You Probably Don’t Trust the Government. This Lab Plans to Fix That

America has a serious problem — a lack of trust in our elected leaders.
According to the Pew Research Center, less than half of the people in this country feel the current political system is effective at upholding their rights. Only 17 percent of Americans across party lines said they trust their government to do what’s right — compared to 75 percent in 1958.
These numbers are nearing a historic low.
In response to this crisis of faith, New Profit, a national venture philanthropy organization that funds social entrepreneurs, recently launched Civic Lab. Civic Lab’s goal is to promote nonpartisan democracy entrepreneurship by supporting a cohort of leaders who are working on solutions to build civic trust in America. The cohort currently consists of seven social impact entrepreneurs. Each leader received a $50,000 unrestricted grant, coaching and peer support in order to support their work.
“There’s declined trust in those kinds of institutions that actually used to be places where people formed communities and helped create the social connection and social fabric,” said Yordanos Eyoel, a partner at New Profit who leads Civic Lab.
Eyoel spent two years researching the civic needs of today’s society — a society that’s more divisive and more distrustful than ever before. “Civic Lab was really born with the emphasis of building and helping to support innovative grassroots solutions that are focused on building civic trust and civic culture in our country,” she told NationSwell.
Eyoel’s interest in civic engagement originates from her experience as a refugee. She was born in Ethiopia during the country’s longest civil war. She came to America in her early teens to join her mother, who had fled Ethiopia as a political refugee.
“Having grown up in a repressive government, I was obviously interested in civil society and activism,” Eyoel said. She started working at New Profit in 2013. A few years later, she had to decide between keeping her Ethiopian citizenship or becoming an American citizen. In 2016, the current state of political affairs in the U.S. motivated her to become an American citizen.
“It was a really big personal decision for me to forego my Ethiopian citizenship, but I made the decision to not sit on the electoral sidelines and to become a [U.S.] citizen and vote.”
Eyoel also helped co-found the Sister March Network, which helped mobilize the four million people who participated in the inaugural Women’s March in 2017. At the end of the march, Eyoel wanted to maintain the level of activism and engagement she saw with supporters of the march.
After two years of interviewing entrepreneurs and researching social distrust, Eyoel led the launch of Civic Lab, which brings together organizations that are addressing civic trust in multidimensional ways from multigenerational perspectives.
The pilot cohort launched this past March and features leaders from a range of sectors. But all leaders have a focus on democracy entrepreneurship.
One cohort member, Katie Fahey, is a 26-year-old activist who tackled gerrymandering in Michigan. With the help of Civic Lab, she’s taking on the rest of the country through her organization The People. Another cohort member, Rev. Gregory Holston, founded the interfaith organization POWER, which aims to unite faith-based communities on fighting for justice reform.
“We have shared values and shared cause but our tactics and strategies in the different spaces can help to inform what works,” said cohort member Steven Olikara, who is the founder and CEO of Millennial Action Project (MAP), the largest nonpartisan organization for young lawmakers.

civic lab
Steven Olikara (first row, far left) is the founder and CEO of Millennial Action Project. Here, he stands with a group of nonpartisan, millennial lawmakers.

Olikara is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is currently the most racially and politically segregated city in the country, according to the Brookings Institute. MAP’s goal is to empower, develop and amplify millennial lawmakers across the country and across party lines.
Olikara launched the nonprofit in 2013, and with the support of Civic Lab, aims to scale the organization beyond the dozens of legislators MAP currently supports.
With the help of a coach, who has experience in the private, political and nonprofit sectors, Olikara is gaining valuable new expertise.
Olikara said it’s key that the social venture philanthropy sector focuses on democracy entrepreneurship.
“Nothing scales a solution like public policy, and nothing solves the root cause like political reform.”
Olikara stressed it’s a critical moment when an anchor in social venture philanthropy, such as New Profit, identifies democracy entrepreneurship as a top priority.
“If you’re working on education, the environment, or immigration issues and not looking at the underlying reason of why our political system has not produced better outcomes in those areas,” he said, “then you’re missing the boat.”
More: Can A Nonreligious Church Save Politics?

