My chat with Danielle Allen

Last week, thanks to the Lexington Reimagining the Civic Commons convening, I had the unbelievable honor of interviewing one of my personal heroes, Danielle Allen.

While Danielle was in Lexington, it was such a joy to share how CivicLex has grown and matured into what we are today. We first met in early 2020 at a convening hosted by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for their Our Common Purpose report. CivicLex was still in its early days, and while we had found our footing, we hadn't quite arrived at "what we were," especially in the context of the national healthy democracy field.

In just one brief conversation, Danielle so clearly articulated the value of our work that it has stuck with me to this day: as we rebuild news and information, imagine the impact we could have if we connected it to a larger project of relationship building.

Looking back, that concept was the organizing principle of our work, but I hadn't quite put the pieces so cleanly together until that moment. In the years since that conversation, every time I hear CivicLex turning up in national conversations, it's more often than not coming from Danielle Allen.

During our conversation as part of the RCC Studio, we talked about the role of public space as a democracy builder and how the local level can be an antidote to the governance dysfunction happening at the national level. We also talked about how the healthy democracy field can learn so much from the locally rooted work happening in the public realm across the country.

I'll share more about the RCC studio in the coming days, but I just wanted to say a big thank you to Bridget Marquis and Amanda L. Miller Amankona at RCC and my co-conveners Lisa Adkins, J.D. and Brandi Peacher for seeing the value in talking about democracy as part of our Studio. And, of course, another big thank you to Danielle for coming all the way to Kentucky for our conversation!