Why this newsletter and why now?

Ever since our founding, We the People have lived separate lives in groups divided along demographic and ideological lines. 

Today these separately lived lives are turning We the People into one of the biggest threats that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has ever faced. 

It is time that you and I changed that. 

It is time to remake the space between us: to open the space within groups and to close the distance across them, so we stop fighting against and start fighting alongside one another for a common goal: building a better future for all, not some.

Hundreds of thousands of people across the country are already doing just that. But because most news media leads with what bleeds, you would never know it.

This newsletter aims to set the record straight. There is a new citizen movement afoot and this newsletter will tell you all about it. 

What kind of space will this newsletter create?

This newsletter creates a space for us to explore how we got to where we are today and how we can move forward, together. 

• It is a mutually respectful space in which we can share ideas and stories about how We the People became the problem and how we can become the solution we need each other to be.

• It is a humble space. Our nation may be among the oldest constitutional republics, but as a multigroup democracy, we are infants, and we have much to learn, especially from each other. 

• It is a space of possibility in which we will inspire and empower one another to find and bring out the best in ourselves, so we can find and bring out the best in America.

• It is a space of curiosity about who we are, what we want, why we want it, and how we can together create a better future out of a past we still carry within us.

• It is a space of perpetual paradox where we will confront the brutal facts while never losing faith that We the People will prevail in the end.

• It is a space where the discouraged and exhausted among us can reach across lines of difference and find a friend. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln once said. 

Let’s finally make it true.

What can you expect from this newsletter?

Every one to two weeks a newsletter will arrive in your email inbox (if it doesn’t, check your spam or junk folders). 

Sometimes it will be a story; other times, an idea or insight; and still other times, an interview or dialogue with someone I think you will enjoy learning from.

As we get to know each other, I will share what I am learning with and from you and use that learning to pose new questions, so we can together deepen our understanding of the space between us and gradually remake it. 

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My story

I began my life’s work in two communities on opposite sides of Boston, one predominantly Black, the other predominantly White, both made up of hard-working, low-income families. For twelve years, I worked alternately as a community organizer, a journalist, and a counselor alongside people struggling to navigate circumstances largely stacked against them. Where they went, I went—to their homes, their schools, the streets, the courts, even prison. The experience was a master class in hard-earned resilience on the one hand and learned helplessness on the other. 

That experience eventually led me to return to school to figure out how to inspire and empower people to create systems that work for them, not against them. As an undergraduate at Boston University and as a doctoral student at Harvard, I had the privilege of learning from and working alongside some of the world’s best thinkers on how to navigate conflict and effect change in all kinds of systems from families (David Kantor) to organizations (Chris Argyris, Donald Schön, Ed Schein, Peter Senge) to nations (Howard Zinn, Roger Fisher). 

For the past 35 years, I have led long-term change efforts in some of America’s most iconic businesses and cutting-edge nonprofits. Along the way, I discovered it is possible to turn intergroup conflict into a powerful force for constructive change. Out of this fundamental insight, I gradually developed an approach to change that is captured in my own and others’ publications and used around the world by my colleagues and students.

I share my life with negotiation expert Bruce Patton, my husband of 30 years, two rambunctious dogs, and a motley family of friends.

Guiding beliefs informing this newsletter

• The most disturbing trends today—toward hate and violence, widening inequities, mistrust, isolation, authoritarianism—all constitute the last dying gasps of a failing order.

• As a species, we are in the turbulent midst of taking another evolutionary step. Many millennia ago, survival prompted humans to move from individual collaboration to in-group cooperation to better compete against other groups. Today, survival in our ever shrinking, interdependent world is pushing us toward greater cross-group cooperation to meet challenges that know no boundaries.  

• Although our survival may depend on greater cross-group cooperation, it is not inevitable. Shifting how we operate within and across groups will take hard work on the ground. It will depend on more and more people working together on common problems across divides, creating common ground where there is none.

• Not everyone will choose to do that work. Some will pave the way, while others will be free-riders or active resisters. That is the way of all fundamental change.

• The odds of success are unknowable. In a world of discontinuous change, past trends can no longer predict future trends with much, if any, reliability. As much as we may hate it, the future is unknowable.

• That makes it pointless to argue over whether we can succeed in making a shift toward greater cross-group cooperation. Our best bet—really our only bet if we want to survive— is to focus on improving the odds.

• Time is running out. We can no longer afford luxuries like cynicism, despair, or defeatism. Those who believe—or at least act as if they believe—we can learn to cooperate across groups will increase the odds of our survival. Those who do not will reduce the odds.

• The demands and constraints of today will always be more pressing than the uncertain threats and possibilities of tomorrow. We will need to help, inspire, and empower each other to keep tomorrow front of mind, if we are to get there, together.

—Diana McLain Smith