On the main stage, we launch our first recurring segment—Schemas That Could Save the World—with Deborah Frieze, co-conceptualizer of “The Two Loops Model,” a tremendously useful map of how promising emergent systems can replace failing dominant systems. Tune in to learn how an ecosystem of roles—from Hospice Workers and Protectors on the inside to Trailblazers and Illuminators on the outside—are needed to transform any system.

In the sideshow, we enter the Realm of the Strange to meet Joshua Lengfelder, co-founder of Randonautica, a mysterious smartphone app that invites you to visit a randomized, real-world location…and see what you find. Tune in to learn about the origins of the intriguing Fatum Project, the promise of Noveltism, the latest verdict on Mind-Matter Interaction, and the announcement of Josh’s spiritual sequel to Randonautica: Chronomancy.

Timecodes:

• 00:00:55 Introducing Schemas That Could Save the World and The Two Loops Model

• 00:06:20 Interview with Deborah Frieze of The Two Loops Model

• 00:54:21 Entering The Realm of the Strange and introducing Randonautica

• 01:00:15 Interview with Joshua Lengfelder of Randonautica

Further reading:

• Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley’s book Walk Out Walk On

• Deborah’s TED talk about The Two Loops Model

• The Berkana Institute’s website

• Randonautica’s website

• The Fatum Project’s Theory page, explaining Noveltism, Blind Spots, The Despair Meme, and more

• Josh’s latest project: Chronomancy, or “Randonauting for Time”

• Daytime Revolution — a recent documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s brief takeover of The Mike Douglas Show

• Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

Subscribe to FESTIVAL on:

• YouTube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• RSS (can be used with most podcast players)

• Substack (If you are already subscribed to my main Substack, you are all set—episodes flow through here.)

And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out FESTIVAL’s trailer, which includes our wonderful theme song—“Last Dance at the Grove” by the great Boston band Noble Dust:

“The Festivals are all for rejoicing and pleasurable gatherings, which in most cases are indispensable for man; they are also useful in the establishment of friendship, which must exist among people living in political societies.” —Maimonides

The rain has stopped. The afternoon sun slants through the pine trees: and how those useless needles smell in the clear air! A dandelion, long out of season, has pushed itself into bloom between the smashed leaves of last summer’s day lilies. The valley resounds with the totally uninformative talk of creeks and wild water. Then the quails begin their sweet whistling in the wet bushes. Their noise is absolutely useless, and so is the delight I take in it. There is nothing I would rather hear, not because it is a better noise than other noises, but because it is the voice of the present moment, the present festival. —Thomas Merton

To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole. —Josef Pieper

Next week, I’m launching a new podcast. It’s called FESTIVAL.

The idea is to have almost everything that a festival has, except in podcast form:

• A main stage where we talk about what everyone’s talking about that month

• Ample sideshows where we enter the realm of the strange and particular

• And everything in-between—interviews, spotlights, investigations, experiments, reflections

These are dark times in our country—and we need to get to work turning things around. But that is exactly why we need to start with festivity, because celebration is the soil for everything new and good.

We have great friends, old and new, lined up to come join us each episode. And I want this to be a shared festival, where we are in conversation with viewers and listeners—so please reach out with ideas and suggestions.

To follow along, subscribe on:

• YouTube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• RSS (can be used with most podcast players)

• Substack (If you are already subscribed to my main Substack, you are all set — episodes flow through here.)

See you next week. For now, check out FESTIVAL’s trailer, which includes our wonderful theme song—“Last Dance at the Grove” by the great Boston band Noble Dust:

“God is the God of Law, but he is also the God of surprises,” Pope Francis preached in 2014. “God is always new."

Francis himself was one of God’s great surprises.

He was the public figure who has, more than any other, shaped my sense of the world and of the work that needs to be done.

Twelve years ago, I was 23 and civically disappointed, bitterly coming to terms with the false promises of modern American politics and technology. None of the shiny paths forward that had been sold to our generation felt like they were heading anywhere good.

Then, out of nowhere, a surprise!

A world leader emerged who would illuminate a new path — one that led past our day’s deadened binaries toward a credible, living counterculture.

Nothing about Francis was as you would have expected. The young firebrand was 76 years old. The Bishop of Rome was a Jesuit from Latin America. He took as his name the patron saint of the poor and of ecology — and he worked to live up to his namesake from the get-go.

His vision for the church was neither progressive nor traditional — it was not primarily about ideology or even theology at all. (“We do not serve ideas, we serve people,” he would admonish ideologues.) Rather, his vision was about the structure of the church: Closeness, proximity was the goal. The work was to remove anything that stood in the way of the church being close to the people.

His messages were full of concrete images making his point: He wanted “four-wheel drive bishops” who would go out to all terrains in all weather. He wanted the church to be a “field hospital after battle” — a place where wounds are healed and hearts are warmed (rather than a place where the wounded were interrogated over “if they have high cholesterol”). Faith was not to be explained as “a light which scatters all our darkness” but as “a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey” — for God is not primarily a provider of arguments, but an “accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touches every story of suffering and opens up a ray of light.”

Francis’ papacy would rejuvenate that great Catholic word: Mercy. It was at the center of Francis’ vision for the church. What did it mean? Francis’ fellow Jesuit James F. Keenan has a lovely definition: Mercy is “a willingness to enter into the chaos of another.” It’s what God does for us (by accompanying us in our messy lives) and it’s what the church needs to do to fulfill its mission—by going out to the peripheries; by working in the streets; by being among, not above, the people.

And it’s what we are each called to do, as well. We were reminded by Francis in countless ways that callousness — a lack of mercy — is the great sin of modern life.

I have learned from Francis that when we become callous to others, we become callous to the God of surprises. The world slowly deadens as we become more insular, distant, and abstract. When we open the doors, when we go out to the edges, when we get up close to the concrete, particulars of world — that’s when it all comes alive again! That’s where the God of surprises is waiting for us — not in perfect plans and predictions, but in the strange and wonderful adventure that is relationship with any given person.

I used to believe that prophecy was about seeing some divine blueprint — some obscured, but static thing out there. But the more you study the prophets, the more you see that they were simply people who had chipped away at their callousness so as to deepen their relationship — a particular, embodied, dynamic relationship — with the divine. Francis understood this so well. The absolute is not “something detached, something lacking any relationship,” he wrote to an inquiring non-believer in 2013. “The truth is a relationship!”

And the foundation of any living relationship is a willingness to be surprised. If you already think you know the score about someone, you can’t have a living relationship with them. You see them as an algorithm — you leave no space for a connection to grow. The same goes for our relationship with history, or even existence: If we already think we know the score about how the world works, or how the future will unfold, we can’t have a relationship with life itself.

But Francis relentlessly preached, in words and deeds and reforms, that we can’t know the score in this way, for the God of surprises is always waiting there for us, here to help untie the tangled knots of our histories, both personal and collective. What a joy — what have we done to deserve this? O Mercy!

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

When our politics reaches a dead end, we need to quiet ourselves, so we can hear where we need to go. If we don’t, we will react to moments like this by just amplifying the same instincts and habits that led us astray in the first place.

In the quiet, we can avail ourselves to the prophetic—to the voices out in the world and within ourselves that are more honest, to the richer visions that Roosevelt spoke of in his First Inaugural when he quoted Proverbs: “When there is no vision, the people perish.”

