Renew America Together

Outreach & education:renew America Together uses a historical perspective to investigate american civility, in order to place today's partisan atmosphere in proper context. American democracy has always been conflictual and chaotic. This is the nature of a system, which is founded on the principle of e pluribus unum (out of many, one) and the ongoing competition of the ideas, values, and priorities of the american people. This background is best viewed in overlapping, long-term political, economic, and increasingly global cycles that last for decades. For the last 100 years, America has managed to balance action and reaction with limited acrimony and little bloodshed thanks to a functioning system of checks and balances on many different levels.there is no guarantee that history does not repeat, nor that these cycles will continue with benign impact over future generations. But continued competition seems inevitable so long as the government is based on a constitution, which separates powers between branches and calls for one branch to check and balance another. The big questions: are these institutions healthy enough, and is our population informed, educated, and engaged enough, for the threats and challenges ahead? Do we have a sufficient commitment to civics, civility, and citizenship needed to address and resolve our differences? Can our electorate see through the divisiveness of the media, special interests, and partisan politics to demand of its elected officials' real achievements in addressing the major issues that face america?renew America Together seeks to bring this perspective to the public square, and reach all segments of the population through three key programs: civility leadership institute and civility summitt, engaging in small group discussions with key political and economic leaders in townhall meetings, and pop-up classes. Our programs provide examples of bipartisanship and civil dialogue to universities and organizations and educate citizens on the merits of collaboration that improve our polarized american society.our flagship program, civility leadership institute (cli), brings Together community leaders from across the country who engage in a year of communication training and insightful conversations to bridge viewpoints and seek common ground. Cli consists of "cohort" classes of around 30 people who go through an application process to participate. Participants selected represent diversity in several identifying categories including: age, gender, race, political affiliation, geographic location, occupation, education level, and more. Each applicant must provide a practical summary of how they will benefit from participating in the course. Including six months of training sessions, each cohort member engages in six months of additional follow-up to report back how cli has made a difference in their day-to-day lives. Participants in our previous cohorts who have completed the program have gone on to apply their learnings in various ways including: co-writing more inclusive policies in the workplace, taking on new leadership roles and responsibilities, public speaking on civility, writing articles, starting a podcast on positive things happening in America, co-writing a legislative bill to support mothers, and more. 96.4% of the cohort one participants reported applications of the things they learned in cli with some success.the civility leadership institute begins and ends with an in-person conference called the civility summit. In 2023, Renew America Together hosted the second annual event. Around 65 people gathered in little rock, Arkansas for three days of learning, training, service, and collaboration. Other programs of Renew America Together include town-hall meetings and an experimental pop-up class on civility for collegiate students. In 2023, the organization hosted these events successfully in-person while laying the groundwork for expansion of additional civility programs and classes for 2024.