Video: Religion and Democratic Ideals: Political Futures

“Political Futures,” featured RPL Organizing Fellow, Josh Wolfsun, and RPL Arts and Popular Culture Fellow, Angélique Roché. Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Hussein Rashid, served as moderator. Moving from the exigencies of the moment, this conversation focused on creating new communities, generating solidarity, imagining different economies, and asked how we can make the politics of the possible a reality.

This was the first of four sessions in the Religion and Democratic Ideals series. This series focused on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Religion and Democratic Ideals Political Futures. September 24, 2024.

HUSSEIN RASHID: My name is Hussein Rashid, and I'm the Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusetts tribe, past and present, and honor the land itself, which remains sacred to the Massachusett people.

Welcome to a program hosted by Religion and Public Life. Religion and Public Life is dedicated to service of a just world at peace. We work with a dynamic method that has religious literacy at its core and brings in it critical analysis to understand and challenge systems of inequity. Our focus on just peace building recognizes that a peace without justice is not sustainable. The goal of our field programming is to bring analysis from experts, including academics, practitioners, and those living within inequitable systems, and offer some ways forward to build a more just world. The program is founded and led by Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean for RPL.

This series, like all our programming, would not be possible without the support of our team, including Ream, Hillary, Anna, Natalie, Tammy, and Rochelle. I also want to mention Becca Lewis, the student who conceived of this series and has been instrumental in putting it together. Thanks to them all.

This series emerged from conversations with students about what politics and democracy mean. It became clear through these conversations that democracies exist in service to ideals. We are a program that looks at questions of structural inequities, so our response has to be about the structure's functioning in our current political moment and creating structures of equitability. We're trying to respond to what we feel our students are asking of us while making sure that we are true to who we are.

A liberal democracy should produce societies that are inclusive, equitable, dynamic, and responsive to the needs of citizens. Thinking about these outcomes that we want from a democratic system creates space for us to construct pathways to achieving these goals. For Religion and Public Life then, the conversation is really about democratic ideals. The focus of ideals of equitable and inclusive societies where every member is treated as valuable, that is our connection to just peace building.

Our first event of this four-part series is on political futures. Ideals are often aspirational, so we think bringing futurists and organizers is a good way to frame the series. It is a focus on what is possible, not what is probable. We engage with the ideas of John Paul Lederach and the moral imagination. He argues for the capacity to imagine webs of relationships, the discipline to sustain curiosity, the eternal belief in the creative act, and the willingness to take a risk. It is in that context we turn to thinking about political futures.

Tonight, we have two amazing speakers. Angélique Roché, who is joining us on screen now, and Josh Wilson, who is also joining us on screen, both of whom are RPL Fellows this year. Angélique Roché, Esquire LL.M., is a journalist, producer, author, and professional host from New Orleans, Louisiana. A multi-hyphenate storyteller, her work sits at the crossroads of history, current events, and its impact on pop culture.

She's been seen/heard on various outlets and platforms, including Harper's Bazaar, NBC News, NBCBLK, MSNBC, AMC/BBC, SyfyWire, Disney, Marvel Studios, ESPN, and Paramount+. Prior to entering the entertainment field full time, Angélique worked as a congressional staffer, political field strategist, and campaign manager. In addition, she served as the vice president for external affairs for the Ms. Foundation for Women.

Josh Wolfsun is a political strategist and communications professional with a 12-year track record of building power and winning tough fights for progressive change. He first found his calling long before he was ever paid for organizing or communications when he was eight years old, handing out flyers so his two moms could get married in Massachusetts. And he promptly spent the next decade as a youth leader and organizer in his hometown in Western Mass.

His professional work has included both consulting and in-house staff roles with dozens of advocacy groups, community organizations, and labor unions across the East Coast. Among those roles, he previously served as the campaign manager for Sonia Chang-Diaz's 2022 Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign and as vice president for labor communications firm 617MediaGroup. He also played leading roles in campaigns that successfully passed a landmark $1.5 billion education equity bill, won nation-leading police reform legislation, and sought to abolish anti-Palestinian policies within Jewish organizations.

Josh completed a Master's of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School in 2024. His project turns a spotlight on the ideological frames that consistently trap organizers and leaders seeking transformational change while articulating a resonant, commonly-shared, proactive vision for change-makers today.

