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Questions Shape Our Future

Democracy is at a crossroads. As America marks 250 years, we face urgent questions: What does democracy mean when it doesn't work for everyone? Who does it serve? What could it become? Our Voices Unbound brings communities across the nation into continuous civic inquiry, connected to movements worldwide. Launching September 9, 2026, this is an evolving practice of collective sense-making and democratic imagination. The work is rooted in local experience, rippling outward.

When we ask "What question do you carry?" we're asking: What have you lived that makes you wonder about democracy, justice, belonging, possibility? Your questions hold profound knowledge about what's broken and what's possible. This knowledge surfaces when communities share questions together and discover the understanding that connects across difference. What we create here will echo across movements working to reimagine democracy.

"This isn't a search for immediate solutions. It's an effort to map the civic moment we're in. To wrestle together with what's working, what's broken, and what might emerge if we give ourselves permission to imagine."

— Dr. Ceasar McDowell

Building Civic Imagination

Democracy needs more than reform—it needs reimagination. Spaces where communities discover their collective wisdom, make meaning together, and chart pathways toward futures where democracy actually works for everyone. This is how we build that.

Reclaim Questioning

Move beyond personal reflection to collective civic inquiry. The questions we carry—shaped by what we've lived, witnessed, and survived—become the foundation for futures we can build together, rooted in shared wisdom rather than isolated experience.

Shape Meaning

Break free from algorithms that control discourse. Communities deserve spaces to explore what their lived experiences have taught them, where the knowledge between experience and question becomes visible and can be built upon together.

Amplify Wisdom

What communities discover must reach the world. Amplify through technology that serves connection, through community spaces and social channels, through street-level conversations. Make visible the patterns that connect us, building movements that reshape democracy.

Co-Creating the Launch: September 9, 2026

We're building this together, in the open. Twenty years after the Table of Free Voices brought 112 thinkers from 48 countries into dialogue, we launch the next chapter: spaces and practices for continuous democratic inquiry. Between now and September 9, 2026, we're inviting co-creators to shape how this unfolds. Below is the vision we're building toward. Not a fixed blueprint, but a living framework that evolves as more voices join. Your work, your questions, your communities can help shape both the launch and what comes after.

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Shape This With Us

Building with partners toward September 2026

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We're building with organizations, networks, community leaders, knowledge builders, practitioners, technologists, artists, storytellers—people working to reimagine democracy. Between now and September 2026, we're sharing the tools being developed, co-designing the approach, and shaping how this launches. If your work intersects with organizing, education, civic tech, media, research, the arts, or community building—and this vision resonates—let's talk. Let's explore what's possible together.

  • Shape the vision: Join conversations about how we surface democracy's pulse across communities
  • Test the tools: Work with emerging platforms, help build what communities need
  • Engage your networks: Some partners are already working with communities—not required, but welcomed
  • Stay connected: Follow the build, provide input, prepare for what September brings
  • Building on 20 years of the Table of Free Voices global dialogue

This moment demands we build differently. What we create here will echo across communities, networks, and movements working to reimagine democracy.

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Share Questions

The vision: questions rooted in lived experience

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When we launch in September 2026, we'll invite everyone to share questions rooted in their lived experiences. Not mere curiosities, but profound inquiries shaped by what they have seen, felt, and survived. Within each question lives knowledge waiting to surface when we share with each other. This includes both organized community dialogues and an individual submission portal for those not connected to organizations. Questions become visible—to each other, to broader networks, across communities—creating connection and building relationships across different contexts.

  • Multiple pathways: community dialogues and individual submissions
  • Communities see their knowledge alongside others facing similar challenges
  • Multiple forms welcome: words, recordings, images, art, song, visual expression
  • Questions geotagged and thematically clustered, mapping the civic moment

When we voice what we've lived and what we wonder, we move from isolation to solidarity, from silence to collective power.

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Reflect

Communities making sense together, in real-time

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Reflection is what communities do together: wrestling with patterns, discovering connections, making sense of collective questions. This happens continuously. As communities share questions, they engage in ongoing reflection. The Civic Knowledge Transformer supports this work, offering tools and guidance that help communities see patterns across local, national, and global scales. It creates a living pulse of the civic moment, continuously evolving as more voices join.

  • Communities lead reflection: Making sense of collective questions together
  • CKT supports the work: Tools and guidance for seeing patterns at local, national, global scales
  • Continuous, not one-time: Ongoing dialogue that evolves as communities engage
  • The civic pulse: Surface what the nation is wrestling with in real-time
  • Community dashboards: See your patterns and connections to broader movements

Imagine communities across the country reflecting together on democracy's questions in real-time: what shifts, what persists, what emerges when we witness our collective wisdom.

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Act Together

The ongoing cycle of collective action

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This isn't linear. It's a living cycle. Reflection sparks action. Action generates learning, builds relationships, surfaces new questions. Those questions flow back into reflection, which evolves as new voices join. Communities discover they're wrestling with connected challenges. Networks coordinate. Design labs prototype. Power maps reveal themselves. All of this feeds back: what works, what doesn't, what questions we didn't know to ask. The cycle deepens. This is democratic practice in real-time, not as prescription but as collective learning that evolves with what communities discover together.

  • Not 1-2-3-4 done: An ongoing spiral of reflection, action, learning, new questions
  • Networks self-organize: Communities find each other and coordinate
  • Design labs emerge: Prototype solutions rooted in what communities actually know
  • Learning feeds back: What works, what doesn't, what new questions surface
  • The pulse evolves: As more join, reflection deepens, action sharpens

Three cities discover they're fighting the same housing crisis. They coordinate. What they learn flows back into the system. Other communities see it—in community spaces, through social channels, in street-level conversations. The understanding spreads, amplified across every network. New coalitions form. This is democracy as living practice.

Questions That Shape Us

The questions we carry aren't just curiosities. They're maps of what we've lived through, what we've witnessed, what keeps us awake at night. When we bring these questions into conversation, we discover we're not alone in what we know. Patterns emerge. Connections form. The knowledge living in our communities begins to find its voice.

Question

"Is there going to be a democracy?"

Question

"Are brands more powerful than governments?"

Question

"Is it too late?"

Build Toward September 9, 2026 With Us

We're building toward the 20th anniversary of the Table of Free Voices with partners who share a commitment to surfacing collective knowledge and reimagining democratic practice. If your work intersects with organizing, technology, storytelling, community building, or the arts—and this vision resonates with you—let's talk.

See your work in this? Reach out.

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