They’re Helping to Keep Families Together Just by Showing Up

Ravi Ragbir is ready for a fight. For the past two decades, the Trinidadian immigrant has been living in bureaucratic limbo and now, is even more unsure whether he will be able to remain living in the U.S. with his American wife and child.
“Imagine that you can be ripped apart from your children and families without their input. Don’t think that because it’s not your fault, your children won’t feel abandoned. Your children will feel abandoned,” Ragbir says, which is what many immigrant parents and children feel under the current tide of immigration enforcement.
Even though the stakes are seemingly higher than ever under the Trump administration, it wasn’t necessarily any easier for immigrants under the tenure of President Obama, who was coined the “deporter-in-chief” by UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza), the nation’s largest Latino advocacy group.
Ragbir, who came to the U.S. in 1991 under a visitor’s visa and received a green card in 1994, is the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City. The nonprofit organization provides non-U.S. citizens support and protection via its unique accompaniment program, which pairs immigrants with American citizens that attend legal proceedings with them.
The group’s consulting and outreach services and community events reach 700,000 immigrants and their family members, a hefty number for a small office based inside a church in Manhattan’s West Village.
“Because we’re an all-volunteer and pro se legal force, the number of people really goes beyond our capacity, but we can handle it by the way we manage the program,” says Ragbir, explaining that he personally trained many of the staff and volunteers on everything he knew.
“I had to download my brain completely. In case something happened to me, this place needed to be self-sufficient,” he says.
Religious leaders and elected officials often participate in the accompaniment program, standing in solidarity with immigrants when they go to naturalization interviews or check-ins with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
“Imagine you have a pastor watching,” Ragbir says. “It changes the whole process. It’s more working within the system so they aren’t deporting the person.”
In March 2017, Ragbir participated in the accompaniment program himself. Since his 2001 conviction for wire fraud, he’s been fighting a deportation order and is mandated to meet with immigration officials annually. Sen. Gustavo Rivera, City Councilmembers Jumaane Williams and Ydanis Rodriguez, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other religious leaders stood alongside Ragbir during his yearly check-in, where it was determined that he could stay in the country for another year.
“I have you guys, and you are all here for me. But imagine those who do not,” he said to a crowd of supporters before his meeting that day. “We need to protect them, we need to protect each other.”

The Tweet That Launched a Movement

Two thousand and forty-four miles.
A distance that would take 677 hours to walk.
A distance that would take around 30 hours to drive.
A distance that technology immediately obliterated as four passionate citizens united against police violence.

