Building Local Democracy Hubs with Vinay Orekondy of Better Together America

bridge block, build, belong, right? So bridging across divisions, belonging to create community, build, to build structures like participatory structures, and blocking. So blocking is like how you block authoritarianism, right? So that is part of this larger movement. Hello, this is the Great Battlefield podcast. I'm Nathaniel G. Perlman, a great political battle is being fought right now between progressives and the forces of reaction on the other side. This show is about the political entrepreneurs and other progressive leaders who are finding new or improved ways to fight. My guest today, Venet or Akhandi, is a co-founder of Better Together America, which is working on building local and state democracy hubs in the United States. Originally from Australia, Venet is an attorney, organizer, and founder of advocacy startups who has moved from partisan politics to building these community-rooted civic infrastructure pieces, and taking part in a number of projects aimed at bridging divides or combating authoritarianism from the bottom up or among independent voters. I enjoyed getting to know him a bit, you should listen. So, after a quick word from my sponsor, my interview with Venet or Akhandi. This episode is brought to you by Graphicacy. Graphicacy is an analytic design firm that can help you advance the mission of your organization using your own real data and information. They are 21st century visual communicators who create interactive graphics, motion graphics, and data visualizations. You can find [email protected]. That is g-r-a-p-h-i-c-a-c-y.com. With Graphicacy's help, you can visualize a better world. Venet, would you mind introducing yourself and giving me a quick biography? I'm Venet or Akhandi. I'm one of the co-founders of Better Together America. I'm also a co-chair at Brave Arrangeals, specifically at the Brave Network, which is their organization's arm. I'm involved in other things such as the Grand Bargain Project, the Unified USA, a couple of other projects like that, all generally within the sort of broader civic ecosystem. I originally am from Australia. That's where the accent is from. I became a deal citizen about a year ago. It's, you know, an interesting time. It's a nice timing. Yeah, I mean, people say, "Why do you become a citizen?" I said, "I think it'll become clear why." You know, I recognize that that it's brown guy working in the democracy space. It's probably a good idea to get it done. But I won the Green Card Lottery, you know, if anyone in your audience is not aware what that is, it was a Bush one program. They give out about 50,000 green cards every year and it's sort of geared more towards countries that have a smaller intake. So, you know, if you're from Canada or China or India or you can't actually apply for it, right? Because it would cut a high intake, but if you're from a smaller country like Australia or something that you've got a higher chance of being able to get this. But I worked most of my career in the political space as well in Australia, and then here, sort of jumping around between law and coalition's work and advocacy work as well. I have sort of found my way into the advocacy space here in the US. They didn't take long working in the election space in the US to realize it was quite broken. So, I moved into election reform, specifically rectory spoting, because Australia has had rectory spoting for about 100 years. And so, it made sense for me to work in that space for a while, and it was in there that I discovered this whole non-partisan civic ecosystem, right? I just discovered as part of my coalition's work. And I thought, well, why isn't this whole field? It's a huge field. There's like 12,000 plus organizations, millions of active people. Two of those organizations alone, like Rotary and America, that's about 4 million people. And that's the two lightest right out of 12,000 plus organizations. It's a very big space. Imagine if it was organized as a movement, a communitarian movement. So, a lot of my work has now been in a stitching this whole field together by locality. On the assumption that local community is kind of the way forward for the whole country. And I can talk more about that as well. But that's kind of how I landed. If you stitch them together, are they pulling each other in different directions? Great question. Great question. A lot of them do different civic processes, right? Like, service is a big one. The community service. Others do bridging divides. Others do participatory democracy. Others just run big social events. Others do organizing. And until recently, a lot of them, they're always just doing separate things. And maybe we're even competing for people, right? But these all have very similar values. That's the first thing, right? And when they have similar values, we're trying to build relationships across the dialogue. Remember, as we have these democracy drinks, we run in DC and we've run them for a couple of years. And we're trying to build relationships across the field. So, we brought all of these groups together and it turned into a networking thing. And people were sort of high-fiving each other and walking away. I thought, well, what could be, I mean, that's fine. But we have grander ambitions here. We want to build a movement. How do we do that? But we realized that the civic field never had a shared mission across these different directions. And so, what would that be? We realized that collectively, in this moment of deep isolation, right? That's really the heart of all this isolation. In this moment of deep isolation, the ability to take someone who's very isolated to a state of high civic engagement. But it's a ladder. It's a ladder of engagement. There's many steps. And the problem is that each civic organization tends to focus on one or two of those rungs in isolation to each other. So, if we can stitch them into a sort of a sequence, meaning starting with the simplest activities to the most complex, we can actually help every organization. So, if someone who's totally new to civic participation, doing a social activity is great, right? And he does here to make friends. Someone who's very advanced in the process, maybe they can engage in a participatory democracy, or an abridging thing. Someone who's even further on may