Such prophetic visions arise and are realized through the main medium of politics: communal life. It’s through association—through friendship—that the work is done.

So if you’re looking for next steps, I suspect that the national rejuvenation we seek begins with cultivating vision and community—a dance of dreaming and joining together.

But first, silence—so we can listen for what is calling to us. As Joe Pug sings: “If you shut up with what you’ve chosen, you’ll hear something choosing you.”

This process is of course not without pain. Eliot continues:

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

The best advice I’ve ever received: “Remember, life has many chapters.” It’s true on a personal and a collective level. The 1932 election, which launched the transformational New Deal coalition, came right after the 1928 election, when that same party lost 444 electoral votes to 87. Eight years after the Dred Scott decision, slavery was abolished in America. In 2008, Californians voted for Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. Seven years later, a Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice wrote the opinion that legalized marriage equality across the country. Life has many chapters.

My favorite image for how change tends to happen comes from Father Józef Tischner, the first chaplain of the Solidarity Movement in Poland. (Many thanks to the great Elias Crim, who first introduced me to his work.) Tischner liked to compare transformation to reforestation. “Someone plants a tree—one, a second, a third, many trees…[and] from those trees grows a forest.” The change doesn’t always look like a grand battle—often it looks like people joining up with one another, starting to embody a new way of being together, growing in numbers and in depth of feeling… and eventually finding that “the reality of the forest cannot be disregarded” by the powers that be. A forest fights its enemies, Tischner says, by “growing and becoming an even larger forest,” just as “solidarity of conscience fights its opponents by becoming more of a conscience and more of a solidarity.”

We live in a civic desert. Much of our social trust and the entities that once cultivated it have slowly died off over the past decades—and we are left with an often barren, inhospitable public life. And, for good and for ill, the politicians who speak to living in the civic desert are resonating more than the ones who speak as if we still live in last century’s civic forest. In the short term, we need to do better at speaking to life in the desert. But in the long term, we desperately need a reforestation project.

In his poem, “February 2, 1968,” the great farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry put well this feeling and this call:

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,

war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,

I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

☘️

For the past seven years, my sister Rebecca Davis and I have been working on a film — Join or Die — about community in America, the social isolation crisis, and Robert Putnam’s legendary Bowling Alone research. To learn more, our website is here and our trailer is below:

After premiering at SXSW last year, we launched our 2024 Join Up! Tour, in which we invited any community organization, congregation, campus, conference, or company to use the film as a tool to bring people together to talk about civic rejuvenation. So far, over 2500 groups (and counting!) have requested a screening—and hundreds of screening events have already been hosted. 

We were excited to screen the film at big, national institutions—from Congress and the Carnegie Library to dozens of film festivals and university campuses—but we have been even more excited to see the film shown by small, neighborhood groups across the country. Watching hundreds of community screening events pop up at public libraries, synagogues, Rotary clubs, Odd Fellows lodges, church basements, community theaters, co-working spaces, and crowded living rooms packed tight with neighbors has been the highlight of our film’s journey.

And this is just the beginning! The 2024 election is going to stress America’s social fabric, likely intensifying various civic ills: polarization, screen addiction, institutional alienation, social distrust, and distraction from local community problem-solving. That is why we are continuing our Join Up! Tour into 2025, so that Join or Die can continue to provide urgent, critical counter-programming: a message that the fate of our democracy depends on our civic engagement with our neighbors and local communities. 

This week, I wanted to pass along 3 ways you can see the film and help spread its civic message:

1. See Join or Die in theaters or at a public community screening. Join or Die is still screening in theaters across the country, as well as at dozens of public community screening events. Visit JoinOrDieFilm.com/#see to find out if Join or Die is showing near you.

2. If no screenings are happening nearby, you can now — for the next 30 days — see Join or Die at home through Theatrical Video on Demand. Our hope remains that, in the spirit of the film’s message, most viewers find a way to see the film together, in community. However, we have decided to create this one-month window for home rentals for two reasons: First, so more people interested in hosting community screening events can see the film for the first time as they consider and plan their event; and second, so we can continue our Join Up! Tour into next year (proceeds from home rentals will go towards us continuing the film’s community tour into 2025). We have partnered with the platform Gathr for this release and you can head over to Rent.JoinOrDieFilm.com to rent and watch today!

3. Most importantly, we hope you will consider hosting a community screening. We see Join or Die as a community organizing tool—and have been delighted by how local leaders around the country have used it to catalyze conversations about rejuvenating civic life in their institutions and communities. Whether you have already hosted a screening and want to host another one, reached out to us about hosting a screening but have not yet scheduled it, or are just thinking about hosting a screening for the first time, now is a great time to get in touch! To get the process started, fill out the form at JoinOrDieFilm.com/#host or email DelevanStreetFilms@gmail.com. 

Thank you for all your encouragement, support, and partnership over the past years as we have worked to get this story and message out into the world.  

Pete

P.S. Feel free to forward along this email to your community and share our announcement posts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

For the past six years, my sister Rebecca Davis and I have been hard at work making JOIN OR DIE, a feature documentary about community in America, the loneliness epidemic, and Robert Putnam's famed "Bowling Alone" research. After a long journey filming Putnam over many years, sifting through amazing archive photos and videos of the history of American civic life (shout out to the Library of Congress!), following six new and inspiring community groups, and interviewing a dozen of Bob’s friends, fans, and interlocutors, we finally premiered the film at SXSW in March.

Here’s a trailer and summary below:

JOIN OR DIE is a film about why you should join a club — and why the fate of America depends on it. In this feature documentary, follow the half-century story of America's civic unraveling through the journey of legendary Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam, whose groundbreaking "Bowling Alone" research into America's decades-long decline in community connections could hold the answers to our democracy's present crisis. Flanked by influential fans and scholars — from Hillary Clinton, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to Eddie Glaude Jr., Raj Chetty, and Priya Parker — as well as inspiring groups building community in neighborhoods across the country, join Bob as he explores three urgent civic questions: What makes democracy work? Why is American democracy in crisis? And, most importantly…What can we do about it?

Henry David Thoreau once said: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” It is important to tell stories about the various “branches of evil,” but with this film, we felt called to bring attention one of the major roots of our public problems: social disconnection. As the unraveling of our social fabric has accelerated in the COVID era, we are all searching for fundamental explanations of our civic decline: Why don’t our politics or government work? Why can’t we see eye-to-eye with our neighbors? What accounts for the gap between the empowered few and the disempowered many?

The answers to these questions are complex—and no single scholar can definitively answer any of them. But Putnam has made great strides at clarifying our understanding of the roots of our civic unraveling. Even better, he is a master at translating his trailblazing social science research into engaging stories. For decades, he has explained to rapt audiences around the country—from VFW halls to the Oval Office—his illuminating findings, but the entirety of his work has never been featured in a documentary film with the potential to reach a wider audience.

With Join or Die, we aim to introduce Putnam’s research on the importance of community to democracy and the decline in American community engagement over the past decades to more Americans—and especially to young Americans who were not alive to experience Bowling Alone going viral decades ago.

To bring Putnam’s message up to date, we have paired his story with figures from various sectors—from politics and economics to public health and urban design—that have been influenced by his ideas. And to bring Putnam’s data down to earth, we have weaved throughout the film historic home videos and contemporary community profiles featuring the types of civic organizations that Putnam has found to be foundational to a healthy democracy. Together, we hope that they not only help promote the public understanding of an important field in social science—but that they also shed light on what Americans across the country can do with this newfound understanding.

