image from obama.org
Reflections on the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum
by Liz Vogel
When New Pluralists began our work in 2021, there wasn’t a lot of conversation or shared understanding about what the term pluralism itself meant or why anyone should care.
A lot has changed since then, and one of the most encouraging signals of that was that two major conferences and convenings within the philanthropic space this year have used pluralism as their themes: In May, the Council on Foundations hosted “Building Together,” which encouraged leaders to develop strategies and skills to productively navigate differences, and earlier this month, the Obama Foundation’s annual Democracy Forum chose to examine how the practice can be used to bridge both political and social divides.
I was grateful to be invited to attend the Democracy Forum this year, and I’m still processing what I heard from other attendees and from the powerful lineup of speakers and panelists. Conversations about pluralism in the wake of a contentious US election, both within the philanthropic space and among practitioners, are particularly necessary and also challenging. And yet I trust that the idea and practice is resilient. As Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment said, “Pluralism craves questions and dies without courage.”
I was particularly struck by Kleinfeld’s framing of pluralism as among the only positive human reactions to increasing diversity in our societies. The others, hierarchy and repression, are negative responses that seek to quell the influence – and often outright subjugate the power – of unwelcome groups of people, ideas, and practices. Pluralism, she said, offers a different path: one that embraces those perceived divisions as strengths that can benefit our societies and ourselves.
It was also heartening to see so many incredible leaders from across the pluralism ecosystem highlighted at the event. Founding Field Builder Eboo Patel of Interfaith America, a non-profit organization working to make interfaith cooperation a social norm, spoke about America as a potluck supper rather than “a battlefield where we defeat our fellow citizens.” Another founding Field Builder, Layla Zaidane, President & CEO of Future Caucus, the largest nonpartisan organization of millennial lawmakers in the U.S., spoke with two Kansas legislators about working across the aisle in a statehouse where one party holds a super majority.
There were so many other New Pluralists-affiliated allies in the room, it was enough to warm my Southern Californian heart on a blustery December day in Chicago. I also appreciated the opportunity to hear President Obama interpret pluralism in our current context. His full remarks can be found here, but I was struck by this observation early in his speech, when he spoke about some of the criticisms of pluralism as “not enough” to meet the moment: “It’s easy to give democracy lip service when it delivers the outcomes we want. It’s when we don’t get what we want that our commitment to democracy is tested. And at this moment in history — when core democratic principles seem to be continuously under attack, when too many people around the world have become cynical and disengaged — now is precisely the time to ask ourselves tough questions about how we can build our democracies and make them work in meaningful and practical ways for ordinary people.”
Check out the resources the Obama Foundation put together to help organizations and everyday people understand and practice pluralism