want to do organizing an advocacy or even run for office. It's a process. So, what we're trying to do with these localities, which we call civic hubs, is thread a lot of these processes together so that they're facilitating this process. Where do I sit on the ladder with a democracy-related podcast? So, the last stage of our ladder engagement is action, action and moving others to action. So, I would put you in that, in that action space. I guess the question is, is are you doing this through a civic hub, as you know? So, I'm part of a group of democracy-related podcasts. The way that our civic hubs are currently set out is by physical locality. That's not to diminish this work. It's not the only way to do it. Yeah, it's as we've put our focus on locality, right? Yeah. So, I want to hear a little bit about your youth. It's always interesting to talk to people from other countries. Tell me about your childhood, your family, and Australia politically. What were you learning about politics from that perspective? Sure. So, my family is from India originally. They moved to the UK for a while, and then my older sister was born there. My dad was finishing his ophthalmology. He was a doctor. He was finishing down the UK. In fact, all of his brothers and sisters moved to the US. So, he was going to follow them, but he got a job off from Australia. So, I ended up in Australia. So, my middle sister and myself were born in Australia. I grew up there, really. Australia is an interesting place for immigrants. There's a lot of cultural similarities with the US. If you took the dial, the dial just turned it down. That's what Australia is. It's very similar culturally and politically to the US. It's just sort of a calmer version of it all. In fact, there would often say that whatever happens in the US, happens in Australia 10 years later, with information being faster these days, it happens a lot faster, but at the same time, it's still a much calmer environment. That is the one thing that I still remember quite much. America, the US does everything in extremes, but it's also how it solves problems. It kind of jumps between one extreme to another, and then somehow finds a halfway that gets it through. That is done this over and over and over again in its history, and Australia just doesn't do things that way. It may be a bit small enough. People tend to talk things out. It seems like the on things like guns or maybe ranked choice voting, they are running ahead. They run ahead in some reforms. A good chunk of it is a size question. It is a much smaller country. Yeah, easier to come to agreement, perhaps. Yeah. There is something else that's different. Despite being culturally very similar, there is more of a collectivist bent there. It's sort of two things. One of it is convict heritage. We set up as a convict colony. A big part of Australian culture is all of us against those elites. Not quite in the way that it manifests in the US, but it's more like a pride in being anti-alletist. It's embedded deeply in the culture. They don't love the sort of historically individualistic culture of the United States. We have a phrase in Australia that's called "Tool Poppy Syndrome." It's like, you never let a poppy get too tall. You cut it down first. It's similar to Japan. The nail that's up too high gets pounded. I had not heard that phrase, but it's exactly the same sentence. He wears hair. It's all about how can you stand up against the masses. You've got to keep pushing yourself harder and above everyone else. That's I think those factors make collectivist solution-making easy. It seems like England had a pro-elite sort of flavor when a lot of circles, even in circles that were not elite, there was that reverence for the monarchy or dukes or people like that. That's completely foreign to us in Australia. Even the fact that they're still in aristocracy is bizarre to us. It's not just an absence of social strata. There is a big focus on taking nothing too seriously, letting nobody let anyone take themselves too seriously. That's a lot of the humor in Australia is about really stripping back people who think they're above anybody else. Have you listened to Tim mention? He does comic opera. He is Australian. He has maybe one of the best college graduation speeches I've ever seen. The reason he came to mind partially because you're Australian, but also because he has this particular bit he does where there's an omnipotent ophthalmologist. It has to do with the presence or absence of God and which he doesn't think there is one. It's worth listening to for anybody. Sounds like it. Thank you. It builds and it's quite funny for my world, but you got into politics in Australia. Tell me about that. That was kind of an accident actually. Another life I was a lawyer. I actually came here in like I think it was 2009. I was here for a year. It was working on international law so about a far from like grassroots organizing as possible. Went back was looking to practice in Australia and then I got kind of pulled into an advertiser boycott. There's a figure in Australia called Alan Jones. He's the Australian version of rushed limbaugh. Pretty much I even looked similar to him. I bet they give the whole like let's just get on the radio and bully people and they can't really push back. Earlier that year, in the 2010 or 2012, I can't remember that. There was I know there was a big advertiser boy coming as rush limbaugh the same year. This figure Alan Jones went to a political event and made some really demeaning comments about the prime minister's home's late father who died a few days prior and he'd been bullying. She was of Australia's first female prime minister and he'd been like engaging in misogynistic bullying against her for a while. None of which had anything to do with policy like you just go after for a dander and so forth. And then when this happened and it leaked out, it was just too much. And so a friend of mine started a petition to his advertisers. He asked if I wanted to be part of it. We didn't think anything would happen but we did share it with our circles who were quite political and they just spread like wildfire. This was on Change.org. They contacted us. We started adding his advertisers to it and they got flooded. It became I think the largest online campaign ever run in Australian history. We had about oh I think