Paths to Renewal

I have hope. People are ready. People want to do more. People want to be able to work in their communities. People want to see their communities whole.

Mary Wilson
South Fulton People-Centered Economic Development Collaborative

How can we heal through adversity & secure legacies of well-being & justice for generations to come?

Even in the wilderness of pandemics new and old, we believe America’s communities can find their way through the woods. This section continues our wayfinding for the journey ahead.

Long before the crises of 2020, life in America was out of balance. We have been consumed by an inhumane style of winner-take-all capitalism, by fight-to-the-death politics, and by a White-is right culture. It is exhausting. And it has locked us in an unjust loop: living-to-work, not working-to-live, feeling socially short-changed, emotionally adrift, spiritually tested, and civically cynical. A pandemic that endangers our lives, halts the economy, and falls hardest on People of Color makes this maddening way of life unworkable. Ghastly scenes of racial injustice exemplify how deep the dysfunction goes. A super-majority of Americans agree that our entire system is spiraling out of control.

But renewal is within reach. In this legacy moment, we hear the same refrain: we cannot go back. Yet there are many paths forward. Those willing to work for renewal must make choices that may well change the world. Elders will do their part to clear the way. Youth will rise and rapidly take the lead.

This section explores three paths for renewing Civic Life, Economic Life, and Social, Emotional, and Spiritual Life. Each avenue braids the vital conditions together into cohesive but still-evolving proposals for how our lives together could unfold. Short-term pivotal moves may help us to change course. However, the renewal we need requires persistent, courageous, trend-bending effort on many frontiers—always directed toward our north star expectation: All people and places thriving—no
exceptions.