Civic Renaissance

Two weeks ago,. Gretchen and I went to Indianapolis to attend the Civic Renaissance weekend in Indianapolis.

Some of my libertarian leaning friends had introduced me to the retreat’s remarkable organizer, Alexandra (Lexi) Hudson on line, and we leapt at the opportunity to meet her and the network she has assembled in person. So, we headed to Indy not knowing what to expect—including the tornado that came within a couple of miles of our hotel a few minutes after we arrived.

I’ve been to a lot of events over the years. This one was unique in lots of ways, including the venue. As you can intuit here, it was held in a large turn of the twentieth century house not far from downtown Indianapolis that Lexi and her husband are restoring. What you can’t see here is that it has a lot of land and a couple of outbuildings in the back that make the 10,000 square foot main residence all the more impressive.

Because you can see Lexi’s take on what happened in general on her Substack, I’ll focus on the five ways it will affect the Peacebuilding Starts at home community going forward, \\

Five Takeaways

Civic renaissance and paradigm shifts. I was first drawn to Lexi’s work because we reach similar conclusions despite having very different starting points. While I tend to use cutting-edge scientific discoveries as my inspiration, Lexi draws on classical social and political theorists, most of whom I have avoided reading for most of my career.

No matter what gets our intellectual juices flowing or whatever terminology we use, we end up at the same point. We need a paradigm shift (even though she would never use that term) in the way we solve the problems facing our country and out planet. Although she finds more inspirational roots in the roots of great thinkers and leaders from Gilgamesh to Hayek, we both agree that there are plenty of messages that we can build on in our shared history.

The weekend’s framing. In addition to Lexi’s brief presentation on her thinking about civility, the agenda was framed by two very different but equally inspirational keynote speakers.

We had known Daryl Davis for a decade after we met him at Gretchen’s first husband’s seventieth birthday party which was a swing dance. I had always been intrigued by former Indiana governor and Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, whose work has always impressed me, especially when we disagreed.

At first glance, the two didn’t share a lot. After all, what does a Black boogie-woogie pianist who has led at least two hundred people out of the Ku Klux Klan have in common with a leader who is best known for his pragmatism?

But when you get down to it, both reflected what Lexi wanted us to think about. How can you blend a desire for dramatic change with taking some risks and focusing on the things that you can accomplish in the short term?

What we discussed. We then went on to have nine working sessions with each participant being able to go to three of them. I went to ones on local initiatives, the role of the media, and on national politics. We also had remarkable discussions over the remarkable renaissance-era inspired meals that Lexi’s team prepared.

I came away with one common denominator that permeated all of the ones I sat in on as well as our discussions over meals and down time. As Lexi points out in her video on the Substack post, the labels we all use to define ourselves and each other just didn’t take us very far when we got into the nitty gritty of education, the media, popular culture, our lived experience wherever we lived, and, surprisingly, the specific issues being addressed by political leaders at the national level. The opportunities for finding common ground and working together not only exist but are surprisingly easy to identify.

The people in the room. It was an amazing group of people as well. That starts with its diversity. We spanned the political spectrum. We also came from big cities and small towns. There were plenty of professionals and professors but also a woman who has home schooled five children and another mom whose daughter graduated from college despite severe learning disabilities. Perhaps most importantly for me, Gretchen and I only knew three of the attendees before we got there but left with dozens of people we want to work with in the future.

Our remarkable host. As you will see if you watch the video, Lexi Hudson is remarkable on almost every dimension imaginable. That starts with her fascination with the innovative thinkers about society and politics from the past. These are folks whose works I avoid like the plague. She got me to read them. More seriously and importantly, Lexi takes on big challenges, ranging from restoring the 10,000 square foot house that her family lives in to reaching out to people like me whose political and social roots are so different from her own.

Going Forward

Even though two weeks have passed since we went to Indianapolis, the implications of what happened are still percolating. Certainly, we will be asking Lexi and the others we met to join us in the Peacebuilding Starts at Home community. Even more certainly, they will have a huge impact on how we do that work going forward.

There also will be ways for average citizens to get involved in her work without making the trip to Indianapolis.

Let me end by going back to the other project Lexi, Kian, and their children have taken on—restoring their remarkable house. Despite some plumbing setbacks, they have gotten the house in pretty good shape. The asphalt left from the days when it was a transcendental meditation center is gone and a large garden is springing to life. As someone who once owned an old farmhouse on twenty acres of land, I know—and they know—that their home project will never be done.

We are not as far along in the Peacebuilding Starts at Home project. As you will see in the coming weeks, we have a pretty good idea of what the scaffolding of our house might be like. But the inside of our metaphorical house needs a lot more renovation. As a Soviet friend once put it about perestroika, we may have to “remodel“ the “house” of American democracy from its foundations upward. And we have plenty of “asphalt“ in the back yard to replace.

But Lexi and the other people we met over the weekend have convinced me that it is possible to create a country in which most people solve most of their problems most of the time without the use of force and violence.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Alliance for Peacebuilding or its members.