With the death knell of our national unity tolling from every corner of our public life, we hope that revisiting Putnam’s groundbreaking civic findings—and spotlighting the creative local groups acting in the spirit of them—can serve to inspire viewers to do what needs to be done to save our democracy: Join up!

Bring Join or Die to your community

After our premiere in March, Join or Die has been on a large film festival and community screening tour all year, zigzagging America from Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Seattle to Tallahassee, Harvard, and Arizona, and more—plus screening for dozens of neighborhood civic groups, congregations, and campuses across the country along the way.

We would love to bring Join or Die to your city, campus, organization, or community group. If you’re interested, fill out this form and we’ll be in touch to work out details:

Host.JoinOrDie.film

DC Premiere Week

If you are in the DC area, I am excited to share that on Thursday, November 2nd at Georgetown and on Friday, November 3rd at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema DC, we will be having our DC Premiere Week. If you or any other DC area friends are interested, would love to see you at one of our screenings! Robert Putnam and we will be around after both screenings for a discussion and Q&A. If interested, space is limited, so get your tickets soon:

Thursday, November 2nd at 4PM — Premiere at Georgetown

• Schedule:

  • 4PM-6 PM — Screening at Gaston Hall in Georgetown University's Healy Hall

  • 6PM-7 PM — Reception in Healy Hall's Rigg's Library

  • 7PM - 8:15 PM —Dialogue with Robert Putnam, Rebecca Davis, Pete Davis, and others on "Isolation or Community? Solidarity in America" in Healy Hall's Gaston Hall

• Sponsored by Georgetown's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life — more information here

• RSVP here: https://forms.gle/89N3BbbrhrJsZ7uw5

Friday, November 3rd at 7PM — Screening at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema DC

• Screening at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema DC on 630 Rhode Island Avenue NE in Washington, DC

• Schedule:

  • 6:30 PM — Doors open

  • 7 PM — Screening begins

  • 8:45 PM — Q&A with Robert Putnam, Rebecca Davis, and Pete Davis starts immediately following the screening

• Sponsored by The Aspen Institute Philosophy & Society Program — more information here

• Get your tickets here: Aspen.JoinOrDie.film

Hope to see you at a screening! 

Pete

P.S. We were so honored to interview the heroic labor organizer and theorist Jane McAlevey for the film. This week, she was just featured in a New Yorker profile that is well worth checking out: How Jane McAlevey Transformed the Labor Movement

Early Reviews of JOIN OR DIE

"The seeming irreparable divisions in our country have been a hot topic of this year’s SXSW entries, but one documentary is preoccupied with finding solutions." Austin Monthly, The Films We Loved Most at SXSW 

"The film, like Putnam’s work, is engrossing and, ultimately, convincing. It’s hard to watch without feeling the personal impact of Putnam’s ideas in your own life – the social disconnection, the apathy, the cynicism – and as the credits roll you might just find yourself wanting to join a bowling league." Archer Parquette, Milwaukee Magazine

"Join or Die, a documentary, did justice to the incredulity of its premise, treating the concept of social capital and the power of joining groups with a necessary seriousness, but keeping the tone approachable.” Culture Map Austin, Our 12 favorite films, parties, and moments from SXSW 2023 

"Join or Die made me feel more motivated to do something than perhaps any movie I've ever seen." Ryan Scott, Slash Film (Full review here)

"Most inspiring movie I've seen so far at SXSW…I want to join all the clubs now" Dan Gentile, SFGATE

"Striking Visual Bombshell About Decline of Membership Clubs Delivers Wake-Up Call” David McDonald, FilmBook

"Join or Die proves itself vital and relevant, a necessary documentary that promises the conversation will continue long after the credits have rolled." Stephanie Archer, Film Inquiry 

"[Putnam's] an affable, sensitive person and a wonderful camera subject who never seems calculated, withholding, or insincere." Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com

"[A] sense of humor, bolstered by a plucky voiceover, cute animations, and clever editing quick with a punch line, is all over Join or Die." Brianna Caleria, CultureMap Austin

"A resonant tale of how community...benefits individuals and our democracy at large. Nicely told...balanced by an affable tone." Jon Partridge, Cinapse News 

"So interesting and engaging. Highly recommend." Rachel's Reviews 

"Join or Die makes a compelling argument and does so with style…Davis & Davis...establish themselves as an upbeat documentary duo that can communicate important, complex ideas in easy-to-digest packaging." Alan French, Sunshine State Cineplex

"Join or Die places a magnifying glass on a simple, yet surprisingly crucial topic: clubs...This one is not to be missed!" Josh Batchelder, Josh at the Movies

TO: The Democratic Party of Virginia

FROM: Pete Davis (contact@PeteDavis.org)

DATE: December 11, 2021

RE: Transforming DPVA into a participatory membership party

I. From membership to management

As political scientist Theda Skocpol has written in her illuminating book Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, much of civic life in the early twentieth century was based in mass membership organizations—religious congregations, unions, fraternal organizations (like Elks, Kiwanis, Rotary, Jack & Jill, etc.), and political groups (the NAACP, the Sierra Club, the political parties, etc.). These organizations had local chapters (or congregations or union locals) that hosted in-person meetings, managed an annual calendar of real-world events, and worked to be an integral part of the town where they were based. These chapters would federate into state and national conventions and committees. Pairing centralized coordination with deep local participation, this structure allowed local ideas to be transferred to national venues and, in turn, efficiently spread back out to local chapters across the country.

But, as Skocpol points out, American civic life started transforming in the middle of the twentieth century. Mass communication became easier—and civic leaders became enamored with direct-mail fundraising campaigns. As federal politics became more complicated, a class of expert activists who knew the ins and outs of lobbying politicians and mobilizing supporters started growing in Washington and state capitals. National groups started hiring “donor management” and “member relationship” professionals to get the most dollars, votes, and petition signatures out of ordinary people. Eventually, national and state leaders started wondering why they were bothering with all the local pageantry and community-building in the first place. Soon enough, “membership” no longer meant meeting up in local chapters all across the country. It now meant sending checks to expert activists in centers of power in exchange for a bumper sticker, an annual report, and the occasional call to action to do a day of door-knocking or send off a form letter to some elected official.

This transition—from membership to management—shifted civic life. Social groups like post-college fraternities and sororities mostly died off. Groups with an agenda had their local chapters turned into mailing lists. Unions were pacified and demobilized. Religious groups focused more on private piety and less on their role in broader civic life. And political parties that were once-vibrant pillars of local culture became out-of-touch centralized operations that mobilize from afar.

The consequence of this “civic concentration” is the same as its corporate counterpart: More people feel less ownership over public life. A model where everyone volunteers with, participates in, and lends their ideas to a city’s public health system, for example, is one where thousands of people have a relationship with and stake in the success of that system. But when that same health system is managed by an insulated team of experts who only talk with the professional lobbyists from various advocacy nonprofits and corporations, only a dozen or so people take responsibility for its success. You might feel a relationship with your neighborhood if you feel like you co-own it. But if you start to feel like your neighborhood is becoming an administrative unit at the intersection of various indiscriminate flows of action between opaque energy, transportation, housing, and police departments, you won’t be in a relationship with it for much longer.

