said, but people don't have a job to go to. A lot of times how can we help them find a job? But then they realize a lot of the folks don't have the skills to fill the jobs. So how do we provide job training to folks so they can get jobs? Then they realize, well, when folks finally got the skills and the training and they got the jobs, they didn't have the financial literacy skills
to make a go of it. So how do we help them create the financial literacy skills? So lo and behold, they did all these things, each of these being a chain reaction of steps. It was so successful that they created a storefront that became a home for people in this community, and they reduced the rate of drug addiction in their community. But here's the other part of the chain reaction, the medical system that looked at these two women and said, you don't know what you're doing. You have no training in this. You have no experience in this. You have no background in this. Will you please get out of our way? All of a sudden started to call them and said, oh, look what you've created. Will you train our staff and how to engage people when they come into the emergency room? Will you train our staff in how to engage in these types of relationships that you're forming, and how you've developed this civic culture around these groups of individuals and this community that you're now building. All of this started by two women with, quote unquote, no training, sitting in church looking at each other and saying, "huh, what can we do about this?" "Well, I just heard about this conference. You want to go?" "Yeah. Let's go." And then all this happened.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:45] That's a great story. It's so hopeful. And much to the credit of the emergency room, they changed their minds and they also paid attention. So, you know, I think a lot of people were turning outward here, as you like to promote. And I just mentioned that that is a hopeful story. And I know that one of your mantras also is trajectories of hope. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Rich Harwood: [00:26:08] Well, it goes along with the other three, which is the other three basically are we do all sorts of things that dig a deeper hole for us. And inevitably what happens is things that maybe start with a big press conference or a big splash or a big announcement. You know, it's kind of a downward sloping curve. We start really high and then it just keeps diminishing over time. Right. And one of the questions that I started the institute with was, what actually engenders hope? Well, what engenders hope is not that we've solved the problem. It's that people believe that we're taking steps that get us on the right path, and that do so with the right expectations, where we're holding ourselves accountable for what we pledged and promised and where we're building on what we've already produced. That's essentially a description of an upward sloping trajectory. Right. We're making progress. What we say to folks is, look, the challenges that you face, whether it's opioid or meth challenges or public school challenges or racism, which is everywhere in our communities, or poverty. All of these
things took generations many times to come about. Why say we're going to solve them in 2 or 3 years? We know we're not going to do it. So let's not say it, but let's say we're going to get on a better, more hopeful path and we're going to hold ourselves accountable for it. And so your job as a change agent, your listeners, our job as change agents is to get on a better path with an upward sloping curve with increasing momentum, ever expanding civic confidence. Right. And a greater sense of individual and shared agency in our communities. So many of the actions -- I started by talking about the campaign, and people are so tired and frustrated, they don't feel like they're making a difference. But you and I both know they are making a difference. They just don't see it. People who do this work don't see the progress they're making, because they're so mired in the day to day efforts that are so difficult at times. So we created this tool called Making the Invisible Visible. How do you make visible the things that you're already building? Not by waiting to the end of what you're doing, but to make them visible as you're going so that A you can start to see the progress that you're making. B that you can contribute to sharing your story with others to give them hope, not just yourself hope, and C that you can contribute to this upward sloping trajectory of new hope. And people are using this tool all across the country and it's remarkable.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:41] All right. Tell us about this tool. Because right now, in this time of war, people feel incredibly helpless and hopeless.
Rich Harwood: [00:28:49] First of all, you don't need to have used our work to use this tool. It's on our website. Download it. It's free. Please use it: HarwoodInstitute.org. The tool is rooted in eight questions, which we spend a lot of time shaping and testing with folks in communities, and it's all around. What are you seeking to achieve? What are you building together? What small wins have you encountered? What are the challenges along the way? And what happens is as people use these questions, they rediscover their purpose in acting. They discover that they're building something of value in the community. That notwithstanding how big some of these challenges are, that they are creating wins along the way, they're discovering that they have catalyzed and unleashed a chain reaction already. Maybe it's small, but it's real, and it gives them hope that they can keep going. And you know, we rooted this by starting ritual. It creates a ritual for people. And as as you and your listeners know, rituals are often rooted in fellowship, in finding commonalities with others, of creating meaning together. And so it becomes kind of like a civic ritual of what are we co-creating together to build
a better world in a practical way? And I just love this tool. I know I get excited about it, it's just a tool, but it really works and it's joyful to watch people experience it.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:17] Yeah, well, your joy is infectious. I have to say. Now, I know that you visit communities to talk about this campaign, and I'm curious to know the profile of the kind of person who shows up at your events. They're clearly interested in participating in building a public square. Who are you talking to and reaching?