yet by the end of a 99 advertisers had dropped out and media landscape had changed forever. So that was how I started. I ended up going. That must have been pretty exciting. Oh yeah it was it was yeah it was huge. We were not expecting. Yeah I mean it seems like an incredible introduction to efficacy in politics. Yeah. The reason I think it worked was because we once social media was new as an advocacy tool and so we kind of just accidentally gave people a way to do something and have a direct impact because after they signed the petition like I was posting on the Facebook group saying hey these people advertise on this guy show this morning go tell them what you think here are links to it pages and they did and they're like an hour later I could say are they withdrew advertising right so so there was a very direct link between people taking action and no time gap at all really. So we accidentally stumbled on a way to give people power so that's why I think it worked. But you were I think I understood going back to try to practice law did you just get diverted off of that into a different channel? Kind of. Yeah so after that I ended up working for a union and I was like okay I like this campaign thing and I did that for a while ended up being drawn into their legal section as I worked I worked as a lawyer again for the union. It helps start a political party the Australian progressives I co-founded that that took up in my last couple of years in Australia also ran for office not with the progressive but with a state party were allied with us. Yeah so now you did a whole bunch of things at the party there so from the legal to you know the campaigning all of it so and then I went after I got here back to the US I went back on the same cycle I started as an organizer when I set the bar got through that and I did practice as a lawyer here at politics for a bit before I got into into kind of coal as she's activity so I came jumping around. Yeah well when you were observing Australian politics in that role with a new party and running it's if you were telling someone here about some of the important differences what would they be? One of the first things I noticed when I started working here was that the technology makes a massive difference like the level of technological precision in the United States around politics is just unparalleled so things like Van and some mobile app that organizes use the level of precision or data collection it's just extraordinary. A lot of other countries just don't they just don't have that yet or they're building towards it. Correct yeah and that's one area worth if you want to call that ahead ahead. Yeah I mean it's technically brilliant right and at the same time like you don't really don't walk in Australia. We did it I remember I'd never been do or not about politics because we would consider it rude right and or called I heard that there were in swing seats they might do it they might maybe you. And part of it also is we have compulsory voting right so that that changes the game dramatically means that you don't have to do get out the vote correct effort. Yeah yeah and so that brings up another important difference is that because we have compulsory voting you don't have to move people to come and vote. What does it take to move someone to vote? It means tapping into the deepest emotions whether they be very hopeful or very fearful right and that's why American politics I think ultimately produces some of the but the best and worst politicians in the world because you have to work so hard to move people to come and vote right and that means tapping into their best instincts or their worst instincts and Australia you just don't have to do that. That seems preferable. I don't understand why you came to the US was it basically family you had a lot of people over here because you seemed so involved in Australia what brought you here? So Australian politics is very responsive to what happens in the US very and I mentioned I had helped set up the progressive party that you know I felt like I was kind of hitting a wall on what I could do there because you let me take a step back and say another thing in response to your your question about the differences is that Australia is kind of a political low energy environment the US is a very high political energy environment things are always moving and changing here whereas Australia thinks sort of tend towards not changing right and that was very frustrating for me as someone is quite passionate it often felt like getting people to do things like politics right in Australia that's there is here like there's always someone is going to do try try to think about how crazy it is right so to the US is a preferable environment that sense and so I I felt like I was kind of reaching up a limit so what I could do and I needed to be a more high energy political environment also that if you're influencing the US you will influence Australia so it made sense to me to come here and then I had vague dreams of coming and working for the Bernie campaign turns out I won the green card lottery my first job was with the Bernie campaign in New Hampshire I got really lucky yeah so you realized that dream yeah with a lot of luck it helped yeah but were you as happy with the experiences you anticipated you might be it was actually a far greater experience than I thought it would be I thought it would be great it was just extraordinary what made it extraordinary the Bernie campaign brought a lot of very very talented organizers together I can only speak for my my office you know just because that's what I experienced but the it was such a high morale environment I don't even ever said anything like that before I mean they were big into distributed organizing correct I started on the campaign in I think November of 2019 and so the office began with quite a lot of paid organizers so it paid staff right like so we were there to like when he didn't have a big volunteer list like we were there to kind of get the volunteers up and running to make the calls do the organizing and so that's what we did initially but what happened over the course of the campaign was that mass activation started occurring like first from Massachusetts like there were just so many volunteers and for the week to change tack we were like okay it no longer makes sense to just for