Finding Hope After Presidential Debate Fiasco

The first presidential debate left many Americans feeling frustrated and disheartened. On a special episode of Turning Outward Together, Rich Harwood discusses how we can find hope after last night's presidential debate fiasco. Rich covers the opportunity before us all, and 4 steps you can take to reimagine and recreate where we can go, together.

Transcript:

0:01

Hi, I'm Rich Harwood. Welcome to a special edition of Turning Outward Together. Good to have you. Good to have you with me. How do we find hope after last night's fiasco at that presidential debate? I don't know if you watched it, but maybe a better way to say it is how do we how do we create hope? Did you get a chance to watch it? And if you did, I'm wondering, how did you feel as you were watching it? How did you feel about yourself? How did you feel about ourselves? How did you feel about our country? How did you feel about our shared future? You know, about 15 minutes, maybe less? Maybe 10 minutes into into the debate. I got a text from my from my 30 year old daughter who lives in Richmond, Virginia. And it just said, Are you watching Dad? I texted her back, Yes. And I got another text back which read. I don't think I can watch anymore. I don't think I can watch anymore. And I suspect that so many of you so many of us, I know myself included, felt as though we couldn't watch anymore. And so many people probably like my daughter chose to turn off the television because it was just so frustrating. It was just so frustrating. But you know, I watched the whole damn thing from beginning to end. And then I watched the commentary afterward. It was a long night. I'm exhausted this morning. But I felt that I needed to watch it. I felt disgusted. I felt deflated. I felt enraged. As I watched it, I felt angry. I felt incredibly ashamed. That, that this is what's going on in our country today. You know, I'll say this once I don't like to criticize a sitting president something that in my 30 years of doing this work I've avoided. But I will say this about our current president. He hijacked that debate last night to save his reelection chances to save his own butt. And he did it without any care or affection for our nation, or our people. It's the most damning thing I can say about a president he even when asked by the moderator, Chris Wallace, when asked to denounce white supremacy, and the group proud boys, here's what he said. And I'm sure you've seen the clips and read the newspaper articles. He said, You know, they should stand back. And then in the very same breath, he said and stand by. What the hell does that mean? Standby. Standby for what? Standby for whom? Standby to do what? The folks, the proud boys love what the President said so much that they took this new slogan, stand back and stand by and integrated it into their logo. Let me be clear. And I hope you share this and I know you share this. There is no room in our nation, in our communities in our lives, for hatred for bigotry for discrimination. There is no room. There is zero room. There is zero tolerance, there ought to be zero tolerance for it there isn't. And on that stage last night there wasn't.

4:17

But there must be in our nation. And so we suffered last night. We suffered let's be clear. We all suffered. Our democracy suffered. The people in our nation suffered the people who are hurting suffered. And everything that this Institute and that I stand for happened last night that were against the kind of bigotry the hatred, the bullying. The attacks, the undermining of a debate, the inability for people to hear what different candidates believe the future of our country ought to be, I stand against everything that happened last night. And I condemn it. I condemn it. Now, a columnist said today, the headline was that our nation is in irredeemable darkness, irredeemable darkness. These are dark times. These are dark times, but I have to disagree with the columnists. I believe we are redeemable. I believe we can redeem ourselves, we must redeem ourselves. And here's my point today, we will redeem ourselves as a people. And as a nation.

On my speaking tour last year, about my new book Stepping Forward, I went to about 20 communities in just four months or so. And in the first few minutes of every speech, I would say, we do not have to accept what's happening in our country today. We do not have to accept what's happening in our country today, we have a choice. In the last six months, I still believe even more, that we don't have to accept what's happening in our country today. And let me say, after last night, I'll be damned if we accept what's happening in our country.

