Exploring Democracy for America’s Next 250 Years
A day of TED talks in Philadelphia inspires attendees about the country’s past—and its future
“Can we eat our way to a stronger democracy?”
That question was posed in jest—sort of—to an audience that filled Marian Anderson Hall at the soaring Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Philadelphia on Saturday, June 13.
Some 1,500 people had come to spend a full day at “TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures,” which spotlighted 35 speakers and panelists on four stages, musing about the state of democracy—and, more importantly, its future. Anuj Gupta was the last speaker on the main stage before lunch, and his point—based on a program he spearheaded called Breaking Bread, Breaking Barriers, which puts strangers together to sample each other’s ethnic cuisine—got the attention of audience members hungry not only for lunch but also for pearls of wisdom and encouragement about democracy.
“Democracy relies on us knowing each other—and the more we learn about each other’s food, the more we realize we’re not as different as we think,” Gupta said before sending attendees out for their lunch break into hallways lined with local food vendors offering an assortment of Philadelphia’s best.
The importance of dialogue, even with—maybe especially with—people with whom we might disagree, was a theme that ran throughout the day. TED and local tourism agency Visit Philadelphia organized Founding Futures, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, to look at democracy from multiple vantage points 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document—venerable now but almost unimaginably revolutionary in 1776—was signed about a mile from the Kimmel Center, a point lost on no one and mentioned frequently during the event.
How revolutionary? The Declaration of Independence was a “a spark that ignited the world,” said Pew Research Center President Michael Dimock, who was the day’s first featured speaker on the main stage—the sessions of which were live-streamed to audiences gathered in 77 libraries across the country. (Pew sponsored the livestream to engage civic-minded people beyond Philadelphia in the conversation.) Co-emcee Kelly Stoetzel, TED’s former head of conferences, noted that the Declaration’s self-evident truths—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—“weren’t at all self-evident at the time,” adding that the document was “more like a dare, a bet.”
And yet the nation that emerged from this revolutionary spark was not a perfect union. As Visit Philadelphia CEO Angela Val said as she surveyed Marian Anderson Hall before the morning session, “Many of the people here wouldn’t have been allowed in the room when our country’s democracy was conceived.”
“Democracy,” she added, “is not a moment frozen in time. So where do we go next?”
Part of figuring out where to go next, of course, is assessing where we are now. And despite the morning cheerleading led by Atlanta-based social activist Jacoria Borders before the main sessions—“There’s no offseason for democracy,” she had the crowd chanting—most of the day’s speakers agreed that although there may be no offseason for democracy, there’s such a thing as a challenging season. And we’re in it.
Stoetzel called this “a complicated moment for democracy,” pointing to “a gap between democracy’s promise and democracy’s reality.” When Stoetzel and her co-emcee, author and self-described “curiosity expert” Scott Shigeoka, asked attendees to applaud if they were worried about the current state of democracy, the response was thunderous.
The concerns about democracy aren’t limited to the people attending the Founding Futures conference, of course. Dimock cited Pew Research Center survey data, saying “What we’re hearing from Americans is pretty dark,” with partisan polarization—and demonization of those we disagree with—high, and trust in our institutions and our fellow citizens, including our neighbors, low.
Pew’s involvement in the conference included not only Dimock’s speech from the main stage but also appearances on the Pew Spotlight Stage by CEO Susan Urahn and Donna Frisby-Greenwood, a senior vice-president at Pew who leads the organization’s work in Philadelphia and scientific advancement. A “Pew lounge,” just inside the Kimmel Center's main entrance, hosted a steady stream of visitors who came to pick up Pew publications, talk with Pew experts, watch several videos from the organization running on a loop on the lounge’s TV, or simply sit and chat with fellow attendees.
In the lead-up to the nation’s 250th birthday, Pew—which has long worked to support democracy, promote civic dialogue, and create common ground—welcomed the chance to support Founding Futures based on the premise, as Urahn said in her conversation on the Pew stage with TED’s Director of Curation Cyndi Stivers, that “we’ve got to be able to talk to each other. We need to agree to disagree in a respectful way.” Or, as Stivers put it, “disagreement is a feature of democracy, not a bug.”
And therein is the essence of renewing and strengthening our democracy. Dimock set the table by pointing out that the Framers themselves had laid out a roadmap. Although life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness still ring in the ears of most Americans from high school civics class, Dimock said that the Declaration of Independence’s “next assertion was at least as important: that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The founders didn’t hand us a finished product but an ongoing project that depends on renewal, participation, and civic imagination from every generation.”
That renewal, participation, and civic imagination could lead to, Dimock said, changes to our political system. In a March 2024 survey that asked, "What can improve democracy?," survey respondents shared ideas such as term limits for Congress; age limits for federal officials and Supreme Court justices, or expanding the number of Supreme Court justices; and abolishing the electoral college; among others.