Martin Luther King Jr. described this as a system that “leaves the person outside”: “the sense of participation is lost, the feeling that ordinary individuals influence important decisions vanishes, and we become separated and diminished.” The political scientist Donald Kettl describes it as viewing the public sphere as a “vending machine”: You put in your votes and tax dollars, and out comes public services. There’s no participation, no interconnectivity, no relationship—and no commitment necessary. A vending machine is also an apt metaphor for the type of control that the system sometimes does give you: You can’t be an owner, but you can be a chooser. You may be separated from the workings of the system by heavy glass, prevented from truly participating in its design, but as a consolation, you can choose among options. As philosopher Michael Sandel writes, our conception of freedom changed from having a “capacity as citizens to shape the forces that govern our collective density” to having a capacity as individuals to choose what we want among a menu of options offered to us by anonymous and inaccessible bureaucracies.

With this shift in public life came a shift in our practice of civic commitment. When public life is something we approach as an active participant—as a co-owner—we experience it as a series of committed relationships: to systems, processes, projects, places, and neighbors. When those shared enterprises struggle in the short term, your relationships keep you loyal over the long term—and even transform your original conceptions of your personal interests and ideals. But when we approach public life passively, as an exercise in selecting among options, we never form those relationships at all. There’s no sense of loyalty to carry us through challenges. When a system fails to meet or understand our interests and ideals, we become angry, alienated, and pacified.

II. DPVA’s loss of a sense of membership

The national Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party of Virginia, has too fallen victim to this civic trend of prioritizing management over membership. Focus has been almost entirely on the endless succession of short-term election campaigns, optimized for the membership that we have at any given time, rather than long-term development of our membership. Most local committees have lost the basic practices of civic organizing: counting and tracking members over time; initiating new members and celebrating old members; building internal community and routinizing internal education and mentorship; formalizing inter-committee learning and strategy dissemination; identifying and cultivating organic local, regional, and state leaders (not candidates, but organizational leaders); building meeting spaces and fostering local committee pride; engaging in the local community outside of elections; mapping territory for recruiting strategy; and more. It’s the equivalent of if a military only fought battles in the short-term without ever, in the long-term, recruiting members, training members, tracking members, cultivating unit pride and culture (through badges, mottos, fables, etc.), identifying and fostering leadership, holding inter-unit meetings to share learnings, having celebrations, or giving out awards. That military would eventually lose out to a military that did the long-term, as well as the short-term, work.

Last month’s election should have been a landslide in the other direction. Half-billionaire private equity mogul Glenn Youngkin is the textbook definition of a plutocrat. He and his party have no serious vision for the future of our Commonwealth except the same economic insecurity, corporate domination, and culture warmongering that they have been trotting out every four years for decades. We can point to various problems in the short run that caused this debacle: candidate choice, the failure to recognize the hardships parents have been through in the past year, the failure to adequately push back against the CRT boogeyman, the federal climate of Congressional gridlock, and even the thermostatic nature of Virginia politics (a blue White House means a red governor’s mansion). However, we would be wise to avoid “fighting the last war”—and instead reflect on the deeper, long-term causes of this failure. 

In my view, the long-run challenge revealed last month is that the Democratic Party of Virginia desperately needs to begin a transformation from a top-down, low-participation, centrally-managed party into a federated, participatory membership party. The long-term benefits that such a transformation would bring — more members, more engagement, more routine funding sources, more transparency, more ideas, more leaders, more strategic upgrades, more energy, more sense of shared ownership over our party’s destiny — would overpower any short-term factors against us, like the ones we fell victim to in November. We cannot poll, focus group, consult, data-analyze, or micro-target our way out of this ditch — we will lose the long-term game of fear, spectacle, and money. What we can do is use the tools that got us out of the last Gilded Age: the type of broad-based organizing, engagement, community, and participatory membership that would make real our party’s name.

III. Reviving a spirit of membership in the DPVA: Four areas

Here are four broad areas — symbolized by the “4 Ms” — that could revive our state party’s sense of membership:

(i) Membership Cards

You should actually 'join' the Democrats—and we should track how our membership is doing year-over-year. Chairs who are successful at increasing membership should be celebrated and turned into inter-committee mentors and regional leaders — and unsuccessful chairs should be informed and mentored. There should be initiations of new members (with the presentation of a membership card) and celebrations of old ones. New members should immediately be put to work on concrete projects — engagement begats engagement, disengagement begats disengagement. Fundraising should be done primarily through annual membership dues, not sporadic, disrespectful email blasts. Our web infrastructure should drive people not just toward ad hoc volunteer events — but to membership in their local committee. Our famous party leaders should focus less on celebrating extraordinary candidates and more on celebrating ordinary engaged members.

(ii) Maps

We need to split the commonwealth into small precincts and assign every precinct a Democratic precinct captain. Captains should be known by their neighbors as captains because they are so visible organizing the block for the party all year long (not just during election season). Neighbors should see their captains as their first access point to all things politics and government—“when in doubt, ask your precinct captain.” We should track how precinct captains are doing. When precinct captains are successful at increasing general turnout, Democratic turnout, and membership within their precinct, we should celebrate them and learn from them. When they are not successful, we should inform them and mentor them. The most persuasive canvassers during a campaign are people who know you and your community.

(iii) Meeting Halls

Local committee meetings should be designed and executed with utmost care. The party should innovate on and disseminate best practices in making committee meetings, committee working groups, and annual calendars maximally warm and engaging. We should learn from the best practices of other civic groups (from Alcoholics Anonymous to sororities to evangelical churches to the Sunrise Movement) — and create a culture among chairs of sharing learnings and models. Formal rules and procedures should not be fetishized at the expense of engaging ordinary people. Every member should be ready to, proud of, and unconcerned by telling anyone they run into around town: “Hope you can come to our next local Democratic meeting.”

Eventually, each local party should work toward building a physical Democratic Meeting Hall in their district (just like how Elks, Rotary, Odd Fellows, fraternities/sororities, unions, and others have physical spaces). These meeting halls should become warm and lively community centers for the broad progressive, racial justice, climate justice, and labor movement in the area. Wealthy figures and talented fundraisers within the party should be encouraged to think about building such meeting halls across the commonwealth as part of their legacy. 

(iv) Mutual Aid

We should directly care for members and for the broader community. Democrats should do disaster relief, take on homeless shelter shifts, attend funerals, send gift baskets when members get married, and bring sick members soup. Effective and inspiring community engagement should be celebrated state-wide — and turned into multi-committee efforts. This is especially important in red districts — trust is earned through real in-person care over the long run, not perfectly-targeted messaging in the short run.

IV. Six steps toward this transformation

Steps toward the transformation will take various forms: top-down from the state party and bottom-up from the local committees; relatively quick steps that could help immediately and relatively long-term projects that will come in fits and starts. Below is a non-exhaustive list of concrete, actionable steps the state party could take this coming year:

Steps toward formalizing party membership and promoting a membership culture:

1. Formalize and track party membership 

Currently, the DPVA does not track party membership. It does not have a formal version of state party membership (outside of being members of local committees), it does not have an internal state database of who is a member of any local committee, and it does not have a way of seeing if membership is growing or shrinking as a whole, nor in any particular part of the commonwealth. 

As famed organizational theorist Peter Drucker says, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” As a foundational step in transforming from a “management party” to a “membership party,” the DPVA should formalize membership in the party, track members in a statewide database, train local chairs in updating the database, and provide dashboards to all party leaders and local chairs for viewing membership counts and trends over time.

