I spoke with dozens of civic leaders in Europe and the US and learned what they’re not saying about democracy & belonging

Sara Grossman, Forum Director

As last year wound to a close, many of us working towards belonging looked tentatively at the prospect of a brighter 2022. In the US, widespread access to Covid-19 vaccines suggested that the worst of the pandemic had passed, while former president Donald Trump was no longer stoking offense on Twitter, his account having been suspended due to “incitement of violence” after his supporters stormed the capitol in 2021.

Meanwhile in Europe, an era definitively ended with the conclusion of Angela Merkel’s historic 16-year tenure as Germany’s center-right head of state (after which the baton was amicably passed to her moderate-left successor), Switzerland expanded rights for LGBTQ people by legalizing gay marriage, and the last remnants of the deeply polarized Brexit vote seemed to finally settle into the dustbin of resolved policy decisions in the UK. 

Could those of us working towards justice now move on from reacting to crisis after crisis and start organizing towards a vision of belonging for the long term? 

Of course, nearly halfway into 2022 and only more alarming crises have emerged. Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine abruptly ended a period of sustained peace in Europe, while emerging evidence from the US House committee investigating the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol has revealed how advisors closest to the president unprecedentedly strategized ways to reject the democratic results of the 2020 election.

The backdrop to these democratic crises, of course, has been continuously rising levels of pernicious polarization, growing mistrust towards institutions, fear and anger towards out-groups, and the normalization of “us vs. them” thinking—divisions historically ripe for exploitation by anti-democratic leaders globally. Indeed, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there is a measurable inverse relationship between polarization in a society and the quality of its democracy. Their study of 52 countries “where democracies reached pernicious levels of polarization” found that half of those nations later experienced a downgrading of their democratic rating.

Although OBI has long been chiefly concerned with advancing belonging for the most marginalized groups, we also recognize that strong democratic norms and systems are fundamental to that work. We need functioning democracies in order to make appeals for human rights, implement structural reforms to protect minority groups, and ensure the right to make demands upon institutions—a core aspect of belonging. 

Authoritarians, as history has too often shown, generally have little interest in belonging.

With this context in mind, and tasked with developing OBI’s emerging work to link belonging efforts in Europe and the US, I set myself on a mission over the past five months to speak with social justice leaders in both regions about their work in this challenging moment. My interest: gauging how much, if at all, polarization and democratic degradation have affected their efforts to advance belonging, which generally requires coalition-building across lines of difference and an assumption that civic institutions will (or at least can) be responsive to citizen demands. 

I further wanted to know if they themselves were engaged in depolarizing bridging work, which involves an openness to engaging with people of different backgrounds and beliefs, and creating space to see and hear others’ suffering and stories. 

I soon found that advocates were saying things to me privately that they might not say publicly: Yes they were concerned about polarization and increased discomfort with difference, yes they were monitoring democratic threats with unease, yes they were dismayed by populist authoritarians’ successful exploitation of group divisions. But still, most weren’t engaging with these issues directly due to the polarized nature of the topic. Some saw themselves as bridgers, others admitted they wouldn’t take that position publicly.

“We desperately need a space to have this conversation behind closed doors,” one advocate told me, adding that she deeply believes in bridging and the importance of depolarization in her work for social justice, but that avenues to do so are increasingly fraught.

I was curious, then, to learn what those working to tackle polarization and strengthen democracy had to say about all this, and reached out to a handful of polarization experts to hear how they grappled with holding the need to protect minority rights with their central goal of depolarizing across lines of difference. In some ways, our conversations were the opposite of those I had with civil society leaders working on marginalization.

Many polarization experts expressed a fear that the tactics and rhetoric of justice campaigners were contributing to polarization and toxic division, in turn producing more backlash than advancement and moving less vocal citizens into the extremes, despite the worthiness of their calls. One expert shared that despite having real worries about the rise of far-right authoritarianism and subsequent threats to minority groups, they would not publicly frame their work as  countering such ideology. Rather, they were centrally concerned with building consensus and understanding between groups—indeed an important task.

The more I spoke to these two groups of experts, the more a troubling reality became apparent: Despite sharing many of the same worries about the present and hopes for the future, these groups were simply not in conversation with each other. They were, at best, skeptical, and at worst outright dismissive, of one another’s efforts.

Depolarization experts were often hesitant to center the concerns of marginalized groups for fear of triggering polarization by aligning with one “side”, perhaps recognizing the adverse consequences of justice campaigners’ strategic use of “breaking” to affect change (as with classic Alinsky-esque “name and shame” tactics), while justice advocates were often apprehensive that calls to bridge in order to reduce polarization were actually veiled appeals to weaken or undermine their demands in favor of the status quo.

More than anything, these tensions illustrate the complexity in building healthy democracies rooted in belonging. We strongly believe that a singular focus on either polarization or justice, bridging or belonging, constitutes a real barrier to all of our efforts. We cannot advance belonging without strong democratic systems and the capacity to coalition-build across difference, and we cannot bridge without acknowledging the concerns and demands of those being called to do so.

“Bridging is about creating compassionate space and practices where we can acknowledge each other’s stories and suffering,” our director john a. powell has said. “At a deeper level, bridging is about co-constructing a larger we, with shifting differences and similarities. Through bridging, people experience being heard, being seen, and being cared for.” 

I would add that it is a rejection of seeing “them” as fundamentally different from ourselves, a rejection of binaries and fairytale good vs. evil narratives. It is an embrace of nuance, of curiosity, and of the reality that we are fundamentally interconnected. Indeed, in our analysis, the solution to othering is not more othering (such as breaking into smaller identity groups and turning inward to people “like us”), but rather expanding who we include in our circle of concern—and taking pains to engage with them. 

At OBI, we believe that we need to hold both concerns around polarization and concern for marginalized groups at the same time in order to build the world we envision, one where democracy is strong and where the concerns of minority groups are centered. This may certainly sometimes be a paradoxical task, with inherent tensions and contradictions, but one that we must nonetheless grapple with in this crisis moment.

In line with that concern, we are proud to launch OBI’s inaugural program housed beyond US borders: the Democracy & Belonging Forum, which will bring together civic leaders in Europe and the US working across issue areas and ideological orientation to grapple with both the weighty demands of democracy and those of belonging. We also aim to build out lines of communication between polarization and democracy experts and social justice leaders, who we believe have much to learn from each other.

We will never call for activists and others fighting for the rights of vulnerable groups to water down their demands or moderate for the sake of countering division (demands we often share). But as needed to advance belonging, we also seek to better understand how our work contributes to or detracts from the health of our democracy, thoughtfully explore practices that reduce toxic polarization, and better appreciate why we have a collective interest in countering democratic degradation and populist authoritarianism.  

The Forum will develop as a transatlantic network for leaders who are committed to centering the needs and concerns of marginalized groups while bridging across lines of difference, building diverse coalitions, and strengthening democratic norms and systems. We will support their work through innovation microgrants, in-person and virtual events, intimate gatherings, and the dissemination of key resources. 

While there are certainly tensions inherent in this work, we believe that in this urgent moment of rising authoritarianism and growing far right political power, we have no choice but to do both at the same time, grappling with these tensions as we do the work itself.

We invite leaders from across the political spectrum who share our belief in the dignity of all people and our commitment to the pursuit of belonging for everyone to join us in this work. Let us know you’re interested today. 

Sara Grossman is the Director of the Democracy & Belonging Forum.