Today, we face four crises, four simultaneous crises in our nation that we need to address. We face a public health pandemic COVID-19 that has killed over 200,000 Americans infected millions and many more are going to die before this is all over. And this pandemic has laid bare the inequities and disparities in our nation for all of us to see. This pandemic has hit brown and Black people, disproportionately poor people, disproportionately people with mental health illness. It's a crime, it's a sin. We need to do something about it. We face an economic crisis as a result of this pandemic that is wreaking havoc on our country. So many small businesses and nonprofits have had to close people who have invested their entire lives and life savings have seen a damaged because we have not addressed this pandemic. So many people have lost their jobs and are unemployed. So many people are afraid of becoming unemployed. So many communities’ downtowns have been hollowed out. And they fear that they will not rebound. We face a crisis of systemic racism and social injustice. Now, let's be clear. This crisis has been with us since before the founding of our nation is part of our original sin. But it has been crystallized for all of us to see on videos and on television, with the murder of George Floyd and others.

8:02

We can no longer turn away and turn our backs. We must engage with this issue with these issues, and find a way to make a more equitable, fair and just society and we face a crisis a political crisis in our country, a crisis that I've been writing about for over 30 years now, it didn't just happen with this president or this Congress. What's happened in the last four years or eight years or whatever it may be. It has been coming for a long time, people have lost faith in their leaders. They've lost faith in their institutions. They've lost faith in religious institutions. We have lost faith in one another. In this political crisis, well, we need our politics in order to come together and solve our problems.

But here's the thing. Here's the thing, we have an opportunity today, and this is what I want to underscore is mad and as angry as I am today. What I really want to underscore is the opportunity that you and I and all of us have together. Notwithstanding the fiasco that happened last night, we still face an opportunity and it is this. We have the opportunity to reimagine and recreate our lives to reimagine and recreate our communities to reimagine and recreate this nation. We have the opportunity to begin a new to begin a new, we ought not to be talking about how to fix our problems. We need to talk about how to recreate and reimagine who we are and who we can become and how we're going to create a path to get there.

Now, some of you answered the questionnaire that we sent out back in May and June to frontline civic leaders about what how they were responding to COVID-19, to the emerging issues of systemic racism, social injustice that were on the front pages at that time. And here's what people said, among the many answers that they gave us. We asked them, What do you fear, what you fear as we move forward? And people said that amid all the pain and suffering that our nation was experienced, and all the pain and suffering that we are experiencing now, which is much greater than it was some months ago, they said that they fear most of all more than anything…they fear losing this opportunity before us. We don't have to lose this opportunity. We are not in a redeemable darkness, we can redeem ourselves, we can put our nation on a more hopeful, inclusive path, a path that is more equitable, more just more fair, where everyone has an opportunity to fulfill their God given potential, and has a real shot at the American dream.

11:13

We have an opportunity to make a choice to bring out the best in us and the best of us. And just stop bringing out the worst in us and the worst of us. That was last night's fiasco. Let's put it behind us. And let's declare today, let's declare today that no matter what happens on that presidential stage for the next two debates, and in this election, that we in our local communities can put this country on a better path, a more hopeful path, where we bring out the best in ourselves and in one another.

Now, before laying out four steps, I think we need to take to do that I just want to acknowledge something. And that is that we find ourselves today, six months into this pandemic. And these other crises, we find ourselves in a kind of messy middle about what's happening in the country, there is no end in sight to this mess. We don't know when a vaccine is going to come about we don't know when, despite the fact the efforts to reopen schools and colleges and universities and, and sports leagues, we keep reopening them, shutting them back down. We don't know when we're going to get back to lives that we once knew into hopefully a life that we reimagine and recreate together. And so for now, in this messy middle. Our lives are in upheaval. Our country is an upheaval, our communities are in upheaval, our relationships, many of them are in upheaval. And so I just want to say that I know, I know from continuing to speak to people all across the country, in our work, that some of you are coming today and listening to me today. And you're unhappy. Some of you are here today and you are depressed. Some of you are here today and you are lonely and feeling alone. Some of you are here today and you feel defeated, that we are defeated that maybe you are defeated. Some of you feel deflated. Some of you feel disgusted. Some of you have lost a loved one to this pandemic. Others of you fear losing an elderly parent or someone with pre-existing conditions. So if you as I've mentioned before, have lost your job, no people who have lost their jobs or fear you will lose your job. And so in this period in this messy middle that we find ourselves in today, we all need you need I need we all need something to be for not simply something to be against. We need something to be for. We want to look to the future. And think about what we can co create together to build a more hopeful, a more inclusive, a more just a more fair, a more equitable society. That's the work we must do.