us to directly organize or even do the doors ourselves we've just got so many volunteers straight from Massachusetts we should just put all especially I was in Nashville I was in southern New Hampshire so it's like let's just put all our energy into that right into organizing so that was the first thing and then closer in the last couple of last month or two of the campaign people from all over the country so it just became about managing the volunteer flow setting up lists and then things for them to do finding accommodation you know having some of the front door like I often I did the doors and I remember when you'd have like hundreds of people streaming into our office in like a day like it was just ridiculous I remember like we would just run out of lists like right out of doors I think on the day of the campaign we actually ran out of doors by mid-morning so we had to send people around back around again to hit the doors that there was no one there and then we ran out of that and then went for like half of the third route so we're doing the entire state of New Hampshire yeah so it's crazy when a campaign here has that kind of energy which is mostly not the case you can do entirely different things I remember them Sanders people telling me both times I think they could like call through everybody in Iowa or whatever the state they were working on they had the volunteer energy to to hit it over and over which yeah you can't possibly do yeah so is that combination of just this very high morale environment that like the team was incredible and then we just kept getting more and more resources thrown away like people and we got to meet Bernie and his team and they'll celebrity started to flow into the office and launch can't like launch campuses so you know AOC showed up at some point like not in our office but in New Hampshire and so the momentum just kept going stronger and stronger and stronger so did it surprise you that he didn't win it well you did win New Hampshire but the whole thing yeah I mean when we look at what happened no you know it was a I mean the truth was and this is no I say this not as a slide it was a coordinated dropout right I give credit to the Democratic establishment they played their hand well you know with that coordinated dropout and you know I wish that and progressives had shown that level of discipline as well so a lot of people were angry and understand what I was too but I was like a little tactically they played their hand better than we did you know we had like kind of squabbling between candidates and things like that and so so I think that was for for me I was like okay as a progressive I need to we'd wake up and learn to be more disciplined right and I will say that my experience with the progressive movement since then has not been as positive right I don't think that progressive movement so that discipline in the US I think that campaign was kind of an exception really to draw this through this incredible talent together I've been less impressed with the with the movement I mean that was going back several years since we're not that disciplined in any aspect because we are individualistic I don't think that the establishment is typically more disciplined than the progressives or less so it's just like Americans are not that easy to channel down a particular pathway I guess when I say dislike I mean like kind of willing to do what it takes to win and like set aside whatever you need to right and and you know I say that as someone who's involved several years ago with the movement more than I am now and since then there have been many great wins right so I clearly the progressive movement is doing a lot better across to that so what did you do after the Sanders campaign yeah so I wasn't sure what to do at first and one of my friends suggested I if I want to go back into political or that I could sit the bar so I actually the day I started looking at applications do it for more scrambled and got my application in by like 1159 I had to get these sent from Australia and also so it was kind of crazy but I did got it in when set the bar in Vermont got through to the horror or experience but I got through it for more it was lovely obviously and it was the pandemic so I nothing distracting me actually Bernie lived like 10 minutes down the road but it was the pandemic so I never saw him there after like spending some time recovering in Georgia I went and worked in like voting rights law for a little bit on campaigns for the protection work and things like that and I and I think it was at that point I realized that I wanted to get into electoral reform and so I transitioned into working for the ranked choice movement that was fair vote for yes yes I went to work for fair vote for about I think about six months yeah what do you think of them oh I read a lot my time of fair vote they were just kind of in that transition from like as a movement the ranked choice movement used to be very like let's lobby officials and see what we can get and they've kind of exhausted that it started moving into ballot measure mode and I was there at the time where there were sort of more aggressively moving that's why I got brought on actually was that still Rob Richey yes yeah I've actually yeah it was Rob Rob who brought me on during my time there was the Seattle campaign was that one I was most involved in which we won by like 0.3% it was very close it was great actually that there were about 10 ballot measures that year I think we won nearly all of them yeah so it was good and I went on to work for ranked the vote after that who was sort of the campaigns arm of this whole movement the ranked choice movement that's Nathan right no more Nathan still there that he's the executive director but I worked under Nathan mostly yeah but now it's Eileen Revy who runs it I'm definitely interested in the ranked choice voting reform among others I've had a bunch of the people who are running advocacy groups in that space on he's one of them and kind of became friendly I think that it's kind of both surprising that it's gotten as far as it has and also feels like it may have lost the momentum of Lee it's it didn't well because it was so local it was very disciplined right I was incredible impressed with how how it ran what are the barriers that ran into last year was because a whole lot of kind of