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Just days after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, civil rights activists DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie were on the ground in Ferguson, Mo., documenting on social media the unrest that ruled the streets. Shortly thereafter, the two connected with Brittany Packnett, the then-executive director of Teach for America in St. Louis.
As #Ferguson became a rallying cry on social media, Oprah Winfrey leveled a critique at the Black Lives Matter movement (which used Twitter to mobilize its followers), saying that it didn’t have clear goals, leadership or asks. Mckesson tweeted a reply, listing demands of the protesters.
Meanwhile, more than half a continent away, Samuel Sinyangwe spotted Mckesson’s response and felt compelled to reach out.
“I replied to the tweet saying that I could help develop a policy agenda that implements these demands in practice. I didn’t know who DeRay or anyone was,” says Sinyangwe, who was doing policy work for a nonprofit in Oakland, Calif. “As a policy analyst, I wanted to contribute policy.”
Two thousand and forty-four miles separated Sinyangwe from Mckesson and the other protesters in Ferguson. Yet Mckesson’s 140-character post forged a virtual connection and jumpstarted a conversation that would, in just a few short months, result in the formation of the far-left leaning nationwide organization WeTheProtesters.
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Initial phone calls between Sinyangwe and Mckesson (and later, Elzie and Packnett as well) focused on a shared understanding that data needed to inform policy making so that it would gain traction with both the public and government officials at all levels.
“What made it work was that we’re all committed to the same goals, and we each have a particular skillset that added value to each other’s work. It was all about the commitment to work; it was not about our own personalities,” says Sinyangwe. “I can analyze the data and identify policy solutions. DeRay can communicate that very well in relationships with media. [Joh]Netta can make sure the information — this sort of ivory tower research — is accessible to people and Brittany has institutional access to make sure these recommendations are embedded in some of the foremost institutions of government.”
Not surprising to the activists, their data mining uncovered systemic problems with policing use-of-force practices nationwide. Taking that information, they developed and launched Campaign Zero, a series of 10 proposed policing policy solutions, like ending broken windows policing, community representation, demilitarization and fair police union contracts.
“No other group had ID’ed solutions and grounded it in data and evidence,” Sinyangwe says.
Sinyangwe and company also leveraged data to create a second resource, a groundbreaking interactive map that provides comprehensive information (name, location, description of incident and a link to related, authoritative news coverage) for each police-involved shooting in the United States.
“In the beginning, it was all about convincing the country that it was a crisis — that police violence was happening everywhere, not just in St. Louis or Baltimore,” says Sinyangwe. “No one is going to read a 30-page report on this, but people will look at something that looks high quality and communicates [the information] in much less time.”
Using off-the-shelf technology (often free or free-trial versions) as they continued to collaborate virtually, Sinyangwe and his WTP cofounders built a tech-powered infrastructure that overcame geographic limitations. (“It was literally a period of months before I met everyone in person,” says Sinyangwe.) They shared information in Google docs and sheets, held meetings in Hangouts, designed infographics with Piktocharts and created data tables using Tableau.
Typeform proved to be particularly valuable to WeTheProtesters in recruiting volunteers. The group used the platform to increase its ranks by around 16,000 people in just two weeks. These helpers were then organized into groups and used Slack to communicate, building a bond in cyberspace.
WeTheProtesters is supported by Fast Forward, an accelerator for tech-focused nonprofits and a partner of Comcast NBCUniversal. Today, the group’s biggest challenge is scaling its systems so that more citizens can become effective advocates.
“Across the country, as I’m meeting people and speaking at various venues, people come up to me and ask, ‘How do I get involved?… I want to do something, but I don’t know what to do about it,’” says Sinyangwe. “In today’s day and age, when you see the hyper-targeting of every political campaign, there is no excuse to not have a pathway to get involved. People shouldn’t have to ask anymore.”
But just in case, WeTheProtesters created a Wikipedia-style guide known as the Resistance Manual. The crowdsourced webpage tracks local, state and federal issues, offers resources on effective organizing and lists upcoming teach-ins, town halls and marches across the country. It’s part of a wave of new digital tools created since the 2016 presidential election in response to people’s renewed interest in politics.
Sinyangwe believes that it’s possible to awaken and amplify more voices, “in part because of the tools that we have available to us, because of the platforms and technology and the creative ways we’re using it.”
If he’s right, this tech-driven era of activism may bring about a level of civic engagement unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
Additional reporting by Chris Peak.
This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.

The Surprising Story Behind One School’s Healthy Lunch Program, The Best Way to Reach Your Reps and More

 
Revenge of the Lunch Lady, The Huffington Post Highline
In a country where cheap mass-produced food is king and pizza counts as a vegetable, healthy lunches for kids can be hard to come by. But a recent revamp of school fare in Huntington, W.V., previously designated as the nation’s unhealthiest city, provides a hopeful model. There, an enterprising employee managed to implement a healthy lunch program, starring locally grown produce, while maintaining the district’s minuscule $1.50-per-meal budget.
Getting a Busy Signal When You Call Congress? Here’s How to Get Through, The Christian Science Monitor
Since President Trump’s inauguration last month, there’s been a surge in citizens reaching out to Congress, but not all forms of communication are equally effective. If you really want your voice heard, say experts, try meeting with your representative in person, writing a personal letter and focusing on policy rather than cabinet picks.
The Compost King of New York, The New York Times
New York City alone generates 1 million tons of organic waste per year, but a new plant on Long Island will process this waste into both fertilizer and clean energy, generating significant returns. This new large-scale industrial waste processing is both more environmentally friendly and more profitable than traditional composting, and could revolutionize American energy.
Continue reading “The Surprising Story Behind One School’s Healthy Lunch Program, The Best Way to Reach Your Reps and More”

Can New Tools End the AIDS Epidemic by 2020?

