it’s time to spark conversations.
to repair.
to imagine.
to commit.
Us@250 is an invitation to each of us, on behalf of all of us. To get inspired, and inspire others. To mobilize, and be mobilized. To offer grace, and to receive grace. And to do so in ways that not only allow but respect our ability to face history, make history, and create history.
Through dialogue and discourse, joint action and shared experience, hard work, and joyous work across spaces large and small we can live up to our nation’s ideals, and strengthen and build muscles as a people.
The civic muscles of…
To be able to see beyond what has been, and what is. To audaciously imagine the America we want to build. To be generative as a people about our next 250 years.
To believe we all belong to something greater— this idea called America. To be more able to see our fellow Americans—and all the ways we are similar and yet unique—as a deep fabric of our identity. Building belonging is to act as if the nation is big enough to hold us all.
To be able to face truths—especially ones that we would rather look away from—and to sit with those truths, without trying to deny nor fix what can never be truly fixed. To embrace our accountability to end harm. To do that, so we can repair and heal. Both are necessary to create an equitable future.
To be able to see care as central and visible to our work as individuals, families, companies, cities, states, and as a nation. Work that is essential to human flourishing, organizational productivity, and national prosperity. And thus, it must be acknowledged, uplifted, and compensated commensurate with its value.
To be more able—from acts as individuals, families, organizations, towns and cities, states, and nations—to approach the land, the planet, and systems in a way that regenerates and constantly renews, rather than exploits and depletes.
To be able to love and critique, to reckon and still have hope, to see my own view while holding someone else’s as equally valid. To celebrate independence and inter-dependence. To see the greatness in America and also where we have much work to still do.
To be able to believe, see, and act as if someone else’s flourishing is connected to my own. To believe in a positive-sum society, and that there’s a dividend to being in solidarity with many others, both like and unlike me.