Voiceless Not Powerless: 3 Principles for Changing Our Civic Culture

It was perhaps one of the most important days of my career and I awoke at 6:00 AM, voiceless. I had spent the previous day facilitating a powerful working session with some of the leading civic entrepreneurs in our country discussing what America needs to build a strong civic culture and infrastructure, and lost my voice in the process.

Twelve hours later, I was hosting an event to share our insights with a group of philanthropists and thought leaders. The day’s success hinged on my vocal cords functioning and allowing me to convey the learnings and the vision for our emerging initiative in civic engagement, which ironically focuses on the power of individual and collective voice.

Despite desperate attempts over the next 11 hours, my voice never came back. As a young immigrant and woman of color, representing a constituency that rarely gets this type of a platform, it was deeply disappointing. While I lost the opportunity to engage in important conversations that day, I gained a deeper perspective on the design of systems, structures, and power and what it takes to give “voice” to the “voiceless.”

What do I mean?

Uplift, don’t co-opt the agenda: Losing my voice was a physical manifestation of what many Americans experience as civic oppression in the forms of misinformation, racism, voter suppression, and all embodiments of systematic “othering.” Similar to those impacted by these issues, I had deep insights into both the problem and the solution that I had hoped to share that day, informed by lived experience, field interviews with civic leaders, and literature review. Nevertheless, the representation of the truth could be thwarted and co-opted, just as the work of many grassroots organizers, if those with the resources and platform do not commit to spreading the truth or sharing their podium, in whatever form it may exist. A recent report, The Hidden Tribes of America, illustrates this at the macro level: The political fragmentation in our country is fueled by a narrative war led by political and economic elites on both the right and the left, leaving 67% of Americans as the “exhausted majority.” At the micro level, in my field interviews I often heard local organizers express sentiments such as “institutions use their mission and leverage to force local groups to focus on their agenda.” Across our society, we consistently see the manifestation of distrust fueled by power dynamics.

What I witnessed during the day I lost my voice is the commitment of my team to uphold the core vision and execute on the agenda of my initiative in a way that honored the integrity of the research and the voices that contributed to its development. In doing so, they acknowledged the work that went into designing the initiative, but also their limitations in representing the work, as they were not as proximate to it as I was. This is precisely what we need in America today. Imagine what we can achieve as a country if our voices and our truths were uplifted rather than co-opted for political gain? Imagine a civic culture that rewarded community builders and organizers rather than consultants who parachute in and out of communities during election cycles? 

Redefine the rules of engagement: Five hours into my vocal cord revolt, I sat in a conference room to prep for a panel discussion with two guest speakers—Darrell Scott, CEO of PushBlack, the nation's largest nonprofit media platform for Black Americans, with over 3 million subscribers, and Katie Fahey, Founder and Executive Director of Voters Not Politicians, who led the historic non-partisan grassroots movement in Michigan to win the ballot proposal to eliminate partisan gerrymandering. Sensing my frustration as I furiously wrote notes to Darrell and Katie in my notebook, Darrell suggested that we open a Google document instead. For the next hour, we proceeded to use our screens as our collective canvass to draft and refine our talking points. By changing the structure of our communication, Darrell fundamentally shifted the rules of the meeting, enabling an equitable platform through which we could equally participate. 

Structures matter. In order to dismantle civic disempowerment or disenfranchisement, we have to change our modus operandi. As a country, we are over-investing in cyclical voter mobilization and short-term campaign wins rather than building the civic culture and ongoing civic participation of all Americans. In the 2018 midterm elections, we spent $5.2 billion on campaigns compared to the $5.1 billion institutional philanthropy has spent in the past seven years on democracy-related efforts including civic participation, the media, and research. Darrell and Katie are pioneering new ways of unleashing meaningful civic engagement, and we must support civic entrepreneurs like them who are shaping our civic destiny and building enduring, equitable structures for sustained civic participation.

Cede Privilege. Seed Power. Once the rules of engagement shifted in our panel prep meeting, those who could use their voice opted for our new communication medium. It was not until I suggested to Darrell and Katie that they practice their talking points out loud that they began to do so. At another moment in the day, a senior leader stepped in to facilitate a discussion in my stead, following the script I had drafted. And when all hopes had dissipated about the return of my voice, my CEO made the decision to introduce me and the vision of our work, powerfully positioning me to our highly influential guests. In all of these cases, each individual had to cede some form of their privilege in order to advance the work and empower me to lead. We often discuss how to unlock power, dismantle power, or build power in the context of civic participation. In my moment of vocal powerlessness, I could have found other means to express my “power” but it was so much easier when those around me were willing to cede some aspect of their privilege for the greater good of the initiative. For some it required silence, for some it required taking on additional work, for some it required being a messenger. Our civic ecosystem today is fragmented at best and broken at worst. Civic organizations operate without strong incentives for collaboration, often fueled by competition for funding. This contributes to distrust between civic organizations and those they serve, duplication of efforts, missed opportunities for sharing best practices, and diminished potential for enduring, transformational change. We have the opportunity to shape a different ecosystem, a different culture. We can do this in our individual positions of power in our companies, schools, and communities. We can also demand the same of our leaders. 

At New Profit, this is what we aspire to facilitate by broadening our aperture to support leaders who are working to build trust and a strong civic culture in our country. Akin to the collective effort that led to a successful event in the absence of my voice, changing the civic culture of our country requires each of us to reflect on how we can contribute to an equitable democracy where no one is made or left voiceless.