Not long ago, Reading, PA was declared the poorest city in America. Once predominantly white, now 70% Latino. People there, across Pennsylvania and across America had given up on Reading. We worked with the community on education at the height of the culture wars on that issue nationally. Everyone told us not to do it, we’d never succeed.
But working with local citizens, we helped them put aside political differences. They developed a new mindset, discovering they shared the same hopes for their kids. They then were able to take action: creating an education agenda for their community. They did it, collaborating as leaders and volunteers, people of different backgrounds and beliefs, to implement successful new programs in English as a second language, after-school activities, and early childhood education.
The wins rippled into other public initiatives, and momentum grew. The community has a new spirit and hope, and a dramatically transformed civic culture. Where there was once a narrative that ‘We should flee this community as soon as we possibly can,’ what people will now tell you, ‘This is a great place to raise kids. You should move here.’
In my recent interview, Rich Harwood, President and Founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, was recounting one recent example of the transformational change he and a growing network of other leaders have been fostering in scores of American cities and townships. It’s an inspiring story, but it also augurs something bigger. Reading, PA and other Harwood-inspired local initiatives suggest a “radically traditional” solution for renewing our struggling democracy. That the best hope for rebuilding the American way of national self-governance lies out of sight, in the revival of the historic civic spirit and shared accountability of local citizenship. In the pragmatic relationships and let’s-do-it trust our ancestors developed in their small communities to build out this country centuries ago.
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Harwood summarized the essential insight now driving his work:
Healing our toxic politics, and returning America to a better path won’t be led by Washington D.C. It has to begin with Americans locally, restoring the hope and faith that we can work together, and build together, to make better lives for ourselves in our communities. We have to demonstrate it first to each other. Only then can we lift up the proof that will give rise to a new national spirit.
In his writing and speaking, Harwood actually avoids describing his work as “saving democracy”—sidestepping more abstract phrases that have become (regrettably) politicized as simply “anti-Trump rhetoric.” Harwood is deeply patriotic, revering the equality, freedom, and dignity of Americans governing themselves as citizens -- but wants his cause to remain rigorously non-partisan. He sees healthy communities as the source of what makes American democracy great. He agrees, as many others now write about, that changes to federal institutions, political parties, and constitutional laws are needed--but wants to keep his focus on our deepest self-governing DNA: a strong local civic culture that enables higher level democracy to thrive.
Learn By Doing
Harwood began his career in the early ‘80s as a staffer in political campaigns. Eventually, frustrated with electoral gamesmanship, he launched his institute. He traded looking for votes to working with troubled communities, turning the people politicians were supposed to be helping into problem-solving partners. During the next forty years, he explored key questions of what makes a community work for all its members, not just some. He learned from both successes and setbacks, assembling a strategic vision for progress based on local cultural change. He spoke and published widely, sharing lessons of his field experience. The common thread was communities flourish when they learn how to help themselves—collectively, as citizens responsible to one another.
His latest book, The New Civic Path: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation, pushes the vision up a notch: that the kind of local community renewal he’s been leading for years is now a blueprint for America’s civic improvement at scale. He’s heard repeatedly in his travels that people of many different backgrounds, living in many different communities are now hungry for change. And that they’re longing for many of the same things. Like better schools. Clean water. Less crime. Americans everywhere eager to make progress with local impact, free from the dispiriting battles of national politics.
Starting Small to Go Big
Harness such progress born of this new mindset, and the whole grows greater than the sum of the parts. Expanding networks of citizen-led community eventually transforms the political culture of the entire country. Thus, the new book’s subtitle: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation. He emphasized the theme repeatedly in our conversation:
Grand transformational plans always fizzle out. Success comes from first shifting the mindset of citizens in their communities. We have to start small, help people turn outwards towards others living in the same community; to embrace them as partners in creating real change. Focus on rebuilding a sense of local civic culture, and unleash a chain reaction of change more widely over time. It’s the surest way to put our lives and nation on a more hopeful trajectory.
The skeptic may ask: “Does Mr. Harwood have enough evidence to validate the hypothesis?” Numbers-wise the progress is only a fraction of what’s needed for a national tipping point. But he’s not running a double-blind research experiment. He’s building a learn-by-doing movement reaching for broader change every day.
The better question for this constructive disruption is whether it’s starting a durable trend. Rich points to a growing sample of cases now turning a similar wheel of change. More volunteers are joining him. So are various community organizations, like many local United Ways.
Harwood cases include communities with varying mixes of Republicans, Democrats, old, young, white, non-white, urban, rural. As shared aspirations come into focus, rancorous political differences fade. Local citizens improving local education with new youth mentoring programs. Redesigning public transportation to end racial inequalities. Rethinking commercial development to balance growth and respect for local history. Once competitive faith organizations collaborating to engage young people adrift in truancy and loneliness.
Innovating But Also Rediscovering
The notion of “better local communities make for better democracy” is not a Harwood invention. The 19th C. French chronicler of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville famously stressed the “strength of its free people resides in its communities,” including the many local associations that created “habits of the heart” for civic self-reliance.
More recently, research of the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) similarly argued that American well-being and happiness depended on citizens participating with one another in local membership organizations. (See also the recent film about Putnam’s community-focused work, Join or Die).
But academic observation will always pale in comparison to living practice. The aspiration we must nourish, if the civic path is to grow bigger and wider, is that ever more communities will join the movement, and push ideas and practices of citizen-led progress to a national level.
Call to Action
But will that happen? Harwood inspires with his buoyant optimism, insisting that the country is more ready than ever to take action: “Americans are yearning to work on things that they’re for, instead of just what they’re against.” As I listened further, I heard a leader radiant with hope, who’s made a career helping others realize their own hopes through local civic collaboration. His personal journey is a story of service, but also a challenge to all of us to join this bottom-up revolution:
I was born a sickly child, but determined not to become a victim of poor health. I had the great benefit of support from parents, neighbors, and surprisingly accidental mentors—all helping me succeed against the odds in my younger life. I have never forgotten how freeing it is to realize we can’t fix all problems at once, or do it alone.
The pursuit of a new civic path is both a personal and civic endeavor—for me, and for anyone who cares about America now. When we step forward…we feel seen and heard; we become doers, builders, and innovators. And it helps us rediscover our innate capacities and capabilities.
We must go together. We must build together, now.
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For more information about the new civic path, and how you might contribute to or join its mission:
https://theharwoodinstitute.org/
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Click below to listen to my full interview with Rich Harwood (Sept. 30, 2025)
Provides hope for our country as we face the years ahead.
Thank you Joe: yes indeed!