outside money came in and saw that momentum and we were like let's just run like state ballot measures and get big wins and it was impatient he didn't do the necessary work and they lost a lot of them lost like too soon or not not good enough both actually yeah and they weren't connected to the the really to the efforts that fair vote and ranked the vote and other ones should be known for long time we're doing they were just kind of like big money campaigns that has done some damage to the movement like those losses but what it has done is it's forced the whole space to like really do two things one is refocus on the local you know get greedy the second is that to really think okay well are we just one particular reform or are we part of something larger and the movement is now thinking okay well we're part of this larger civic ecosystem we're on that advocacy end of the spectrum but yes so I've noticed there's a lot more interesting the ranked choice movement for example in participatory dialogues if a town does a participatory dialogue it says yeah we we love ranked choice voting let's say yeah okay let's come in healthy do a ballot measure if it says no we don't like it then that's okay we accept that so I think it makes more given how many small towns there are right yes you ramped in the district of Colombia in ranked choice voting I was I was involved in the leadership of the DC campaign for a period of time yeah especially during the the early parts of the campaign I left the campaign I'm more point to to pursue other things but still very close with the campaign they went on to win and you know through their efforts they got the count like the council was kind of resistant to funding it as well but they got the council over the land through a lot of pressure so DC will have ranked choice voting which is which is excellent yeah what was next for you oh yeah yeah so that's I told you earlier that I who's in the for like doing coalitions work for ranked the vote right discovered the broader civic health movement like all the rotary is and the brave arrangeals and at the time I was just looking for non-partisan grassroots allies because it is a non-partisan reform and so on so well okay who who is on the ground and who could support it and who's broadly values aligned as well because a lot of the language you know ranked choice voting we do talk about depolarization right as and that is a consequence of a ranked choice system actually going back to your earlier question that is a major difference from Australia in the US is that is ranked choice voting does tone down the temperature and people do feel more represented so I was looking for who else out there is using that kind of language and and that's how I discovered all these groups I became obsessed with this idea of stitching all of these groups together into a movement and the thinking was it's not just because the US is going through this sort of civic health crisis that's clearly part of it but there's something deeper going on I'm thinking is that like what's happened is that the entire political compass has shifted dramatically since Brexit right like like we're no longer in the sort of that four quadrant diagram that that kind of defines a political compass globalization happened right and that now the two poles of politics everywhere in the world are a kind of liberal individualism on the one hand that's vaguely global in orientation and now there's exact opposite of that which is a conservative authoritarianism which is anti-global so it's almost like a z axis got added to that political compass right now what does that mean means I know where which side I'm on in that fight well there's no one to it we think that they what fueled the conservative authoritarian was the desire for groupness if individualism like nationalism well yeah I mean that's an example of it right but that's not there if individualism has been kind of atomizing society in in every respect whether it be nations or ethnicities or unions right or any kind of group it's saying any group is the enemy right you alone exist in the world that is the message of American liberalism that's all we hear we heard I thought I heard from America growing up it's about you as an individual right and so this kind of atomization I think is and exported to the planet is created a desire for the like the Newtonian response which is what's the the the quickest way you can form a group right and then have someone quote unquote strong enough to defend that group what's it the quickest group you can latch onto those of race those of nationality those of gender right and who's going to enforce that some sort of authoritarian figure that's why it's popped up all around the world all around the same time it's a Newtonian response type of it's funny because the left is typically associated less with individualism and more with collectivism because there was a sort of a useful coalition you know it's difficult to say where that's at now but you know if you want to get philosophical you can call it like a materialist coalition you know but there's a liberals and leftists were have been on and off allies opponents for some time now certainly since I've come to the US what we see now though between these these two poles right it's created an opportunity right is that how do you meet this kind of desire for groupness in a way that is respectful of individuality that is respectful of people and he's flat it is collaborative and the answer we believe is community it's flat local collaborative community right and so that I think is the new space for a new global center to form in light of this new paradigm is a communitarian center where people kind of political expression and identity expression comes through their locality right and those but how do you project power on top of that is that these are modes in a much larger network of community so that's kind of the vision that we're heading towards and so when I talk about stitching civic groups together that's kind of the direction that that's headed in there are a variety of folks that were around that had also the idea of aligning say democracy related groups or civics related groups funders operatives of various sorts what did you see missing exactly in that place because yeah you're right there are numerous groups most of which are very