2. Push the concept of a “membership culture” through various party institutions

Once membership is formalized and tracked, the party can advance an internal cultural project of normalizing membership as a concept. This could include:

• Issuing membership cards

• Having a formal initiation process for new members in local committee meetings

• Celebrating membership anniversaries (“10 years as a Democrat”) locally and statewide

• Adding members to various “members-only” email listservs

• Establishing sub-party memberships like caucus memberships

• Establishing annual membership dues that are split between local, state, and national parties

• Having the party’s website center membership and drive people to local committee membership

• Co-creating and disseminating local membership apparel (t-shirts, hats, etc.)

• Establishing member-to-member mentoring, training, and leadership development relationships

Steps toward centering chair leadership in membership recruitment and engagement:

3. Establish a formal chair liaison within the state party leadership

If there is to be a transformation of the state party into a membership organization, the key figures in that transformation will be local committee chairs. They are the heart of a membership party — they are the connection between ordinary members and the state party; they are the ones with an ear to the ground about the status of the party in every locale; they are the ones innovating on the routine recruitment, engagement, development, and deployment of party members.

If we are to take seriously this central role of local party chairs, the state party should hire a formal liaison to chairs within state party leadership. This liaison should not only respond to chair requests and disseminate information to chairs—they should also actively develop the leadership of local chairs by gathering and disseminating best practices, celebrating local membership growth, and intervening when local membership is in decline.

4. Create a continual learning community for local committee chairs

There are limits to what state leaders can do, top-down, to transform DPVA into a membership party. In the end, the transformation must be led by local committee chairs, via experiments and innovations at the local level. However, state party leaders can accelerate this bottom-up transformation by creating a continuing learning community among local committee chairs. Put another way, just like how we need to create community within each local committee, community must also be created across and among local committee chairs.

Here are examples of some ways to do this:

• Hold an annual retreat for local committee chairs. 

• Initiate new committee chairs at the annual retreat into the community of chairs.

• Hold an annual training (perhaps at the retreat) for local committee chairs.

• Hold a monthly call/Zoom for local committee chairs.

• Create communication channels for local committee chairs — an email listserv, a slack, a newsletter, a knowledge database (to share files, language, FAQs).

• Encourage and facilitate the sharing of learnings among local committee chairs: learnings in recruiting new members, in engaging new members, in meeting design, in broader community engagement, etc. 

• Host a leadership development speaker series and/or book club for local committee chairs — bring in civic organizing experts to talk and share studies, for example.

• Create mentorship relationships between novice local committee chairs and experienced local committee chairs.

• Elect a leadership committee among chairs to self-coordinate this community

Steps toward establishing a precinct map and precinct captain program:

5. Create a precinct map of Virginia, recruit captains to fill the map, and develop a precinct-tracking data dashboard

Currently, the DPVA does not have a formal map of all precincts — nor does it push local committees to create their own precinct maps nor recruit precinct captains. This means most canvassing is done ad hoc, by short-term campaigns and super-volunteers. This inhibits the effectiveness of canvassing efforts because many canvassers are strangers who do not deeply know the particular community in which they are knocking. The most effective canvassers remain those with a deep knowledge of and relationships within the community they are canvassing. 

The DPVA should transition from ad hoc, short-term, and supervolunteer-driven canvassing to a system reliant on local precinct captains. To do this, the state party should:

• Work with local committees to split the commonwealth into small precincts.

• Work with local committees to recruit precinct captains for each precinct.

• Train precinct captains in the art of precinct captainship. (Captains should be known by their neighbors as captains because they are so visible canvassing the block for the party all year long—not just during election season. Captains should ensure that their neighbors should see them as their first access point to all things politics and government—“when in doubt, ask your precinct captain!” Precinct captains should be responsible for turning out the vote in their precincts, persuading neighbors in their precinct to vote Democrat, recruiting those in their precinct to become members of their local Democratic party committee—as well as recruiting and making use of volunteers to help in this process within their precinct.)

• Create a statewide data dashboard that tracks turnout, Democratic vote totals, and Democratic membership within each precinct, so that precinct captains can track their own progress and party leadership can track the effectiveness of precinct captains (and celebrate or intervene when necessary).

6. Create a training and continual learning community for precinct captains

The most effective way state party leadership can train, develop, and support precinct captains is to create and coordinate a continuing learning community among precinct captains. 

Here are examples of some ways to do this:

• Hold an annual retreat for local precinct captains. 

• Initiate new precinct captains at the annual retreat into the community of precinct captains.

• Hold an annual training (perhaps at the retreat) for local precinct captains.

• Hold a monthly call/Zoom for local precinct captains.

• Create communication channels for local precinct captains — an email listserv, a slack, a newsletter, a knowledge database (to share files, language, FAQs).

• Encourage and facilitate the sharing of learnings among local precinct captains 

• Host a leadership development speaker series and/or book club for local precinct captains — bring in canvassing/organizing experts to talk and share studies, for example.

• Create mentorship relationships between novice local precinct captains and experienced local precinct captains.

• Elect a leadership committee among precinct captains to self-coordinate this community

This is a long-term project — more like the planting of acorns than the planting of sunflower seeds. But we must get to work now — the Virginia Democrats of 2025, 2029, 2033 will thank us. As Martin Luther King often said: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

As I was growing up, I kept getting advice to "keep your options open." But I started noticing that the people earning respect were those who didn't follow that advice. They were long-haul heroes—people who dedicated themselves to particular causes and crafts, places and people; people who showed their love for particular things by working at them for a long time.

For years, I've been thinking about this tension between our infinite browsing and our love for this Counterculture of Commitment—the citizens, patriots, builders, stewards, artisans, and companions who close doors and forgo options for the sake of things bigger than themselves.

Dedicated is about that tension. It's a case for commitment—and against keeping your options open. My hope is that it can help readers rebel from our culture of open options, join up with the Counterculture of Commitment, and place themselves among the dedicated. You can pre-order at DedicatedBook.org.

Here’s the speech that inspired the book:

Here’s the official description:

Most of us have had this experience: browsing through countless options on Netflix, unable to commit to watching any given movie—and losing so much time skimming reviews and considering trailers that it’s too late to watch anything at all. In a book borne of an idea first articulated in a viral commencement address, Pete Davis argues that this is the defining characteristic of the moment: keeping our options open. We are stuck in “Infinite Browsing Mode”—swiping through endless dating profiles without committing to a single partner, jumping from place to place searching for the next big thing, and refusing to make any decision that might close us off from an even better choice we imagine is just around the corner. This culture of restlessness and indecision, Davis argues, is causing tension in the lives of young people today: We want to keep our options open, and yet we yearn for the purpose, community, and depth that can only come from making deep commitments.

In Dedicated, Davis examines this quagmire, as well as the counterculture of committers who have made it to the other side. He shares what we can learn from the “long-haul heroes” who courageously commit themselves to particular places, professions, and causes—who relinquish the false freedom of an open future in exchange for the deep fulfillment of true dedication. Weaving together examples from history, personal stories, and applied psychology, Davis’s candid and humble words offer a meaningful answer to our modern frustrations and a practical path to joy.