Rich Harwood: [00:30:40] It's interesting. I was just out in the Central Valley of California, which is Fresno, a place that has probably some of the greatest inequities and disparities in all of America. It's the agricultural heart of the United States. So here was who came. It was the community foundation president. It was the president of the regional United Way, folks who headed up social innovation at a local university. It was students from a community college. I think maybe a quarter of the audience didn't speak English, so they were translators. So a woman who only spoke Spanish, who wanted to know about foster care, and she works on foster care in neighborhoods. Another woman came up to me afterwards and she said, I'm a leader in my community. But people increasingly don't trust the organizations who are here with us. This is a neighborhood leader, and increasingly they no longer trust me. I had tears in my eyes as she was telling me this and she said, what do I do? What do I do? So you can see it's a range of people, what they share in common... We think of leaders as holding a certain title, of going to a certain school, of being, of a certain race or ethnicity, of speaking a certain native language, of praying to a certain God, of maybe having a certain sexual orientation. But if you look across the people who are with me in the Central Valley, they transcended all those differences. While they may have had individual or personal points of view on those different things, what they shared in common, which is more important, I think, right now, is that they wanted the Central Valley to thrive. They wanted to reduce inequities and disparities in their community. They wanted people from all walks of life to have a real sense of hope in their lives. And I think our opportunity in this country right now is to marshal the collective resources of the types of people who are showing up to these events and to say, let's go and let's go together. We're meant to go together as human beings. That's how we're built. That's our DNA. I would say that's how God made us in some ways, and realizing that we will disagree on a lot of things, our task is to find out what we can agree on and how we can get things moving.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:06] So we are always looking to build our civic Action toolkit here at Future Hindsight, as we call it, the Civic Action Toolkit. What are two things an everyday person can do to create this trajectory of hope? You know, to have accountability for ourselves, but steadily making progress towards that goal where we are at least getting on the same path.
Rich Harwood: [00:33:35] Yeah, this may sound a little soft, but I actually think this is really important. One I would say is, you know, when I was a kid and sitting in those hospital beds. My parents were overwhelmed. They didn't have the resources or the wherewithal, and I was falling through the cracks. And three men in my community -- didn't know each other -- over time, stepped forward and made sure I didn't fall through the cracks. But not only that, they lifted me up and taught me about hope, and that while I was a sick child, I could exert myself physically and still achieve things. There's a teaching in my faith that's a teaching in most faiths that goes, "if you save one life, you save the world." And the reality is, if you save one life, you don't save the world. We all know that. But what you do do is you're making a declaration. You're stepping forward. You're making yourself visible. You're placing a value not only on your life, but on someone else's life. You're saying that we need to go together, that we need to be together, that we need to work together. So often in our society, small efforts are diminished because they're not systemic enough. They're not big enough. They don't cost enough, they're not flashy enough, technical enough. And so what I would say to your listeners is, don't let anyone diminish your efforts, no matter how large or small. They're all worthwhile, and we need them all. So that's one. The second goes back to something we were talking about earlier, which is at a time when we feel under anxiety and stress. When we fear one another, we don't believe we can make a difference, but we are making a difference. Each of your listeners, I'm sure, is making a difference already. And so get that Making the Invisible Visible tool and download it from our website and start to use it and make what you're doing visible, first and foremost to yourself and to those you're working with, and give yourself a sense of possibility and hope that you're actually are already making a difference. You're already doing good work, you're doing good deeds, and then to share those stories with others, because... not to pat yourself on the back, not to give yourself credit for things you didn't do yet, not to blow out of proportion to things you did achieve already... but simply to say it's possible to move forward when we get together and work together, even when we don't
like each other, even when we disagree, even when we come from different walks of life. We can still do it.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:09] That is very good advice and the perfect antidote to feeling helpless and hopeless, right? So many of us, right, are saying, what else could I be doing? But maybe really, first and foremost, we should see what we are already doing.
Rich Harwood: [00:36:22] That's right.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:23] So as we are rounding out our conversation here today, looking
into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Rich Harwood: [00:36:32] What makes me hopeful are the things that I've seen over the last 35 years. The people of Flint, Michigan, who came together against the highest homicide rate in the country at the time, losing 30,000 jobs, living in persistent poverty and fighting to move their community forward. The two women in Clark County, Kentucky, who looked at each other in church and said, we can do something, let's go do it. And the folks in Redding, Pennsylvania, who are not only making progress on really specific education challenges, but who are changing in a much larger way the civic culture of their community. They give me enormous hope every day. The fact that in American history, over and over again, knowing that our country was founded with stains on its civic fabric, that we have continued to fight to make a more perfect union. And we are imperfect. We are still highly imperfect, but we still fight as a country to move forward. Sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back, sometimes it's one step forward, two steps back. But we haven't given up. And so that gives me great hope. So I know right now that this is a time to be pessimistic when we should feel hopeless. I know when we should be saying we can't trust any leaders. And I say to all that, okay, fine, get it out of your system, say it. But what are you going to do now? Let's get moving. Let's start creating together. And out of that, much like throughout American history, we can start to get on a more hopeful trajectory. And that's how this country has always changed. And I believe, at least right now, that's how it's going to change moving into the future.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:13] Yeah. Hear, hear. I think you're right. It's indeed very hopeful that we have not given up. Thank you very much for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Rich Harwood: [00:38:25] Thanks so much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:27] Rich Harwood is the president and founder of the Harwood Institute, where he has innovated and developed a new philosophy and practice of how communities can solve shared problems and change their civic culture.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we'll be sharing an episode from our good friends over at Democracy-ish. Danielle Moodie and Wajahat Ali are joined by author and NPR Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep, whose latest book is Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. The three of them discuss why dissent is necessary and how it is as American as apple pie. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
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This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:39:47] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.