very small and then a number which are big what opportunity did you see to get people aligned working together forming hubs all the stuff that you're talking about certainly the urgency of the moment like every day it it it passes and people don't feel like there's a way out there's like an unhealthy body politic correct I mean that's not the only part of it but I think also framing it in the manner that I just did saying look this is actually not a stab in the dark this is part of the the new trend the paradigm has shifted and I think that was that's part of the big struggle is that the paradigm has shifted and we had it we were still thinking this sort of 20th century box and what I'm assuming what's going on the world is this chaos and say actually no it's a very clear pattern going on and we have to be responsive to that pattern so I think people seem to be taking a lot of hope from that say okay there's an order in this chaos right does that overlay in any like the schisms the polarization is so fierce right now and a large number of people can only see through that lens so how does the remedy of civic hubs pull people out of that mindset successfully sure sure so it's about creating space to form new identities post polarized identities so I'll take me for example like I've clearly had a partisan past I've worked very much on the progressive side of politics I am now very active in brave angels which is a space which works really really hard to create a postpartosans like a a bipartisan or I'm space and I've had my views and they create space for people to share their views and so I hear views that I never hear in my circles that create a space for that to happen and I've been able to just calmly hear and listen and digest and challenge my interviews my views have grown I have grown into a different evolving as you correct yeah I mean I've when I've talked to some people who are looking for a post-Trump world like I talked to someone from the libertarian right recently who felt that the solution was in a return to old-style liberalism like individual rights that are getting trampled right now or in this person's view that's where she wants to hold the line and that's where she sees a post-Trumpian future what would you say to someone who's looking for a solution there I'd say that's part of the answer right but the philosophy of this kind of communitarian movement is still being developed right now right there is a collective as bent to it it has sort of anarchistic strains I guess I could say that like being focused on deliberative democracy that is not individualistic right but at the same time these are spaces that are voluntary right these are spaces that people are opting into and if they don't like they can opt out of and we would encourage them to do so there's a very big episode of flatness and but at the same time the relationship between individuals is a vital part so what was I thinking of community as a political entity and as a social entity is extremely different from just thinking of the world as there's no such thing as society just just collections of individuals right you start to think of the emotional temperature right you start to think about processes for facilitating communication you think about ways to like almost bring up the collective unconscious of the community into a shared identity to surface tensions things like that so there's a whole series of things that a communitarian would look at that an individualist wouldn't look at and yet I would strongly welcome individuals into our community that want into our field but know that encourage them to challenge and evolve their perspectives as well I find there's something quite appealing about this notion of local civic like go back to before bowling alone sort of stuff right right right but there's something in me at the same time that feels like the power that's driving us to the authoritarian right is housed in a political party that needs to be defeated and the coalition of opposition to that party is hard to imagine without the vehicle of an opposing party especially in a in the kind of electoral system that we have here so how do you like overlay or weave in what you're doing into what the reality is which is a lot of contention between very opposed forces yeah so when we clear what the work I'm doing is definitely medium to long-term work this is not a something that's going to solve like authoritarianism overnight you know and and those who are pushing back against those forces defer to their full leadership in fact there's a model big week so want to make it clear that even though I'm saying it is a new center right it is still a firmly anti-authoritarian space it isn't necessarily a progressive or liberal space right in fact we've got some people very conservative viewpoints in there but it is anti-authoritarian because you can't even have a dialogue if someone it shows up a dialogue with a gun the power like there's a model we talk about bridge block build belong right so bridging across divisions belonging to create community build to build structures like participatory structures and blocking so blocking is like a block authoritarianism right so that is part of this larger movement I think said all that it's that think of what we're doing building as the movement arm right eventually is going to need a political arm right it's just it's not we're not there yet and the structures that to develop the political arm are complex right because we're talking about building these deep nodes and then connecting them across these nodes in like larger participatory dialogue which some of which have already started right right is running this big national dialogue and immigration eventually you're going to get a set of policy positions out of this right so we are creating the basis for political power here so eventually if a party is the right way to manifest that then so be it right but it's it's too early in this movements history to talk about a party right and do we if it's an existing party so be it if it's something you also so be it if it had to correspond with a political force in this country right now it would be the largest political block of all which is independence at 45% are you talking about better together america when you're talking about this so better together america is not a political organization