Newlin Carney: It’s the year for civic resolutions

If you failed to visit the gym, cut back on sweets or start a new hobby in January, never fear. Experts say it’s best to make resolutions a little later in any case. And the most important resolutions you make in 2024 may be less about self-help than about the nation as a whole.

There’s never been a better year, in fact, for civic resolutions. You may not believe, in these dark times, that your civic pledges can make much difference. But civic life is a muscle, and you can resolve to strengthen it every day — just as you might set out to practice a sport or a musical instrument.

At The Civic Circle, the nonprofit where I teach civic skills to young students, we’ve identified seven simple “steps to democracy”: listen, learn, choose, join, speak, act and lead. In other words, be civil, inform yourself, vote, help someone, speak up, take action and be your best self.

Americans are despairing about the future. This poses a bigger threat to democracy than any one politician, party or trend. When people lose hope, and the faith that their actions can make a difference, they retreat into cynicism, nihilism and isolation.

Yet democracy depends on public participation, and the bad actors know that. A leading objective of Russia-style disinformation is not to forward any one particular untruth, but to throw out so many conflicting and crazy claims that people no longer know what to believe or what they might do about it.

With civic resolutions, you can take practical steps to improve democracy right here, today. Here’s how:

• Listen. Listening doesn’t simply mean to stop talking and open your ears. It means practicing civility and respect, even when you disagree. From Braver Angels to Living Room Conversations, there are more than 500 groups hosting cross-partisan events around the country every day. These are easy to find and sign up for.

• Learn. If you’re one of the 50 percent of adult Americans who get their news “often” or “sometimes” from social media, resolve to branch out. Social media channels are rife with falsehoods and disinformation, and artificial intelligence is twisting the facts even further. Seek out reliable news sources, and subscribe to a local (or mainstream) newspaper.

• Choose. Voting is the most direct expression of civic power in democracy, yet in the 2022 election, fewer than half of voting-eligible Americans turned out. Voting should be civic resolution No. 1.

• Join. Amid a national mental health and loneliness crisis, experts say surprisingly little about the health value of volunteering and helping others. Yet the physical and mental health benefits of volunteering are well established. Whatever your interests, there are dozens of sites that can get you started.

• Speak. When was the last time you went to a candidate forum or a town council or school board meeting? If you don’t know who your local and national elected officials are, resolve to find out — and write, call or connect with them in person.

• Act. Whether you care about traffic, earthworms or pickleball, there is an association for you. Advocacy and trade groups get a bad rap in a culture where the term “lobbyist” is an insult. But one person’s special interest is another person’s passion. Resolve to join with others who share your interests and concerns.

• Lead. If elected officials are ignoring you, your ultimate recourse is to run for office yourself. But it’s not the only way to be a leader. When asked what it means to lead, Civic Circle students sometimes reply: It means to listen. This takes them full circle, right back to the first step to democracy. It’s not a bad place to begin.

Democracy is not some far-off realm presided over by experts, politicians and activists. It is something we practice every day, in our ongoing interactions with those around us, in the choices we make about what to read or watch, and in how we spend our time.

When you resolve to be a participant, not a spoiler, in civic life, you focus on solutions, not problems. Whatever your civic resolutions, don’t procrastinate, as you may have in getting to the gym last month. By this time next year, it may be too late.

Eliza Newlin Carney runs The Civic Circle, which uses music and the arts to empower young students to understand and participate in democracy. She wrote this for The Fulcrum.