Indiana-based entrepreneur Jeff Maurer said that the country needs to amend the Constitution, “in order to form a more perfect union,” echoing the document itself. There’s been only one amendment in the last 55 years—the 27th, ratified in 1992, which details the circumstances under which members of Congress can give themselves pay raises. The last before that? The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
Maurer said it’s no accident that there’s been a fallow period in amending the Constitution because “amendments don’t happen without social movements to put pressure on politicians.” And the key to creating these social movements, many speakers argued, lies with us, with Maurer calling for a renewal of the “can-do, anything-is-possible spirit of 1776.”
And some social movements are likely to arise in response to problems that those gathered in Philadelphia 250 years ago could scarcely have imagined. University of Maryland professor Jen Golbeck, after glumly outlining the ways we’re surveilled—from automated license plate readers to track our movements to “thousands of ways data about us is collected without our permission every day”—praised the citizen outcry earlier this year that forced Amazon to drop a proposed deal with the company Flock Safety that would have given Flock access to footage from Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras. A movement against surveillance, and against the building of large data centers to support infrastructure for artificial intelligence, “can unite the left and right,” Golbeck said.
Political organizer Katie Paris picked up on the theme of dialogue by describing her experience in suburban Ohio, where groups of women with no previous background in politics began meeting over dinners in each other’s homes to discuss their lives—and the impact public policy had on them. They soon became get-out-the-vote advocates on a people-to-people level, with Paris noting that voter turnout goes up 5% following conversations between friends. Political campaign managers, she said, are thrilled if they can move the voter turnout needle even a half of 1%. “Everyone in life has a network,” Paris said. “Make sure that the people in your network vote.” Donna Frisby-Greenwood recalled her earlier work as the executive director of Rock the Vote, when she enlisted barber shop and beauty salon owners in urban neighborhoods to urge their customers to vote.
But is voting enough? Is it even the point? Carolyn DeWitt, the current president of Rock the Vote, said “We need civic education, not just voter education.” Philadelphia journalist Laura Smythe noted that 86% of Gen Z cites social media as their main source of information, saying “We have more access to information than ever, but we think less independently than ever.” She then pointed out that some countries are setting minimum age limits for social media use and that some, with Finland prime among them, are even making media literacy courses—in which students learn how to verify if online information is credible—a standard part of the country’s school curriculum.
Author and nonprofit leader Scott Reich expanded on the idea that civic commitment goes beyond voting, saying that “citizens aren’t born; they’re made.” He harkened back to ancient Athens, where “they understood that citizens need to feel responsible for one other.” That inspired his proposal that all U.S. citizens ages 18-24 should do a year of civic service “as an on-ramp to citizenship.” Such programs already exist, he noted, pointing to Teach For America, ROTC, and AmeriCorps. But, he said, “We need scale.”
Athens was also on the mind of former state legislator Terry Bouricius, who, on a day when several people used the word “audacious” to describe the events of 1776, may have had the most audacious idea of all. He reminded attendees that Athenians used lotteries to decide who would serve as lawmakers and on various civic committees—similar to how Americans today are chosen for jury duty. He summarized and condensed a passage from Aristotle, saying, “Elections create oligarchies; lotteries create democracy.” And so Bouricius called for abolishing the role of elected officials and replacing it with “sortition,” in which citizens would serve as lawmakers as part of large citizen assemblies created through lotteries. “We trust random people to make life-and-death decisions on juries,” Bouricius said, so why not trust them to make laws too?
Jon Alexander, an author and visiting fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, said such citizen assemblies are being tried in various localities around the world as part of what he called “a bold, bright future of democracy.” Such assemblies work, he said, because “all of us are smarter than any of us.”
And all of us, the speakers agreed, need to continue to engage with each other to ensure that there’s no offseason for democracy. As Jeff Maurer said, “The fix to our problems is connection. Talk to people in your communities.” And not just talk, said Tami Pyfer, who, after a career in public service in Utah now heads The Dignity Index to promote dialogue: “We need to listen to each other, seek common ground, and admit our own mistakes.”
Throughout the day, those in the hall and watching online from libraries across the country were reminded of their own power. Reparations activist and Kennedy School lecturer Aria Florent said, “We can’t do nothing just because we can’t do everything.” Career trainer Louis King II noted that “ordinary people can do extraordinary things.” Civic strategist Jasmine Sessoms shared the words of her political idol, the late Shirley Chisholm: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring your own chair,” and urged Americans not just to watch history but “to make history happen.” And Katie Paris said, “If you’ve never done anything political before, you’re exactly who this moment needs most.”
When the co-emcees concluded the formal activities—with a dance party still to come—they asked attendees to shout out one word to describe their feelings about democracy. After the day of speeches and between-session discussions with other attendees, the same hall where the informal applause meter had registered great concern about democracy several hours earlier now rang out with the words “hopeful,” “renewed,” “jubilant,” “energized,” “optimistic,” and “empowered.”
As the day wrapped up with attendees dancing to tunes spun by Philadelphia DJ Diamond Kuts, the words of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 hit summed up the mood: “Gonna keep on trying, ’til I reach the highest ground.”
Or, as Susan Urahn said earlier in the day: “I see so much energy here today in possible solutions. And where’s there’s energy and innovation, there’s hope.”
Bernard Ohanian is a longtime journalist, author, and editor, and he was the senior director of editorial at The Pew Charitable Trusts from 2014-25.