And here’s some nice blurbs, including from some people who are long-haul heroes themselves:

“Well-versed in the current zeitgeist, Davis is insightful without being preachy, and his wise guide to commitment should be on everyone’s reading list." —Booklist (starred review)

"If you have ever struggled to cross the Rubicon and commit to an endeavor that would foreclose other options, then this book is for you. Pete Davis provides a provocative countercultural thesis for our time, explaining why resolve and stamina are in such short supply and how we can, in an era of infinite browsing, learn to be dedicated." —Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and founder and CEO of Character Lab

"Pete Davis is one of America’s most creative and inspiring young writers—sparkling with enthusiasm, yet profound beyond his years. In Dedicated he challenges his peers to change America and themselves for the better by committing themselves to something greater than self. It’s a sermon, all right, but it’s far too lively to be just a sermon. And those of us a bit older could learn a thing or two by eavesdropping." —Robert D. Putnam, Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School, and author of Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

“Pete Davis’s Dedicated is a magisterial book on the moral Counterculture of Commitment in our shallow culture of money and fear. His depth of wisdom and scope of knowledge are astonishing. And his powerful vision of decency and democracy are compelling.” —Dr. Cornel West

"The most countercultural act you can do today may be committing to something for a long period of time, maybe forever. That's the word that married couples tend to balk on these days—not 'love,' 'honor' or even 'obey,' but 'forever' or 'all my life.' In his provocative new book Pete Davis shows us why commitment is so difficult for people today, but why it is also not only beneficial, but necessary, if we are ever to accomplish anything of value or live lives of depth." —James Martin, SJ, author of Learning to Pray

“This is a brilliant book about one of the defining predicaments of our time: the temptation to keep our options open. Pete Davis is the fresh voice of wisdom that our culture desperately needs—Dedicated is required reading for the 21st century pursuit of happiness and success.” —Adam Grant, New York Times–bestselling author of Think Again and Originals, and host of the TED podcast "WorkLife"

“An engaging exploration of how to restore meaning and purpose and the satisfactions of enduring commitment in an era of short attention spans and infinite choice. In this greatly expanded version of a 2018 Harvard commencement speech, Pete Davis challenges his generation—and all of us—to reconnect to the institutions and relationships that truly matter—and will build a better world." —Drew Gilpin Faust, President Emerita of Harvard University, and author of This Republic of Suffering

"In a society of endless possibilities, I’ve long felt there was something radical about commitment. Instead of letting that insight take the form of a passing thought, Pete Davis devoted himself to exploring the same intuition, and the result is a thoughtful, original, erudite, and inspiring manifesto. We can scroll through life and stay in the shallows, or limit our options and connect on a deeper more satisfying level. Devoting your attention to the wisdom in these pages is a good way to begin.” —Astra Taylor, documentary filmmaker and author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone

“My dad used to say, ‘If it’s worth doing, it's worth doing right.' It was his take on the importance of dedication. Most everything that matters requires dedication: day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out. At the end of every effort you want to be able to look back and feel the kind of satisfaction that can’t come from staying on the sidelines. Pete Davis’s Dedicated is a book that speaks to me and shares important messages and values that can be helpful to anyone who is facing a challenge or simply looking to excel in what’s important to you.” —Cal Ripken Jr., Hall of Fame shortstop and third baseman

"This is the book we need right now, more than ever. There's no useful forward motion without enrollment, and that requires commitment. Pete Davis knows that it's up to each of us to choose to matter." —Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing

I wrote this book (and originally gave the speech that inspired the book) for a few reasons.

First, I am a superfan of long-haul heroes—and wanted to simply share my love for them with the world. Whether it’s Ida B. Wells tirelessly working for decades on her anti-lynching crusade, or David Letterman doing his same run of show for 33 years, or Jimmy Wales building and sustaining Wikipedia, or Rabbi Amy Schwartzman in my town stewarding Falls Church’s Temple Rodef Shalom for decades—I have always been enchanted by people who work on 10-, 20-, 30-year projects. With Dedicated, I hope I can help us better spotlight this special type of hero—not the hero that responds to a big, brave moment, but the hero who strings together years of ordinary moments into something special.

Second, I think there is much that the tension between browsing and committing illuminates about our time. It is a way into understanding how our pursuit of flexibility, authenticity, and novelty is haunted by the risk of paralysis, isolation, and shallowness. It helps make sense of the relationship between what could be called liberatory politics (freeing ourselves from oppression) and dedicatory politics (building things together). And it’s a lens through which to see clearer certain tensions in our economy (between the triumph of money over the love of particular things), in our moral system (between a culture of indifference and a culture of honor), and in our education system (between education for personal advancement and education for attachment to things bigger than ourselves). In short, our relationship to commitment on a personal level implicates larger questions about society and culture.

Finally, I think commitment is the ultimate prerequisite for all significant civic action. For those of you who follow my work, you know that there are all these civic projects and ideas that I care about—specifically, the projects of deepening American democracy and solidarity. But none of the projects any of us care about are going to be advanced if there are not enough people willing to commit to them over the long haul. Today, there are so many big problems to solve, institutions to rebuild, and breaches to repair. And there are no silver bullets for these crises. Forming communities takes a long time, and so does healing community divisions. Building institutions takes a long time, and so does reviving institutions that have been corrupted. Transformative political change takes an especially long time: To take ideas from “unthinkable” to “thinkable but fringe” to “debatable” to “popular” to “consensus” is a trek. Teaching a lesson, advancing a cause, rectifying an injustice, revitalizing a town, cracking a tough puzzle, launching a venture—they all come slow. And none of them will happen if we cannot become a more dedicated people.

I look forward to sharing the book with all of you:

• You can pre-order a physical, digital, or audio book at: DedicatedBook.org.

• If you are interested in reviewing Dedicated or doing an interview for your show, email contact@PeteDavis.org and I'll get you an advance copy.

• To book an interview or host an event, my publicity contact is Alexandra Primiani, who you can contact at Alexandra.Primiani@simonandschuster.com.

• My marketing contact is Meredith Vilarello, who you can contact at Meredith.Vilarello@simonandschuster.com.

• For more information, check out: PeteDavis.org/Dedicated.

If you’re receiving this email, it’s because you subscribed to my newsletter sometime in the past few years. I’ve transferred my newsletter list over to Substack, which lets you mix blogging and newsletter posts. I haven’t been writing here much, but am going to start posting more soon to keep followers updated on my civic essays and projects.

Thought I’d kick off that process today by letting you know that I am in Current Affairs this week with a tribute to the beloved songwriter John Prine, who died last week at the age of 73. An excerpt is below, with my goofy schema of splitting public figures into “prophets,” “mystics,” or “sages” (Prine was a prototypical sage):

I think you can split great public figures into three groups: the prophets, the mystics, and the sages.

The prophets have visions of the future. They’re the Martin Luther Kings and Michelle Alexanders and Wendell Berrys of the world—they condemn the present order and lead us toward somewhere new.

The mystics have a connection to the otherworldly—to the realm of the mysterious. They’re the William Blakes and John Coltranes and Stevie Nickses of the world, who try to bring you with them to—or, at the very least, bring you messages from—some spiritual plane.

The sages are different. They have no special access to the future, like the prophets do — or to another realm, like the mystics do. They aren’t trying to take you anywhere — neither to the promised land nor the other world.

Rather, sages are just really, really good at living here and now. They’re who we turn to for practical wisdom. And their wisdom is hard earned — it comes not from a prophetic insight nor a mystical trance, but rather from the sustained, ordinary work of putting in the years living and learning, listening and paying attention. Like cast iron skillets, sages only get better with age. And like the plant they share a name with, they have healing powers.

