NEXT WEEK: The Commons in Conversation
On Wednesday, December 18, at 12:30 p.m. ET, we’ll explore how you can navigate political division at work and during holiday family gatherings. Journalist and nonprofit leader Mónica Guzmán joins Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Andrew Simon for the discussion. Guzmán, the founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, is the author of I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. She is also a senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, and host of A Braver Way, a podcast to help people bridge political divides in their everyday lives.
Join the conversation! The event is free on LinkedIn. Registration is required.
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News and other noteworthy items:
- Voters in “overwhelming” numbers say the 2024 elections nationally and in their communities were run well, and they express confidence in the vote counts, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Nearly 90 percent of voters say that elections were administered at least somewhat well, up from 59 percent of voters in 2020.
- In the Center for Effective Philanthropy podcast Giving Right, Rockefeller Brothers Fund CEO Stephen Heintz talks about community-based work to encourage civic engagement and bolster democracy. He also addresses concerns that nonprofits are deepening divides in the country: “I do think that some nonprofit groups, including some foundations, have contributed to the sense of polarization in our country.”
- The Atlantic’s Russell Berman examines why proposals for structural election change — including ranked-choice voting and open primaries — “failed nearly everywhere they were on the ballot” this year. Advocates haven’t done a good job selling “possible solutions to core problems that voters repeatedly tell pollsters they want addressed,” Berman concludes. One told him: “We have totally failed at the marketing.”
