By: Chirag Mehta, Director of Policy and Ideas
We have officially reached election season. As the pomp and strange circumstance of the party conventions draw to a close later this week, the races for statehouses and legislatures, control of the U.S. House and Senate, and occupancy of the White House will click into a higher gear. Politico projects that spending will top $6 billion this election cycle–on video advertising alone.
You and I both know the stakes. We know that this is the most important election of our lifetimes (again). But I want to be clear–even a positive outcome is no guarantee for the kind of progressive future that Community Change Action and our partners are determined to build.
As Community Change Action’s director of policy and ideas , I’m helping lead our efforts to build the imaginative power for what comes next. I believe that we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to attack the systemic roots of injustice in this country and build a new foundation for this country that allows all of us to thrive..
The question that we need to answer is what’s next? What is the better world we’re trying to build?
The answer isn’t going to come from the usual suspects or an inside-the-beltway echo chamber. So, we’ve started a body of work we’re calling “Ideas from the Ground Up.” It’s based on the premise that many forms of expertise, including the expertise of lived experience, can be fused together to create a transformational vision for our democracy and economy. We’re thinking about this task as a third Reconstruction described by Dorian Warren and K. Sabeel Rahman in The Nation: a just American Reconstruction that moves the country toward liberation and justice, toward becoming a place where everyone has the freedom to thrive.
That’s going to require power in many forms, including the power of bold ideas. So, even while Community Change Action builds the political power of Black, brown, and immigrant voters, we’re also building the imaginative power of grassroots leaders, organizers, and scholars. We started with a conversation “From a Police State to a Caring Economy” on July 28, followed by smaller group sessions focused on envisioning a true safety net.
Then last Wednesday, August 19, we convened the Taking Power Summit with our partners in the Black Freedom Collective. With scholars like Dr. Darrick Hamilton and Dr. Megan Ming Francis and organizers like Zach Norris and Erica Clemmons-Dean, we created the space for imagination and strategy. Catch up on this powerful conversation, streaming on Facebook.
Another world is possible. Now is the time to build the vision and power to make it real.