The Radical Middle

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Growth and Justice has received praise from nearly every quarter. But, ironically, as in many states, partisan bickering over gay marriage and other issues brought this year's Minnesota legislative session to a standstill, effectively killing nearly all new proposals, Kramer's included.

Shirley Wilcher Celebrating Diversity

If we don't counteract the polarization we see in America today, warns Shirley Wilcher, "my fear is that we could end up with a South Africa kind of scenario, where only a small minority leads, and they're mostly from one race." A corporate diversity consultant, former Labor Department official under the Clinton administration, and founding member of the National Congress of Black Women, Wilcher is a tireless advocate for affirmative action. Yet she rejects being characterized as a liberal. "I think personal responsibility and government intervention can both be appropriate" responses to racial disparity, she says. "My eye remains on 25 years from now when the Supreme Court says affirmative action should no longer be necessary, and I will sit down today with whomever to find solutions." In her many op-ed pieces and letters to editors, Wilcher attempts to shift the focus of the affirmative action debate from racial quotas to the need to fix inequities in the K-12 education system, problems that, she says, create the need for affirmative action later on in colleges and workplaces. The daughter of jazz musicians, Wilcher sees the mixing of cultures and traditions in popular music as a sign that Americans can overcome our differences. "If there's one sign that we in America will be one America, it's in our music. Today you see white kids doing hip-hop. Fifty years ago, you didn't see that kind of blending."

Joseph McCormick Retracing de Tocqueville's steps

Joseph McCormick ran for Congress "as a hard-right Christian" in Jimmy Carter's old district in Plains, Georgia, in 1998. He had been a Republican activist for a decade, but during that campaign, he saw a side of national politics, and himself, that he didn't like. He found himself raising money from anyone who would give it and felt beholden to a range of interest groups he didn't really agree with. After losing the race, McCormick retreated, spending a year in a cabin on a mountainside in southwestern Virginia questioning the status of American democracy.

He read the works of political thinkers throughout American history, from Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to Noam Chomsky, and he found himself falling in love again with the dream that the founding documents of this country brought into being. Inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville, he and partner Pat Spino founded the Democracy in America Project, dedicated to building bridges across the political divisions that polarize and separate Americans, and seeking out models for doing democracy better. They traveled the country throughout 2003, filming interviews with more than 30 modern political philosophers and activists, including Ross Perot, Tom Atlee, Ralph Nader, and David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union, for use in a future documentary.

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