Now, yesterday morning, I spent an hour and a half in a regional roundtable, virtual regional roundtable that that we're holding across the country was the third one that we've done. Yesterday's was in the southwest with leaders from New Mexico and Texas and elsewhere. We've done these roundtables in the northeast and the southeast. We have two others coming up. You can go to our website, by the way and still sign up for one. No matter what region you live in, just sign up for one. And the day before the fiasco took place and terms of that debate last night, the same just hours, just hours before that fiasco unfolded. I heard people talk in New Mexico and Texas in the southwest about their spirit, their common spirit about the good things that they're doing in their community to address these crises that I mentioned before. And so I want to build on their spirit, I want to build on the things that they're doing. I want to build on your spirit and the things that I know that you're doing, and they're happening in your community.

And here's what I believe we must do in order to move forward to reimagine and recreate our society. And to begin a new, four things, four things, I hope you're still with me here, four things. The first one is this. There's been a lot written about personal resilience. And I'm a big fan of personal resilience. Maybe it's because I grew up as a kid who faced and battled a serious childhood illness. And I learned a lot about personal resilience through that, through that illness. And so I read about it a lot, I think about it a lot. And I've lived it a lot. And as much as we might know about personal resilience, and as strong as our own personal networks may be, they are necessary, but not sufficient to reimagine and recreate our society moving forward. Because to do that, to reimagine and recreate our society moving forward, we need shared action, collective action in our communities, beyond ourselves and our own individual lives. I believe that so much of the action that we need must come from our local community. Yes, we need change in Washington, DC. Yes, we need change in our state capitals. But so much of what we need must come from our local communities. Why? Why because it's in our local communities where we can turn outward toward one another. It's in our local communities where we can see and hear one another. It's in our local communities where we can come together and work together. It's in our local communities where we can restore our belief belief that we can come together and get things done again. It's in our local communities that we can reimagine and recreate our society and begin a new and create a new trajectory for our country. And it's in our local communities when we start to take this action together. That at a time when we are hunkered down and fearful and nervous and apprehensive and anxious. The antidote to those things is to feel a sense of agency. And you feel agency when you step forward and join with others and get in motion and start to take action. It's the greatest antidote to anxiety and apprehension and fear. Because in doing so, we realize we are no longer alone. In doing so we realize that we can join together to take action in real life, when in doing so we realize that while we cannot control the world around us, we can shape our future, we can shape our future. And as we do so, as we begin to get in motion and start to take action. We discover new possibilities. And as we do that we discover new partners. And as we do that, we discover new serendipity. And so the first thing is, yes, personal resilience is important. But we need shared action in our local communities, if we want to get on a more hopeful, inclusive, just equitable path.

Second, second, we must recommit ourselves to the basic ideas of dignity, hope, and community as a common enterprise. Let me just talk briefly about these ideas. You may have heard me talk about them before. dignity. I think we like to talk a lot about it these days. Everyone likes to talk about it seems to be everywhere. But truth be told, I think we give good lip service to the notion of dignity in our society. we afford people dignity, who look like us we have, we deny it to people whose skin color is different. We often denied to people whose ethnicity is different. we deny to people who hold a different job, we live in a different part of town. we deny to people who speak a different native language than we do even though they're American citizens. we deny to people who have a different heritage or a different history. And it seems to me that if we want to get on a more hopeful path, a more inclusive path where we can reimagine and recreate our society and our communities and begin a new then we need to make dignity a birthright for every single American every single individual regardless of the color of their skin, their color. their ethnicity, where they live, how much money they have, it is non negotiable. It is a human right? Not a political right, a human right. And it is at the essence of who we are as human beings, and is required for us to move forward as a better, more equitable society. Hope I mentioned hope.