at all and it never will be it's very involved in the movement beside of this better together america is an organization to stitch communities together that want to engage in participatory dialogues that want to do community building and we have very conservative communities got very liberal communities we have communities that don't identify politically the the most incoming is that they just want to sort of bridge divides us really that's the main thing we are better together america's role is to stitch like we're stitching these nodes together on the assumption that our past assumptions are civic organizations are a logical starting point because there's so many of them this and and they're everywhere and they're the right kind of values they think about democracy they think about processes so they have been our starting point moving forward with thinking more broadly like so we're talking to arts organizations and and they're very excited about what about this so there because I was at an arts conference last week and they were like arts as local civic infrastructure like that was the whole theme of the conference right so so another another way to frame this maybe is we're trying to stitch civic infrastructure together from existing pieces right should that give rise to political activity beyond that is up to the communities themselves and I think that's inevitable but it is up to the communities themselves so what are the other main hats that you're wearing right now sure sure so obviously it's better together america but brave rangers and they're your co-chair of this network yeah yeah so brave rangers has historically been so they've got 115 local chapters in you know around the country they're also very much moving in this civic hub direction how can we build civic infrastructure they have an organizations arm we've got a good name we have a lot of organizations who want to participate how do they do that we're not really set up so they set up the brave network a couple of years ago to be the organization's arm so a lot of where that's headed as we figure it out is how do we activate organizations in that local civic infrastructure let's say it's a bank big national bank that supports depolarization of bridging they're like okay you've got members you've got staff and branches everywhere how is that activated in the local hub it might be using your comparative skill set maybe one of a donate or maybe you want to partner with a local hub to run a new man together or maybe you want to strengthen that you'll use your megaphone to talk about the importance of civic infrastructure on your social media or public do you think if there was another attempt to steal an election that those people could be mobilized to be on the streets in a time of travails i think yes there's a different pathway right i think that we're like stitching people to go on necessarily political i mean never get political but but some crisis might require unpolitical people to stand up for the country what we're trying to is pull them into is pull people into networks right so people don't feel alone like them they know one biggest blockers of people doing anything is if i can't do anything right i'm alone so pulling people into feelings of power but also civic values right and democracy is a civic value so someone tried to say oh we're not gonna have an election then yeah i think those spaces would get activated right again to be clear be up to that locality right we don't make decisions we know in positions but we're creating space for them to make those kinds of decisions you're also center for collaborative democracy yeah so i do it's the grand bargain project is their main thing that they do and what they're doing is they're working on a different part of this movement so they're working more from a policy angle there's seven issue areas where polling is indicated most Americans want progress on what they've done is is through kind of consultation with other think tanks and groups like begun to craft a a legislative package right and so they are working at the DC level but now as that's all urban correct yeah yeah okay so i did talk to him about that i wasn't sure if there's more than one grand bargain out there but you know it's it's it's that yes the grandest yeah the grandest of targets yes so a lot of it and one of the work we're doing is like how as this whole movement comes together how can we bring policy actors together how can we develop relationships with like-minded politicians both currently in office and looking to get into office and how can we connect this policy work with the grassroots as the grassroots starts to come together what else would you want people to know about what you're currently doing and what the challenges are and what the opportunities are yeah yeah i'd say that it's got tremendous momentum right because right now i think that the powerlessness that people feel is because it doesn't seem to be a pathway it's like part of the chip itself is the obstacle perhaps we're moving towards a point a moment of crisis where enough people could come together like statistically look like 86 percent of people oppose an invasion of Greenland which should be a higher number but anyway but that's the closest I've seen to a unified position in the country right so yeah until he takes Greenland and suddenly it's 50/50 but whatever right well yeah i can't speak to that that the obstacle seems to be part of the chip right i'm saying well why isn't Congress doing things because they're strongly believe other than you know and the other side so the way out it's because you know like oh we're not going to take you seriously because you believe these things and i think if we got a democratic administration next you'd probably see the same thing in reverse right like in terms of like we're just not going to listen to you right and because the conditions are such that that so what we need is the only way out and we'd get what i think we're what are you expecting is to swing back and forth back and forth back and forth one extreme and another the only way out is to form a new set of a new political identity right and to create the structures that back it and enough people have seen that and enough people are willing to open their minds that this space is tremendous momentum right so i would encourage you