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Activities

Heartland Democracy is dedicated to winning over hearts and minds to just and sustainable goals. We do so through a variety of related activities: we identify our principles and values, we describe them in a coherent and comprehensive way, we bring together facts and analyses to reach our conclusions, and we deliver our communications to the public. We use a variety of strategies to reach folks who might be interested in a discussion of ideas, values, and actions. We approach existing groups wherever two or more are gathered to talk about their hopes, concerns, and ideas. We encourage folks to create new discussion groups or book clubs as well. Over time, we will continue to provide discussion guides, provocative questions, information, and writings to discuss. Finally, when you’re ready to move from discussion to action, we provide a range of options, from signing our Reforming Democracy Pledge to volunteering for Heartland Democracy to investigating what other likeminded groups are doing to advance legislation in the state capitals.

One strategy we use is to crystallize our values in an initiative that, if adopted, would fulfill our principles. Our plan is to run a public engagement campaign on the recommendations and values below. Always, throughout our work, we are focused on winning over hearts and minds to the goals of the just and sustainable communities we all desire. We invite you to review our first major project’s recommendations below.

Empowering Youth

The Minneapolis Foundation has made possible Heartland Democracy's first high school program. Working with students predominantly from the Minneapolis area, more than 70 percent of whom are African-American, our Education Director is taking the students through an examination of their values, the issues they care about, and the levers of power in government and their community. While most students come from homes uninvolved in community, with family members who rarely vote, they are identifying an issue they care about and creating an action plan to address it. Along the way, they are studying applicable lessons of history and the array of progressive, centrist, and conservative values at work on issues.

We protect the students' privacy for now by keeping the name of their school out of the public eye, but we want to testify to this truth: students who arrived in the first class with folded arms and skeptical, hardened faces are now leaning in to their work, participating freely, smiling at the prospect of gaining this new empowerment, and working collegially with demonstrable hope in their eyes. We are evaluating the changes the students are undergoing as well.

This is real change, happening in the hearts of students thirsty for more. It's the kind of change that yields the fruits of justice in five or ten years. It's about the relatively powerless putting their hands on the levers of power.

Please contribute to this project to allow us to expand and extend it. We would like to develop a replicable curriculum and take the program to other schools in 2010.

Winning Hearts & Minds

Help Heartland Democracy "scale up" its public engagement program by adding more discussions on progressive values throughout our region!

Our work is distilled in that rare moment when a small group of people have a heartfelt conversation about public issues and shared values. In our discussions throughout the region over the past year, in houses of worship and public forums, in associations and schools, we have found that Midwesterners are thirsty for productive, respectful discussions on issues outside the realm of partisan politics and campaigns. Moreover, when our fellow heartlanders are given the space and time to share their values and relate their stories without a candidacy on the line, they feel free to share their thoughts.

We have a plan to ramp up the number and location of such discussions, to articulate in a coherent way what is progressive and why a progressive approach is the best approach to self-governance, and to boost the coordination of our work with our allies.

Political psychologists have now demonstrated conclusively that our friends and neighbors will change their minds, that our youth will listen to us, only when we match up our solid progressive values to theirs, when we couple facts and analyses and reason with honest appeals to their emotions, their hearts.

Congregations and associations and schools are asking us to come back for another round. We are getting more invitations than we can handle. The demand for this kind of effective public engagement is there. We've got to work on our supply! Help support the efforts of our speakers and facilitators. Help us do the research to buttress our arguments.

If you agree that the wisdom of the ages prescribes a progressive approach, please give now. If you agree that the core tenets of the world's major religions agree --that a progressive approach is the most sustainable --please support us.

If you are looking for the last piece of the puzzle -- the strategy that will help raise the number of people thinking and acting progressively -- please join us in convening, attending, or even speaking with a spiritual discussion group or any group that discusses values and ideas.  We can help you do this on your own -- the best way of all.

Reforming Elections

Heartland Democracy’s past work has focused on Reforming Democracy, a project providing facts, analysis, and recommendations on Universal Voter Registration and Clean Elections.

While most of us are concerned about the things that affect us in our day-to-day lives, such as our healthcare coverage and schools, reforming campaigns and elections will be a linchpin in making improvements possible on all of those issues. Reforming our political system will help make all other crucial reforms possible: it is The Gateway to other critical improvements.

The world’s finest scholars of democracy have put forth many means of modernizing and improving our political system. Heartland Democracy has chosen two initiatives to advance this year. They are broad, absolutely essential reforms, and they are ripe for adoption in the heartland. Each reform takes on a major systemic challenge with daily effects for all of us: voter registration and large donations from wealthy donors and groups.

21st Century Voter Registration: Our current system of voter registration is archaic, causing issues like inaccurate voter rolls, high administrative costs, and low participation rates.  In contrast, a 21st century voter registration system - universal voter registration - would help to increase voter participation, reduce swings in workloads for election administrators, create voter rolls that are complete and cleasned of outdated registrants, and, ultimately, foster greater trust in elections and in the legitimacy of election winners.

Clean Elections: All qualified Americans who wish to serve their community and country should be able to run for office. Full public financing of campaigns would allow every viable candidate to run for office while also helping to keep the “big money” of just a handful of groups and donors from dominating our government’s decision-making. Clean elections allow candidates who truly want to serve their entire community to run. They give them a fair chance to win and to spend their time representing all their constituents rather than advocating for a few wealthy backers or wasting precious time raising money. Heartland Democracy will roll out its recommendations on this initiative in coming weeks. Stay tuned and check back for more!