Wow, I'm tired from reading that. Thank you both for joining us. I'm so pleased and so honored that you decided to take the time to be with us today and share your thoughts and vision for what our political futures could be. And I think the first thing I want to ask both of you is help us understand what is political futures? What does that mean? Political? Futures? How do they fit together? And where does religion come in? And I will start off with you, Angélique, since you've taken yourself off-mute.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: That's what I get. I think, and I've been pondering this question since thinking about the panel and thinking about what does a political future look like. And the question is, who does the future serve? And I think when we're thinking about political future, we look at our now, we look at what are the every day things that we're dealing with, climate change. And I think that is one of the things that stick out to me, is that within the next decade, within the next two decades, not even with the next century, we're looking at drastically changing what the needs are for every human being in the world.

Looking now at what are the needs for transportation, travel, what do basic needs look like when temperatures are changing, when we're dealing with the loss of land. That's something that's particularly poignant now in Louisiana as we are losing wetlands, which used to be the barrier to the state. And as we lose those wetlands, we have more and more people who are suffering from property damage, who are suffering from loss of homes, loss of work, loss of income.

And so what does it mean with these shifts? And so in a less tangible form, a political future is looking at how democracy manifests itself when everybody is considered in who does the future serve. And we have a real conversation about what are basic needs, because-- and we'll probably get to this later, right now we're dealing with so much salesmanship when it comes to future. But those futures that are being sold are being sold from someone else's imagination.

And so as we're contemplating how to get more people to the table and have their imaginations dreaming up a future, where everyone has a place, table or not, just everyone has a place to imagine their futures together, we also have to really hone down on what do basic needs look like, what do basic protections look like as the world around us is changing.

HUSSEIN RASHID: All right, thank you for starting us off. Josh.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah. Thank you so much, Hussein, for inviting us here. Angelique, it's great to be on this panel with you. It's been awesome having some conversations before this about this. And I also want to thank Becca for thinking of this and pulling it all together.

I'm incredibly excited to be here, in part because I think when I think about political futures, the thing I actually start with is that it's important to be thinking about political futures, which sounds really basic. But I think it's a critical question to be asking right now, in part because I think for a lot of people it's becoming increasingly hard to actually imagine any political futures at all. And I think that runs across a few different axes. Like there's the potential rise of fascism in the US, which I think a lot of people see as a threat to the end of politics as we know it.

There's, as Angelique highlighted, there's visions of climate change. But I think there's also a lot of apocalyptic visions of climate change and the end of the world in that way. And on top of all of that, we're also often just stuck in the present moment. It's like a basic fact of who we are, is like we live in a response to the world as it is around us. But part of what the question of even asking the question of political futures does is asks us to go beyond both these sort of apocalyptic visions that are so easily and readily at hand of endings and also the things we're stuck in.

So I think I just wanted to start there first of highlighting that it's important to just be asking that question to start with, and it opens up a lot of space. By way of starting to get into what political futures could mean, I have two very quick anecdotes, if you'll forgive me. So one, as I was like contemplating this question over the last week and what political futures, what it means, I thought back actually to when I was really young, and I graduated elementary school, and I was going to middle school, and I was super excited because I was going to be moving from these classrooms where everything was sort of jumbled together into these classrooms where there were dedicated courses. There was an English class, there was a science class, there was a math class.

But the one I was really excited about was social studies. And in my head, what I thought social studies was as a kid was we're going to look at social relationships, how people interact with each other. It was like the social piece. We're literally going to study being social and what that means. And of course, what I found in the classroom was we're studying government and we're studying economics and we're studying history. And all these things are presented as these fixed, dead, inert facts of life. And the thing that I was thinking about recently with this is how long and how sad it is, how long it took for me to come back around to realize that the things we were actually studying were just formalized versions of our social relationships with each other. That those structures that we think of as so fixed and tangible are actually just codifications of our existing relationships. And that's part of what politics and economics does, is like the actual codification of that.

And along with that, so I was thinking of that on the one hand, and that story and what is politics in the big sense if we're going to think about political futures. And then one of the groups that I'm working with right now is doing campaigning around the presidential election. And I'm not here to talk about the presidential election or that anyone should get involved in anything electoral. But as I was working on one of their campaigns, we sent out a blast text and I got this response and I couldn't not-- like I got it today and I couldn't get it out of my head. So I'm going to share it with you.

