We Who Engage was founded as The Move in 2017 by Professor Ceasar McDowell as a values-led movement facilitating conversations and action around greater civic engagement in our democracy. Grounded in eight civic design principles, The Move seeks to seed the creation of spaces, places, and institutions for our increasingly complex public to engage itself, inclusive of those traditionally excluded from democratic processes. to reflect this focus on individual and collective narratives of civic engagement.
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We began this initiative as a way to highlight through narrative how people of all backgrounds engage with, strengthen, and transform our democracy civic engagement infrastructure. I find and then interview the people we feature. After engaging in long conversations, I parse through the interview to craft a response for social media.
Here's the quote from Mufida's interview:
“I tried to not look at him, but I had to. My mom’s hand gripped the steering wheel nervously because of me. His tyrannical gun across his chest protecting him intrigued me. I thought to myself, I will always be seen by him as the aggressor. He will never understand the oppression he supports. My heartbeat slowed down, but I felt powerless obeying him. I thought to myself, ‘I want change. I want to help my people.’
I went home wanting to let the Palestinian story unfold. I determined that if my people couldn’t voice their struggles, I would. My existence won’t only be my resistance, but my motivation to inspire change. After that moment, I made it my mission to learn about the Palestinian occupation. I knew it had to be addressed, and justice became infused in my life ever since that day. I’ve made it my mission to inform and educate others on what is happening in my motherland.”
The next initiative we created is a spin-off of WWE: Spotlight. This series underscores the longtime connection between civic engagement and democracy by highlighting influential figures in history who advocated, fought, and sacrificed to make our world more just and inclusive. I am in charge of creating the slide content in Adobe Illustrator and in researching figures to feature.
Our final initiative is America's Path Forward (APF). APF is an initiative separate from The Move, and partially managed by the team. As a national question campaign, APF solicits and brings forward questions that the public feels our nation must address. The platform seeks to directly promote the public’s voice about the questions they believe are most central for this country, to amplify and combine that public voice as a means to heal our present, honor the roots of our past, and choose our future. We manage a Twitter and Instagram account to highlight the questions and themes raised on americaspathforward.org. In Fall 2020, The Move will also collaborate with MIT Media Lab, Civic Commons, and The Evergrey (two community organizations in Seattle) on creating design and media outputs inspired by the public conversations co-hosted by these organizations and America’s Path Forward in August 2020.
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