Now, I've worked on lots of political campaigns. And I know that hope is often used as a campaign slogan, it's on bumper stickers. Academics love to write books about hope I've written three or four books myself with the word hope in their title. But here's the thing. Hope to me is not some abstract notion. Hope, to me is not simply a belief. Hope to me is, is defined this way. It's the single mom who has two kids. And what I want to know is, does she have a sense of hope that her two kids can go to a public school tomorrow or learn in a remote pod tomorrow, and that there's a teacher who cares about her two kids, that there are people in that school who care about her two kids, and that her two kids will have a shot at fulfilling their God given potential in this country, and have an equal shot as my kids did at the American dream. Hope has to be for everyone, not just for some of us.

And lastly, community is a common enterprise. Again, we like to talk about community a lot it gives us warm feelings and fuzzies makes us feel good about ourselves. But to me community, what we have a choice is community for some of us, or is community for all of us, is community for those of us who look like us look like you who sound like us? who share our faith, who share the color of our skin, who share our ethnicity, who hold the same economic status, or as community for all of us, will we make room for everyone? And will there be room for everyone? Will community be a common enterprise where we are pulling with common cause in a common direction with a sense of common purpose, marshaling our common resources, where we leave no one behind because no one should go on their own. All alone. We either succeed together or we fail together. And it seems to me that we need to make community as a common enterprise as we recreate and reimagine who we are and who we can become, and to begin anew.

22:48

So if the first idea is that personal resilience is necessary, but not sufficient, we need shared action in our local communities. And the second idea is that we need to recommit to dignity, hope and community as a common enterprise. The third idea is this. I just want you to get an image in your mind when I say this. I believe we need to pitch tents in our community tents, tents, where we can come together, where we can join together, not a single tent, but multiple tents throughout our communities. We can join together and figure out how we're going to move forward together, you know, as some of you know, I'm a person of faith and in the Bible, Abraham had a tent. And as some of you know, Abraham's tent was open on all four sides. Why? Because Abraham wanted to welcome anyone who wanted to come into the tent at any time, the stranger, the enemy, those who oppose something he might be doing. And where was Abraham standing, he was standing at the edge of the tent, always scouting, looking for people who might be coming. So he could welcome them into the tent. I think we need to pitch tents in our communities that are open on all four sides, so that people can come in. And we can build a culture of shared responsibility for our communities, for ourselves, and for one another.

You know, in this New Mexico roundtable, one of the things that people said, which I've heard a lot across the country, is that we are innovating more today than maybe at any other time in the last I don't know, decade or two because we've had to, to respond to this pandemic, to respond to kids being out of school to respond to the need to make sure that people who are shut in aren't lonely and alone. We have found ways to practice our faiths without going into our buildings for the most part. We have done all sorts of innovative things. But what they said in New Mexico and Texas yesterday in this roundtable was instructive. They said, as much as we have been innovating. We are increasingly siloed and fragmented from one another because we don't have places to come together to talk to one Another to innovate together to learn together to share together. It doesn't have to be that way. As someone said, the gentleman named Joaquin said at the end of that roundtable yesterday, he said some of his colleagues, he said, you know, it's great that the Harwood Institute convened this roundtable for us here today. But we ought to be convening these roundtables all the time, so that people can come together and share and learn together. In other words, we ought to be creating our own tent.

That's what they're doing in Clark County, Kentucky, where we've been working as partners with folks there 60 organizations virtually have created their own 10 coming together twice a week to figure out how to deal with this COVID crisis and how to address systemic issues that are emerging out of it. That's what we need to do in our communities. Let's follow the leader Clark County, Kentucky. Let's follow Keens lead in New Mexico. Let's build tents in our communities where we can come together and share ideas and learn together and innovate together and work together and build a culture of shared responsibility together. So again, if the first point is that we need personal resilience, it's necessary, but not sufficient, because we need shared action in our local communities. If the second idea is that we've got to recommit ourselves to the ideas and practices of dignity, hope and communities a common enterprise. And the third idea is that we need to pitch tents in our communities with all four sides open, then the last thing we need to do is that you need to use your civic energy judiciously. One of things I hear from people all across the country, another thing I hear is that we feel this sense of urgency, and we all feel it. And last night made us feel even more that we need to do something we need to improve our society, we need how we need to transform our society. And so we want to get out there and do as much as we can for as many people as we can. We all feel that urge, that sense of urgency. But here's the thing.