This was from a random person that we had texted. And they said-- this was a text to encourage them to vote for Kamala Harris for president. And they responded, "I'm sorry, I can't/won't endorse Harris-Walz. I must weigh the pros and cons. And in doing so, my vote is with Trump." American flag emoji. "Jesus Christ has and always will protect my job. But at the end of the day, the US was better under Trump... Economy/inflation, military, backed the blue, border security, and our nation as a whole. I don't stand with unnecessary wars. My tax dollars going to other countries, over 20 million illegals coming in and taking all our resources. Gender-affirming care for children under 18 is wrong. Taking parents away. Abortion... Et cetera. I love JESUS, my country USA, military, US flag emoji, and my family. I will always stand on the side of God, country and family." Then red, white and blue heart emojis, a salute emoji, American flag emoji, and a cross emoji.

And when I received this, obviously there were a lot of thoughts that went through my head. But one of them was that how much was all wrapped together in this one text message from this person, that often in the political space we think of issues as separate items. But ultimately, all of these added up and what it hammered home for me was that the work of politics and economics is the work of structuring not just like discrete policies here or there, but structuring particular ways of life. That is, in many ways, as politics and economic structures or social relationships, we are constructing ways of life through them and we're living with existing ways of life.

And so when I think about political futures, one of the big things that I think about is ways of life and identities and how that's being constructed and what's being enabled and what's being prevented. And what we want to see enabled or prevented through political action in our structures. So I'm sorry, that was a little bit long, but that text was so rich. I felt like I needed to share it.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you, Josh. That text is incredibly rich and I think, what I'm hearing-- well, first, I want to highlight, I think when we talk about RPL and dynamic methodology, one of our basic starting points is that religion is part of our societies, whether we want to accept it or not. I mean, Max Weber, the sociologist, over a century ago was talking about how secularism is really just the normalization of Christianity, the diffusion of Christianity through the public sphere.

And so we're always dealing with questions of religion, even when we're not sure that we are. So I think these systems of life, these ways of life, is a great way of starting to start encapsulating that, because we're always dealing with questions of religion and sometimes implicit. But as you point out, explicit.

What I'm taking with is I'm hearing both of you talk about what politics means, is you both talk about it through the lens of social relationships who is sitting at a table together. Politics is the formalization of social relationships. And I think these are incredibly important ways of thinking about what politics is and our social relationships. But then you also both point to something else, which is, Josh, in that text, you're talking about how policies and relationships-- how the ways we order society needs are not being met.

And Angelique were really explicit. I mean, it felt like you were walking us through Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like, do people have food right now? Do they have shelter right now in this country? And it feels weird to be talking in 2024, in the wealthiest nation in the world, to talk about are we addressing the bottom needs of society? And I think that's really what at the bottom needs of individual welfare in our society.

And I think that is really what I'm excited about by what you're both opening the door to, is how do we-- if I were to say, let's think of a future time period, I'm just going to throw out 50 years, but you can feel free to do whatever you want. What is that future?

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: Personally?

HUSSEIN RASHID: Yeah.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: I think personally for me, Josh, if you don't mind me going since I've already made a exclamatory statement, is one where everyone sees the value of their story. And the reason why I point to that is Josh-- I left organizing, but Josh and I have some similar-- some similarities in our career.

And when working in politics and working in campaign politics, one of the things that stuck out to me was the devaluation of story and the devaluation of people's placement in the larger community. And I think one of the most dangerous things that colonization did was separate folks from the collective and create individual bubbles that disallowed collective power.

And so in that there is also an erasure of a collective story and where people fit in that. In a more tangible way, when you look at the investment of political dollars, when you look at the investment in education, in roads, in neighborhoods, when you look at where overpasses are built in communities, which are generally lower income neighborhoods that don't have a voice, I always ask the question, would the decision have been different had their story been valued?

Had they been at the table to explain their values and what their neighborhood meant to them? And I always kind go back to the Claiborne overpass in New Orleans, which split in half Treme, the oldest Black neighborhood in the country, historically Black neighborhood. It existed before Louisiana was a state.

A free Black artisans middle class. And my father is old enough to have walked down that street that used to be green lined with bowling alleys. And this is during segregation. So this is a Black neighborhood. And then in the 60s there was a decision to put an overpass straight through it.

And I feel like that hid a lot of the beauty and a lot of the stories. And I think it changed the dynamics of power in the city. And so when I say for me, what our future looks like is that everyone sees value in their stories. Not that everybody gets everything they want. That is a whole other bag of worms.

