RD Moore
Social Change Approach

I'd describe my work as being grounded in five core beliefs:
1. That all of humankind is irrevocably changing and diversifying in unprecedented ways;
2. That our biggest problems stem from the growing gap between the nation we've built and the people we're becoming;
3. That each of us has some great work that only we can do, a line in the human story that only we can write;
4. That going forward, the only kind of society that will work for any of us is one that truly works for all of us; and
5. That a "more perfect union" won't just evolve. It must be formed.

Right this moment, we Americans are undergoing what’s arguably the greatest sociological shift in our nation’s history, a sea change where every prevailing majority, in a system built to reward the majority at the expense of the minority, is eroding. For instance, racially, we’re twelve years past the moment when non-Anglo births surpassed Anglo births, and in 20 years, we’ll be a nation with no ethnic majority.

In 2017, non-church-goers surpassed church-goers, and in terms of sexuality, if trends continue, Generation Alpha will be the first birth cohort where more people identify as some version of non-straight than straight. Add to this, our increasing interconnectivity, evident in everything from the emergence of a global economy to the way the internet has linked us, to the effects of climate change; what Martin, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, described as our “single garment of destiny.”   

We see the stress fractures – from our increasingly toxic elections to rising poverty to our fractured sense of community – but we attribute it to the wrong thing. It’s not because we’re worse people. In fact, in many ways, we’ve grown. We’re more embracing and inclusive, more conscious of our interconnectivity and our impact on the environment. Nor is it the fault of the people on the other side of often outdated categories we’ve inherited or the arbitrarily drawn lines between “us” and “them”.

The problem is that society itself isn’t self-evolving. The most indispensable aspect of true democracy is recognizing that we, the people are tasked with constantly upgrading our institutions and infrastructure, making them compatible with who we're becoming. They, whether lawmaking or law enforcement, economic entities or religious ones, exist to serve us, not the other way around. That’s what democracy means – a government of, by, and for the people. All the people.

This, in essence, is state-building, the work the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote, “We, the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union”. Forming a more perfect union. That’s the great work that all of us, each in our own way, and throughout our lifetimes, are called to do.

Over America’s existence, there have been approximately 550 million lives lived; all of which have shaped us – some have made us better, and others, worse. But every life left its mark. In the intro of THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, I described it this way: In the grand library chronicling the story of humankind, each person gets to write a sentence; each society a chapter. And herein lies our opportunity; to, individually and collectively, make our contribution, unequivocally, a good one. That’s the line in the human story we all get to write.

You can read more about my overall approach to societal change in "Better Than We Found It", one of the Life on the Ground vignettes from THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND