The health of our American democracy depends upon equitable and safe digital spaces.
Toward Ethical Technology: Framing Human Rights in the Future of Digital Innovation was written by Sabrina Hersi Issa, human rights technologist and Rights x Tech founder with Arpitha Peteru, co-lead of Foundation of Inclusion. The report examines and synthesizes intersectional movements to build better, more inclusive, and humane technologies. It also introduces a set of principles and inclusive frameworks to help platform, product, and policy leaders conceptualize intentional ethical technology that is responsive to the needs of impacted communities and shape meaningful interventions for systems-level shifts at the intersections of technology and human rights.
Rights x Tech is a forum and community that explicitly explores the intersections of technology and power. It brings together technologists, policymakers, and movement leaders for dialogue and solution-building on emerging issues around human rights, products, and power.
Democracy Fund’s Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) and its grantees are radically reimagining what it looks like to make platforms accountable to the American public and renew public interest media.
To support this work, the team’s evaluation and learning partner, ORS Impact, conducted learning conversations with DDI grantees in September and October 2021 to understand:
How grantees have responded to the past year
What it would take to better center racial equity in DDI’s strategy and in grantees’ work
Where grantees see opportunities in the current moment
The report summarizes findings about these three topics within and across learning conversations and raises considerations for funders about how to better center racial equity in their grant making, how to better support their grantees, and opportunities ripe for investment. The report encourages funders to reflect on these considerations and how they might be applicable to their strategy.
The volatility of current events makes one thing clear: Our democracy is vulnerable to disruptions many haven’t even imagined. While we cannot predict the future, we can practice futuring — the creative discipline of tuning into the signals, imagining what’s possible, and choosing paths that lead us toward hope.
In fall 2020, Democracy Fund collaborated with Dot Connector Studio and a diverse group of thinkers on a futuring project called Democracy TBD. Together with our collaborators, we considered how the pandemic, racial unrest, political division, and other concerns might spark a cycle of disruption and reorganization for our democracy. We surfaced key themes — like ongoing political polarization — and identified the potential implications for our democracy.
American democracy was born out of an experimental mindset and radical imaginings; we believe these are still needed for it to survive. For Democracy Fund, this is only the beginning of our futuring venture.
The new report “Healthy Local News & Information Ecosystems: A Diagnostic Framework,” presents a framework to help local news funders assess whether a community’s information environment is actually becoming healthier. This assessment approach was tested and refined across nine U.S. communities of various sizes.
Accompanying the report is a playbook designed as a tool to help funders and other community organizations evaluate strengths and opportunities in their locale.
The health of our American democracy requires strategic investment in community-led solutions that combat political violence and mitigate its cost to society.
The Costs of Political Violence in the United States — And the Benefits of Investing in Communities by Dr. Andrew Blum, executive director of the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, examines the human and economic costs of political violence and the strategic investments in evidence-based, community-led solutions that are addressing it.
The report looks at the recent surge in extremism, hate crimes, armed militias, and acts of police brutality and assesses the associated costs: injury and loss of life, trauma, property damage, lost business revenue and personal wages, and the acceleration of additional violence. Philanthropy can mitigate these costs, but investments must be directed toward initiatives led by targeted communities that at their core promote democratic goals and support community resilience.
Department of Motor Vehicles (DMVs) play a crucial role in our elections. This report seeks to raise the level of recognition of the agency’s role – among policymakers, state agency officials, advocates, and the public – to improve their partnerships and the functioning of our democracy.
Since the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA or “motor voter”), state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMVs) have evolved into a bedrock of the modern system of election administration—for voter registration in particular. Since then, their role in our elections has expanded to include multiple types of voter registration, identity verification, and maintenance of accurate voter registration lists. While the current scope of DMV involvement in election administration is relatively unappreciated, raising the level of recognition of the agency’s role – among policymakers, state agency officials, advocates, and the public – is important to improve the functioning of our democracy. This report, Motor Vehicle Departments: Bedrock of American Democracy, serves as a primer and guide for these audiences and other interested parties on the history, parameters and robustness of their current role, and provides a catalogue of everything DMV officials do in election administration.
Unfortunately, the evolution of the DMVs’ role occurred without initial buy-in from DMV administrators or an expansion of resources for DMVs to fulfill their growing role. Rather, in most states, state reliance on DMVs expanded without a commensurate expansion of available funding. Sustained and regular interaction, discussion, and consideration with respect to the scope of DMVs’ role in election administration – among their many other core duties – is happening only now, over a quarter century after passage of the NVRA.
The level of election administration reliance on DMVs is now so great that the public, policymakers, and DMV and election officials should reconceptualize DMVs as integral partners in implementing American democracy. Rather than a non-election entity, DMVs – on an everyday basis – are providing irreplaceable support in delivering aspects of our election systems.
Heather Hurlburt, Dr. Nichole Argo Ben Itzhak, Rachel Brown, Laura Livingston, and Samantha Owens
/
December 10, 2019
Research on international violence and peacebuilding reveals that much can be done to prevent violence and increase resilience — if leaders with influence and resources are ready to face these challenges squarely now.
Michelle Polyak and Katie Donnelly, Dot Connector Studio
/
October 16, 2019
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are fundamental to fostering robust American journalism that supports a healthy democracy. The failure of newsrooms to fully reflect their communities, to build a culture of inclusion that supports and retains diverse staff, and to foster equitable models of reporting that reflect the truth of people’s lived experiences is undermining trust in media and risking the sustainability of the press.
Foundations can play a role in addressing these concerns, but too often funders have exacerbated these problems through grantmaking that reinforces inequalities. Funders must therefore urgently refocus their efforts on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as the right thing to do, both morally and strategically.
Cookies Notice
This website uses cookies to provide you with an improved and personalized experience. By using this site you agree to our use of cookies. Please read our cookies policy for more information on the cookies we use and how to delete or block them.