But I think when we look at that, it means that we listen to the most marginalized voices. It means that we give the privilege of imaginative space to everyone so that they are also able to imagine their futures and feel invested and engaged. And I think the reason I actually got into campaign politics is because I remember a day walking into my congressional office and there was a bill on the floor that stated that if anybody had served their time, they automatically got put back on the voter rolls, no questions asked.

And if they weren't put back on the voter rolls, they had a right to sue the state. And in my brain as a young lawyer, I was like, this is great. People are less disenfranchised. We'll have people wanting to participate in politics again because they're not just paying taxes and they can't vote.

And I was asked who asked us to sign on to the bill? And it was a very hil question. But that's when I understood the power of a story. That's when I understood that the power of people's voices and the level of fatigue, cultural violence, that real violence has just embedded communities whose voices are the most critical when shaping a future has done.

And so I think for me the only way to get to a better future in the future I want to see is where people all understand they are part of a collective, they are part of the community, their story is valued, and what they bring to the table is essential. Yeah.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah, Angélique, like, part of what I'm hearing and what you're saying is, one piece of this is that the political futures are going to be co-constituted. Like, we're going to co-create it. I mean, not just the two of us. Like, everyone's going to co-create whatever political futures, and hopefully aspirational political futures.

Hopefully, hopefully good ones. But I think the question always comes up like what's the endpoint? What's the destination in 50 years? And I think without pushing back too hard on this question, which is a good one, it's an important one, like, I also think it's a trap.

Like, I think it's a trap for us to plant a flag down on here's where we long term, the political future is going to be. And there's a different way of thinking about political futures, where to build on what you're saying, Angélique or there's-- recognizing that the political futures are going to be co-created, that they're going to be co constituted, we can start looking around and thinking directionally rather than about endpoint destinations.

Which will end up just being-- they won't happen. The world is way too complex and difficult and contradictory. And we also can't escape our own experiences. I feel like one of the other pieces when I've tried to go. What do I want the world to be like in 50 years is I feel like I end up often just coming to a negation of all of the bad things that I currently see.

Even though I know that's what I'm not supposed to do, like, I know I'm supposed to be like, ah, yes, here's the visionary, beautiful thing that's going to come out of my head, but it ends up being, well, I don't want to see discrimination and I don't want to see oppression, and I don't want to see economic inequality and I don't want to see-- and it's a lot of that.

So I think it takes real work to look around and go, what are the things that I do actually want? What are the positive things that I see in our world now that-- I don't know what they're going to look like in 50 years, but I know that we can build on them.

And I want to run toward those things. And Angélique, I love what you just described about everyone having their own voice and recognizing that and having their voice be recognized.

And I feel like of the other pieces-- there are a couple of other pieces to me that fit in with that too when I tend to think about these. I think about values a lot. And one of those is like obviously relationships, which we've talked about a lot here already, 27 minutes in. But the other one is growth. Like, both one's own ability to grow, but also creating spaces and creating structures and institutions that enable people to grow and change in different directions.

Adrienne Maree Brown writes about how-- in her great book, emergent strategy, she wrote about at one point, and this one's really stuck with me, when we think about futures, like, we've got to stop thinking about and envisioning ones where everybody has to be the same kind of person. We have to be able to allow for different personality types and different kinds of people and that people might conflict and growth is a key part of that.

So I think about that as maybe two other values to sit alongside what Angélique has described of just valuing relationships and creating institutions that really enable us to focus on relationships and also growth, driving towards politics and economics that allows people to grow in their varied directions.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: And really, there's something you hit on I think is really important, Josh, which is the deconstructing of what we believe everything has to look like. And that may be the hardest part of the process in that we are dealing with problems now that are the byproduct of decisions that have been made in the past.

And I remember we were talking before, we had this conversation about that we're someone's future. And this is kind of where we ended up. It's like, we're also someone's past. We are going to be someone's past. We are sitting at a point where we are solving for solutions in the future while trying to combat dealing with the byproducts of decisions we didn't make.

And that's hard because many of us are-- many of us have the privilege to begin to deconstruct, because we have the context that these systems only exist because someone else imagined them into existence. Our democracy exists because someone else imagined this form of democracy into existence.

Every single structure that we deal with every day, that we feel is so concrete, did not exist 300-400 years ago. And so it's also a little hopeful in a way. So I want to say it because it sounds really hard, like, oh. But it's hopeful in a way because it's like walking into a LEGO store. And those true LEGO people know that if you go into the back of the LEGO store, there's just a wall of LEGOs.