Some might say that the sage’s craft is the cultivation of wisdom, but I think that’s only a part of what sages have perfected. I think it’s more right to say that the sage’s craft is friendship. And friends, as the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott put best, “are not concerned with what might be made of one another, but only with the enjoyment of one another; and the condition of this enjoyment is a ready acceptance of what is and the absence of any desire to change or to improve.” 

If you’re looking for a movement leader, you want to find yourself a prophet. If you’re looking to shake up your old ways, you want to find yourself a mystic. But if you’re looking for a good friend — that’s when you want to find yourself a sage. 

You can read the fully essay — The Very Least We Could Do is Name the Maywood, IL Post Office After John Prine — here.

If you didn’t catch my last essay in Current Affairs, it was a retrospective on politics in the 2010s: Decade of Disappointment, Decade of Hope. My take: the 2010s was the decade of the saviors disappointing us... but also the decade of the people taking matters into their own hands. Put another way, Obama was right when he said back in 2008: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for — we are the change that we seek." You can read the essay here.

Hope everyone is doing as well as can be during this hard time.

Best wishes,

Pete

You can listen to main episodes at CurrentAffairs.simplecast.fm

You can also subscribe to bonus episodes at: Patreon.com/CurrentAffairs

Here's a rundown of some of my favorite episodes we have put out:

My interview with Maryland state delegate Vaughn Stewart on running for office:

Nathan J. Robinson and I discussing the legacy of Mister Rogers:

My interview with documentarian Astra Taylor:

My interview with corporate crime reporter Jesse Eisinger:

Our episode with Matt Bruenig about his "Social Wealth Fund" idea:

Before the Civil War, the Sabbath was the only time that most free, working Americans had off. In the late 1860s, while there were a few unenforced eight-hour-day laws on the books, most Americans worked 10 to 12 hours a day. In fact, the word weekend did not even exist until the 1870s. The first documented use of the word was in 1879, when a British magazine explained, “If a person leaves home at the end of his week’s work on the Saturday afternoon to spend the evening of Saturday and the following Sunday with friends at a distance, he is said to be spending his week-end at so-and-so.”

However, before the weekend, many workers were already taking an informal second day off. They called it “keeping Saint Monday”—skipping work to recover from drinking all day Sunday. The practice was so common that Benjamin Franklin once bragged that he’d gotten promoted simply by consistently showing up for work on Monday: “My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday) recommended me to the master.” There’s even a 1793 folk song about it, “The Jovial Cutler,” which begins:

Brother workmen cease your labour,

Lay your files and hammers by.

Listen while a brother neighbour

Sings a cutler’s destiny:

How upon a good Saint Monday,

Sitting by the smithy fire,

Telling what’s been done o’ t’ Sunday,

And in cheerful mirth conspire.

In some factories, a protoweekend was created when factory owners traded a half-day off on Saturday in exchange for ending St. Mondays.

With the Industrial Revolution, fewer people farmed, a form of labor that had a natural stopping point at sundown. As laborers moved into factories, working conditions became harsher, and the workday became more regimented. With the growth of industrialism came the growth of the labor movement, which pressed for worker interests.

Read the whole excerpt — 'People fought for time off from work, so stop working so much' — here.

The D.C. Line previewed it:

1. Politics: The monthly magazine Current Affairs is taking its culture and politics podcast onstage live for the first time ever on Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE. Doors open at 7. The show is open to all ages. Tickets cost $15 in advance and $18 at the door (a free stream will be availableonline). A seven-member editorial board rotates for regular appearances on the podcast with host Pete Davis.

Here's us singing Solidarity Forever at the end of the show:

http://petedavis.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RZsLRLXQWCHuXoaK.mp4

Here's a shot from the stage:

Here's the audio of the show:

Pete Davis, F.C. native and recent Harvard Law School graduate now living back in the City: “Two things are on my mind as the Little City in the new year. First, with the arrival of HQ2 and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s prioritization of anti-eviction policy, 2019 may be the year our region wakes up to our affordable housing crisis. If we do, 2019 could be a pivotal year for promoting much-needed economic diversity in Falls Church. Secondly, 2019 brings us an enriching state senate primary between Yasmine Taeb and Dick Saslaw. It will be a great opportunity for Falls Church voters to discuss campaign finance reform, clean energy, and diversity in the state house.

Read the whole article here.

Here's the summary:

In How to Get Away, Jon Staff and Pete Davis consider our troubled relationship with technology, urbanization, and work. When and why have we become so dependent on our cell phones? How do green spaces—and the lack of them—affect our minds, bodies, and relationships? Why is it so hard for us to set aside our work and take a real vacation? Blending cultural history with contemporary research and insights from scholars and trend-watchers, Staff and Davis present a compelling case for restoring balance between technology and disconnection, city and nature, and work and leisure. Along the way, the authors draw on their own experience, the lives of pioneers and innovators like landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and conservationist Margaret Murie, lifestyle trends like homesteading and hygge, and the wisdom of philosophers, poets, and scientists ranging from Aristotle to Oliver Sacks. How to Get Away offers a nuanced perspective on our past, a call to action for our present, and a hopeful vision for a more balanced future.

Here's some of the blurbs:

"Jon Staff and Pete Davis take us on a guided tour through American history, identify all the ways our always-on culture is wearing us down, and offer practical, easy-to-integrate strategies for how to thrive in today’s world. How to Get Away is a history lesson, a clarion call, and a practical toolkit rolled into one.” – Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global, and founder, HuffPost

“In How to Get Away, Jon Staff and Pete Davis focus on the Holy Grail of today’s questions: what does it mean to live a balanced technological existence? Is it possible, and if so, what might a healthy relationship to new technologies look like? The founders of Getaway ask readers not simply to unplug, but to become critical thinkers about the role and use of technology in our lives.” —Donna Freitas, author, The Happiness Effect

"An important and uplifting read for a digitally native generation.” –Youngme Moon, Donald K. David Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School

"Staff and Davis have compiled one of the best books yet on information overload and how to reclaim our attention and a higher quality of life in a digital device-saturated world . . . How to Get Away is the ultimate guide for those of us choosing the healthiest possible relationship with technology and with each other.” —Linda Stone, former senior executive, Apple and Microsoft

"A timely read both for those who care about balance in their own lives and for those who want to promote a more balanced society.” —Sep Kamvar, founder, Mosaic; founder, Celo; and former professor at the MIT Media Lab

“How to Get Away is the perfect antidote for these busy times. Written for a generation of digital natives seeking meaning and intentionality, the book captures the zeitgeist behind mankind’s struggle for balance in our hyperconnected era.” –Jeffrey Bussgang, Harvard Business School professor, and general partner, Flybridge Capital Partners

“How to Get Away is a timely and persuasive book which shows us how we can improve our lives, reconnect with our natural selves, and find some balance in a world of digital deluge. I suggest you switch off all electronic devices, get away from it all, read and ponder deeply.” —Dr. Nerina Ramlakhan, author of Fast Asleep, Wide Awake

You can buy the book on Amazon here.

"If the recent Amazon deal goes through as written, Virginia taxpayers will hand over $573 million to one company in exchange for 25,000 jobs. This comes out to Virginians paying over $20,000 in public funds per job. Here’s an alternative deal: why don’t we simply endow 25,000 Virginia entrepreneurs with $20,000 in startup capital to launch local businesses, startups, non-profits and worker cooperatives?

