Ten years ago last week, a gunman killed twenty first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. The massacre shook the nation. Just weeks later, I was called into Newtown to help the community move forward, from trauma and despair to healing and hope.

Since then, school shootings have become so common that kids report imagining how they’d react if it happened to them. I have two children of my own; no child or parent, anywhere, anytime, should have to imagine such tragedy. 

The U.S. has more guns on the street than any other nation, with gun violence on the rise. In the last five years, the U.S. has had more mass shootings than any other comparable time span dating back to 1966. What’s going on? What should we be thinking about—and doing?

The 2022 elections are over, and the political instability once predicted seems to have passed. But the challenges people face in their lives have not magically evaporated because of one election season, nor have future political shenanigans. You, me and others who believe in creating a more inclusive, hopeful path moving forward must act—and with renewed intentionality. There is work to do, progress to make, hope to build. Now.

As election day approaches, tension and anxiety are rising to a feverish pitch across the country. What will be the fall out, and how will people and our nation endure the potential chaos and uncertainty that ensues? It is at this moment that we—you, me and others—must reclaim hope. Now.

The morning following the first public hearing investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rich Harwood offers a perspective on where we can find hope today despite the intensely negative news cycle. He urges us not to deny that may be tired, defeated, or even enraged. But that we find and embrace hope amid the many struggles and crises in the world today.

In the aftermath of the May 24th school shooting in Uvalde, TX, Rich Harwood reflects upon what it means to feel safe in our society and makes an entreaty to us all to take necessary action to ensure that every individual feels safe and holds real hope for their lives.

In the aftermath of the May 14th supermarket shooting in Buffalo, Rich Harwood offers his perspective on what it means to matter and to treat all Americans with the dignity and respect that is their birthright.

During his first State of the Union address, how can President Biden speak to the real concerns of Americans and call us forward to discover anew what we hold in common? Here’s how.

"The Drum Major Instinct" is one of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. sermons. It asks, “What does it mean to step forward to lead and serve?” This is especially important for any of us with a burning desire to create a more just, fair, equitable, inclusive and hopeful society. So, what is the nature of your own path?

On September 11, 2001, I was working in my home-study on a new book when I got a phone call from an old college friend imploring me to turn on the TV. There, I saw a plane ram into one of the World Trade Towers, where my college roommate Frank worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. In his anguish, he left a phone message for his wife. We lost him. I lost him.

As I watch the crumbling of Afghanistan, as I listen to Americans in a new mood of America study I am conducting, as I listen to the hyped and dangerous political debates over critical race theory, among so many other things in our world today, I wonder: Where is our humility?

How can we unleash the full and unbounded potential of people in communities to address the critical fault lines that beset us and transform our civic culture to support such action? This is the question I have been wrestling with.

There are times in your life when you become so angry, frustrated, scared, enraged, or feel threatened that you just want to walk away and give up. Now may be one of those times for you. I am hearing this from so many people. Perhaps I can hear you whispering such things as well.