In 1995, Perry Halkitis watched as New York City’s AIDS crisis unfolded around him and quit his job to focus full-time on the plague killing thousands of gay men. Professionally, it probably wasn’t an advantageous move, but he never doubted that it was the right thing to do. Halkitis, who, at age 18, came out to his Greek immigrant parents in 1981, is now a professor of public health, applied psychology and medicine at New York University. Two years ago, he completed a book about HIV+ gay men who survived that era, and he’s now working on a book about the experience of coming out across generations. Speaking to NationSwell in his Greenwich Village office, Halkitis recalled the experience of witnessing two devastating decades of the AIDS epidemic and his hope of finding a cure.

What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I do work in gay men’s health, part of which is HIV. I emphasize that because too often people think about gay men’s health work as being synonymous with HIV. The thing that is most exciting me is that there are biomedical interventions that have been developed over the course of the last decade that provide another way to fight the epidemic. Now what do I mean that? We have something called PrEP now, which is administering an antiviral once a day to people who are HIV- that prevents them from becoming infected. It’s miraculous. We also know very clearly that HIV+ people — now living longer, fuller lives — who adhere to their treatment have viral suppression and are un-infectious. That is remarkable to me that these biomedical advances enable people to deter both acquiring and spreading the infection. We haven’t fully realized the power of these tools, and there are some challenges with them. But in the absence of a cure, it is the best thing we have.

Are these tools powerful enough that we can talk about ending the epidemic?
There are conversations about ending the epidemic. In New York, two years ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo put forward a mandate to end AIDS by 2020. By that, he meant making infections go from 3,000 to 750 a year by use of these tools. So, do I think these tools are, in and of themselves, enough to bring an end to AIDS? They can get us near the end. We know perfectly well that people don’t finish their antibiotics and that people don’t exercise regularly. Being dependent completely on administering medicine on a regular basis is challenging reality. So I’m going to say that we’re going to do a really good job at deterring new infections.

What motivates you to do this work?
My decision, about 25 years ago, to enter this field was purely directed by the loss I experienced in my life. I was trained as an applied statistician working at a testing company, and at night, I was an activist. I was in New York City; AIDS was all around me. I witnessed friends dying. I decided to merge the two: to take my skills as a researcher and combine them with my passion as an activist. I find my motivation in the memory of the people who I’ve lost. I find my motivation in making sure that a new generation is free of this disease. And I find my motivation in training my students who are going to continue the good work once I’ve finished. I want gay men to be healthy, and I’m going to do everything in my power to see that.

What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
Don’t expect it to get easier over time. It’s going to get harder and more complicated. The more I learn and the more writing and research I do, the less I think I actually know. Which is good: it opens up more questions. I would have told myself in 1995 to be prepared for any possibility that might happen in this epidemic. I would tell myself to keep hope. I don’t think I had a lot of hope in 1995 that there was going to be an end to this epidemic. I was going to fight the battle for as long as I needed. And I would have told myself to be better about writing about my day-to-day life, which I haven’t done. It would have been an interesting story.

What’s your proudest accomplishment?
My book “The AIDS Generation,” where I documented the lives of 15 men who were long-term survivors. It could be the period at the end of the sentence of my career, if I did nothing else. (Surprise, I’m doing more.) I’m incredibly proud of that book, because it got a lot of attention in the popular press, and it inspired a conversation. Sean, one of the guys in the book, reminds me all of the time: “You started all of this.” I don’t really know if that’s true, but I like to think that I contributed to the beginning of the dialogue about long-term survivors.

To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Homepage photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.