A state economy based in local entrepreneurship and community business is more resilient, flexible, and civic-minded than an economy reliant on the whims of an untrustworthy monopolist. Such a plan would cost the same amount as subsidizing Amazon, but would leave our communities much more vibrant, equitable, and empowered."

Read more here.

But Trump assured the community that the golf course would be a boon to the local economy. It would bring thousands of jobs to Aberdeen — the farmers and fishermen that were to be displaced, he argued, could be hired to serve all of the wealthy people that would flock to the small coastal community to enjoy the Trump International Golf Links.

The local planning board didn't buy his sales pitch. Its leader, Martin Ford, convinced his colleagues that Trump's promises were ridiculously implausible.

But Trump didn't respect Aberdeen enough to come back to the board with a revised proposal. Instead, he went behind the community's back and pulled strings with the national government to veto the community's decision. It worked — he was given the green light to build his golf course in 2008.

But some residents of Aberdeen still stood in Trump's path. He thought he could get them out of the way by buying them out. But this didn't work — many refused to sell their homes.

So Trump started playing hardball. After one couple, Susie and John Munro, turned down Trump's offer to purchase their home, he had his team build a two-story-high hill in their front yard, causing flooding.

When David and Moira Milne fought back against Trump's encroachment on their property line, he offered cash, jewelry, a golf membership and spa privileges in exchange for their home. When they refused, Trump ripped out a fence near their house, installed his own, and sent the Milnes a bill for the cost of the installation. When the Milnes refused to pay, Trump had a row of trees planted to block their view of the sea. When the trees died, he planted another row.

When fisherman and farmer Michael Forbes refused to sell his home, Trump told the press that Forbes lived “like a pig" in "a slum" that was "obliterating" the views from his luxury hotel. Forbes responded by painting "NO MORE TRUMP LIES" on one of his buildings. Trump responded, according to Forbes, by disrupting a water pipe leading to his property, leaving Forbes and his 92-year-old mother without clean drinking water for years.

Having failed to buy off or bully the residents of Aberdeen, Trump started pursuing a strategy of "compulsory purchase" — a Scottish legal maneuver similar to eminent domain that would force them out of their homes. When their neighbors got word, they banded together to put their names on Trump-targeted deeds — a counter-maneuver that would make it more complicated for Trump to seize their property.

Trump even bullied the Scottish government over the wind farm, suing to block the turbines. He began lying to the press about having been promised by the government that the wind project would be cancelled. He took out ads opposing the turbines in local papers and even gave political leaders who supported wind energy mean nicknames, like "Mad Alex."

Trump was able to get the golf course opened in 2012. But reality, of course, caught up to him. In its first four years, Trump International lost $7 million dollars. Scottish conservation groups discovered that the golf course was breaking rules on sewage pollution, groundwater, and dune preservation. Of the $1.5 billion in investment, 6,000 jobs, two golf courses, and 450-room hotel that Trump promised Aberdeen officials in 2008, he has delivered on only $100 million in investment, 150 jobs, one golf course and a 16-room boutique hotel.

As expected, Trump's very unpopular in Aberdeen today: when 500,000 Brits signed a petition to bar Trump from the country in 2016, the highest concentration of signatures came from the community. “Nobody wants him around," one Aberdeen resident told The New York Times. "He refuses to see or refuses to accept what is reality.”

This is who Donald Trump is. He's a rich bully who despises ordinary people. He hates when citizens make their voice heard. He hates when neighbors come together to assert home rule over their own land, their own communities, and their own homes. He is an elitist so disconnected from the mainstream that he thinks folks would want to trade their hometown for some jewelry and spa passes, because the only freedom he can wrap his head around is the freedom to consume his own products.

The whole episode reminds me of a scene from A Man for All Seasons. After Richard Rich is appointed to a high and mighty position in Wales in exchange for falsely testifying against St. Thomas More, More asks him: "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"

Here we wonder: "Why Donald, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for a golf course?"

But in many ways, making golf courses — astroturfing our commonwealth so that rich and powerful people have more walled-off space to do their bidding — is what Donald Trump is all about. It's why he's used his power over these past two years to help low-wage behemoths squeeze their workers, oil barons aggravate the climate catastrophe, insurance giants block national health security, monopolists stiff their customers, chauvinist bosses sustain their harassment, absentee landlords evict their tenants, cruel jailers lock up children, and wealthy donors transfer public money from the many to the few.

And just like he did to the "pig" fisherman from the Aberdeen "slum,” whenever Trump's about to be held to account, he starts calling people names, And if his taunts can divide us up — say, by emboldening racists across the country — the better Trump can distract us from his con.

Michael Forbes and the Munros and the Milnes and the planning board and the Scottish conservationists fought back. But for the people of Aberdeen, it might be too late.

But for us, it’s not too late. Trump and his complicit Congress may be part way through turning our beloved country into the biggest Trump International yet, but the job’s not complete. We have time to turn the tide.

But we must do as the proud residents of Aberdeen did. We must come together to show Trump that here, the people rule — that the beauty of America is that we exist not for the golfers in the luxury hotels, but for the citizens whose power and purpose obliterates the plutocrats’ pristine views.

Go Vote!

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In Season 1, we interviewed the head horticulturalist of New York's High Line, the inventor of the Bullet Journal Method, the founder of Folk Rebellion, the artist behind the Light Phone, and more.

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A video of the speech is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDvJTXlW8LY

The Crimson covered the speech:

Former U.S. presidential candidate and attorney Ralph Nader spoke at the Harvard Law Forum Thursday to discuss the need for more public interest lawyers and his belief in Harvard Law School’s obligation to support public interest careers among its graduates.

Pete D. Davis ’12, the author of “The Bicentennial Crisis,” a book-length report that criticizes the Law School, joined Nader to speak in front of about a hundred people in the Law School’s Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall.

Introduced by Harvard Law Forum President Martin T. Drake, the speakers split the two-hour event to both critique the state of the legal profession in America and call current law students to serve the public.

Public service and its connection to the Law School has been an ongoing discussionover the past year. In February, Davis and four Law professors held a forum titled “Harvard Law and the Public Interest” to debate the school’s perceived disconnect with public service. Nader has been an active participant in the discussion as well — criticizing the Law School for its “corporate” focus at an event last year as well as in an open letter with six other alumni to Law School Dean John F. Manning ’82 published in April.

At Thursday’s event, Davis enumerated the history of public interest law participation at the Law School and described his vision of a majority of Law graduates working in public interest careers. The proportion of graduates entering public service law positions stood at 16.87 percent among 2017 graduates.

“Does the mother getting evicted from their house care that we created a bunch of Supreme Court clerks?” Davis said. “Seen through the eyes of America, we risk irrelevance… When our grandkids ask what we did, we want to tell them we advanced the legal interest of the many rather than entrenched the power of the few.”

Davis pointed to the discrepancy between the proportion of students who enter the Law School wanting to work in the public interest and those who graduate with a job doing so.

“Something is changing you while you’re here,” Davis said.

Following Davis, Nader first spoke about lawyers’ need to promote of the rule of law to defend justice. Nader accused the Law School of failing to promote justice in its practices, instead producing graduates who bend to corporate interests.

Read the whole article here.