if people are looking for a way past this then is to help yeah come get involved in a civic heart help set it up that's the best way to do that yeah it's just to reach out to uh so i can better together america.org or you can reach out to me personally um and i'll get a touch it's vinae v-i-n-a-y at better together america.org can talk you through what it might look like and we will start connecting with other non-partisan actors in your area right so whether it be civic organizations or arts organizations or things like that or groups that you know that you think would be good in this like we're not restricting it to types of actors right we can we can help you get that set up or if there's an existing hub in your area to connect you to them if some of your audience moves that people will involve more to national level or or state level the movement is starting to come together more clearly there as well so big focus this year in the movement is state level structures so i'm just we're seeing the emergence of stay round tables in this field and for many organizations that's a more logical place especially advocacy groups the more logical place to interact with the movement than than the local and even national structures are beginning to come together more and more co here only in the space too so it is a despite the organizations being some of me very old like rotary the movement itself is very young the levels of organization are just starting together they're happening but there's so much momentum so many groups and resources starting to pile in and looking for a way in from all across the space that we're now at that point for you how do we catch all this energy so so now's the time and i think we can build something pretty exciting and transformative to come out of that there won't just be a way out of this crisis of today but something that with our vision is permanent civic infrastructure that will never die right like we that's what we need otherwise we'll just lag back here you know anything run the way going through your whole career path more or less in your trajectory and landing here makes me wonder what next for you have you landed on the thing that you work on for the rest of your life or are you a guy who's going to have 15 more startups in front of you where do you want to take yourself yeah so i think i have landed at on the thing right and the reason is that where the rest of this project goes is beyond a lifetime's work i spoke about those new polls of politics they're global in nature right so the answer is a global communitarian movement it is a global mycelial network of local nodes it is global civic infrastructure that you know if you think of the two polls the politics are organized internationally right liberal institution was one for a long time right had control of most international institution and control of many kind of just the ways of thinking in government and the far right around the world are very organized right they run these conferences they're speakers around the world i mean doing this for a long time they cover each other yeah and i look at our space it's like we're not we don't have anything like this right so we need that level of organization are are you finding philanthropy heading your way to yes yes yes so it's because clearly there's a lot of panic around everything and so we offer a pretty attractive way out of it because we're not right right now let's say if you're this is risky right now oh yeah because there's the the the minefields of opposing an authoritarian anywhere are real right right it's hard to argue with i'm creating civic hubs to get civic minded folks together correct you know you see businesses taking a political side and getting cancelled by like two thoughts of the country right like that so a lot of businesses just are scared to do anything but i think that this field this communitarian field offers a way forward that is safe for them and we've heard that directly the philanthropy is same thing but it also targets some very deep issues we're not just targeting political divides we're talking targeting like isolation we're speaking bowling alone type language and at the same time looking for a way to project power politically from that i think it's pretty attractive what what is being pulled together so what i want to do is and it isn't not just want to do it's already begun is start pulling this together internationally right how do networks of localities in Hong Kong connect to networks in Iowa connect to like you know like how do we how do we have just great ideas shared through a lateral network of local communities well one is identity two is relationships and three is technology those things are being developed as well and you know globally what i'm starting to see is a whole lot of interesting characters starting to you know obviously democracy groups right like you know in Taiwan and Hong Kong they're they're quite prominent like Taiwan in particular is a leader in this in this field like especially on deliberative democracy but also democracy groups in in other countries they they clearly part of it but even environmental and bio regional groups like they have a very similar vision of like how do we build a big lateral network of communities are on the world that are sustainable so we're in talks with groups like that so just figure out who all the actors are and start to stitch this movement together is i think what i'm going to be spending the rest of my life doing i'm assuming that it's beyond the last word but it happens quickly now i have to find another project well it's fun to talk to you about it today i'm i wish you luck anything else you want to say no i think this has been a great discussion thanks for having me oh thanks for taking the time that was vene or a condi he is at better together america dot org this is Nathaniel g perlman with the great battlefield podcast you can find us at great battlefield.com or by searching for great battlefield in places where podcasts are found the great battlefield is now part of the democracy group podcast network visit democracygroup.org to learn more about other podcasts that cover democracy and civic engagement you can also help me by leaving comments and good ratings on apple podcasts or elsewhere and by sending me suggestions for great guests to [email protected]