Earlier this month, the Project for Civic Health hosted the 2024 Civic Health Summit, which brought together community leaders, elected officials, and organizations from across the state. Participants came from a variety of disciplinary fields and had different political identities. The meeting was meant to provide inspiration and facilitate information sharing in order to build relationships and support our work to find solutions to our civic health crisis.
The day began with remarks by Congressman Derek Kilmer, who shared his perspective that the challenges of civility we face as well as the solutions are happening both locally in Washington and also nationally.
In the other Washington, some efforts are already underway. A bipartisan working group is facilitating collaboration. “The Building Civic Bridges Act” has been introduced to reduce polarization and support bridge-building. Orientation for newly-elected members of Congress is becoming more bipartisan.
This all requires a certain degree of hope as well as trust in our community, suggested Kilmer. He cited research by Robert Putnam, distinguished social scientist and public policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, in which he found that “people’s divorce from their communities” contributes to extremism and polarization. This separation exacerbates the outrage industrial complex we have today as it pushes people into isolation or loneliness.
He rounded out his address with a quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “Optimism is the belief that things will be better. Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue; hope is an active one.”
The design of the day allowed participants to share their insights, network with each other, and brainstorm within small group conversations. The table discussions also helped attendees to better understand where people’s beliefs and thoughts were coming from, leading to divergent ideas and creative solutions to our civic health crisis.
Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck and Braver Angels’ National Political Director Elizabeth Doll engaged in a fireside chat about polarization, bridge-building, and intergenerational gaps. Doll and the Lt. Governor explored some of the reasons for the current polarization across our nation, including the “Great Sort” of 2020 and the rise of social media as a catalyst for isolation.
Doll suggested, “People who are under-represented in our lives are often over-represented in our minds. We often attack and exclude people who most need to be included and brought into the conversation.” She also thought finding common ground was an essential step to bridging across differences. During one of Braver Angels’ Red/Blue workshops, she found two participants deeply disagreed with one another politically, but have remained close friends due to their shared passion in gardening.
As the day concluded, Lt. Governor Heck expressed his appreciation and gratitude to the participants with a message that aligned with the recurring theme of hope, as he reiterated Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s quote by Congressman Kilmer. He also shared with the group some of the work that the Project of Civic Health has been facilitating, including the Washington Collaborative Elected Leaders Institute and the Joint Select Committee on Civic Health.
The ideas that were shared out of each table during the day-long conversations were visually documented and recorded as headlines on posters throughout the room. Main themes that emerged from the dialogues include community engagement, education, networks, collaboration, and connection, among others.
The core partners of the Project for Civic Health are hopeful that the insights, ideas, and perspectives that came out of the summit can be used to assess how to keep our network growing and to prioritize next steps.