The State of the Movement: Thoughts on Our Two-Year Anniversary

On December 8th, 2023, Starts With Us hits our two-year anniversary. Here’s a message from Tom Fishman, our CEO: 

There’s no getting around it. Our shared mission — overcoming toxic polarization to solve our toughest challenges — has never been more urgent. Our nation hurtles towards another dangerously divisive election cycle, as the echoes of geopolitical conflict abroad reverberate through our homes, schools, communities, and media feeds. The forces of toxic polarization pressure us to declare us vs. them allegiances, to label people as our “enemies” and reduce them to caricatures, and in the worst cases, to dehumanize them. 

Yet I have never been more hopeful, more energized, more convinced that our mission is within reach. 

People sometimes think I’m crazy when I first tell them that. But it rarely takes long for them to come around. And that’s because they quickly begin to understand what you and I and others in this movement see every day.

We know that a majority of Americans are tired of our political divides. We know Americans increasingly agree that polarization is a major problem we must overcome. And we know we share massive common ground everywhere from policy to our core American ideals — common ground upon which we can build solutions to our most pressing challenges. 

There’s a huge audience ready to join us in what we’re building. It’s up to us — up to you — to continue galvanizing that audience into a mass movement.

We are well on our way. Starts With Us celebrates its two-year anniversary on December 8th. By the end of this year, we’ll have an online community more than 3,000,000 strong, diverse in demographics, geography, and political leaning — and striving to practice curiosity, compassion, and courage every day (even in the comment threads, we see you!). There are tens of thousands movement members who’ve subscribed to our newsletter for inspiration and for practical tips on constructive conflict and problem solving in your lives.

Millions of Americans saw our work this year as we were recognized by Fast Company and the Shorty Awards and covered everywhere from The View to Fox News, from The Hill to Newsweek, from the Associated Press to Fortune magazine, from the global reach of Kim Kardashian’s Instagram account (true story, we have screenshots) to powerful local coverage in outlets like The Tennessean. 

And we’re just getting started. In 2024, we’ll double down on our Citizen Solutions project, which began with the TN11 and tens of thousands of Tennesseans shaping proposals to advance Gun Rights & Safety in Tennessee — and we’ll continue to convene Americans in states around the country, demonstrating that citizens from all walks of life can work across our differences to cooperatively solve our toughest problems. That’s on top of growing adoption for innovative products like our 30-day Polarization Detox Challenge, which we launched in partnership with Dr. Peter T. Coleman, and our 3Cs Classroom curriculum, currently building constructive conflict and problem-solving skills in more than 100 high school classrooms across the country. 

While we’re proud of how far we’ve come in just two years, most of the work we must do to achieve our mission remains ahead of us. We cannot afford to take our foot off the gas. The time is now — both to avoid worst-case scenarios and to build towards our fullest potential — to spread this message widely. Please take a few minutes to forward this email to 10 people and rally them to sign up for our newsletter to learn more about this work.

The challenges we face are unprecedented. But so is this work we’re doing. Thank you for being part of it.

     – Tom Fishman, CEO of Starts With Us

If this message resonates with you, please sign up for the Starts With Us newsletter.