And they have numbers and you get to go, all right, I want 10 of those and 20 of those. And I don't know what I'm making, but I'm making something. And forgive me, I can't remember the name of the artist, but there was this incredibly talented artist who made sculpture out of all Black LEGOs. He said, I know what this was supposed to be and I know the instructions that came with it.

And I get that these were formulated in a way, but I am going to take all these Black LEGOs and I am going to make something completely new that's never existed before. And I think that's where we sit right now. A lot of us are in this--

Thank you. Ekow. I'm going to definitely murder his name because I've not heard it. Ekow Nimako. And I encourage you to look-- like, it just inspired me seeing what someone could do with Black LEGOs.

I was just like, OK, this is incredible. But that's where a lot of us sit right now. We sit-in this space of privilege, though it doesn't always feel that way. And not privilege in the other sense of the word, but in that we see the context, we understand that we are in the middle of triaging something that was an experiment.

It was a democratic experiment that didn't include cell phones or broad line or wireless or forever chemicals or interstates. None of it. It didn't even consider more than half of the country being part of the country at the time. And so we are constantly fitting square pegs in round holes while also going, how do we work on slowly deconstructing this to build a better democracy for future generations?

HUSSEIN RASHID: I want to thank you both. Josh, I want to be clear. I think the pushback is welcome. That's the purpose, is exactly to your point, this is not about sameness. This is about difference. And we want that discussion.

And I think trying to build off what you and Angélique are offering, when I think about futures-- the way I was introduced to futurisms, which is different than what we're talking about here, which is political futures. But thinking about the moment we're in as Angelique said, came from a history, how did we get here?

So if there was one thing I could change in the past that would alter the reality we're in now, what would that be? What would be that one point in history that would say is pivotal to what I find aggravating at this point? If we changed, you know, the 13th Amendment, what would that mean for our conception of abolition today?

And legalized slavery within the United States? And then taking that, what is the one thing I could change now that would free up people to do something, to have that privilege, the ability to imagine forward. Or to your point, Josh, what is it that we relish, that we thrive in that we think is healthy and good, inclusive and equitable that we want to encourage and thrive?

How do we create that system? And when I think here-- I want to try to tie together these threads, is I think we're talking about two different types of politics. And I think, Josh, you're opening help frame it. You're talking about a formalized politics. When we think about voting, when we think about electoral work, that's a formalized type of politics that is an institutionalization of social relationships.

And Angélique, as I'm hearing you, you're talking about social relationships, people who have not necessarily been historically in those institutions of power and politics, how they built their own power and their own politics and their own belonging. And I don't think they're necessarily opposed. But we have to understand we're operating at two different levels simultaneously.

And I think that that's really important to understand that when we say politics, it's not just electoral, but it is organizing, it is social. I'll use my own example, since we're getting personal. My ancestors did not have access to formal institutional politics, as colonized subjects, as immigrants to the United States, whereas I sit-in places that they could never imagine somebody from our family ever said it.

Informal institutional politics spaces. But what is my obligation? What is my connection? How do we bridge those social politics to the institutional politics? And I think that that's the question of the futures that we're talking about, is not necessarily about the endpoint, but directionality. And I think that's absolutely the right framing, is what are we trying to cultivate out of this.

And I here-- and I will end with one thing and then I will turn to a question is that I think arts are incredibly important in this space. This is not a secret. Everybody in this call will now understand that I love Star Trek. But 30 years ago there was a show called Star Trek Deep Space 9, and 30 years ago, they aired an episode about an event in the Star Trek past called the bell riots.

And the bell riots were about excessive homelessness and overpolicing and racial tensions in the United States. And those bell riots ushered in a violent moment in American history, in the Star Trek universe, that then led to a more, well-- world War III came in the middle, but then it led to a more equitable society.

It had nothing to do with the bell riots, though. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian antifascist, talks about the oldest dying, the news waiting to be born. And now there are monsters and it feels like that's what they were getting at. But the bell riots happens in the Star Trek universe in 2024, and it's amazing to me how prescient that episode was 30 years ago, reflecting on where the United States was 30 years ago, saying that if this continues on this path, we will hit a crisis point.

And it felt like it offered us a way forward. And it feels like artists now are offering a way forward. And so what are the imaginings that you have seen, the creative imaginings you have seen of what is possible for us?

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: Now, are we talking about completely fictional or are we talking about what people have tried to construct?

HUSSEIN RASHID: I'm talking about what people have tried to construct or what are they-- you talked about Nimako, who is playing with Blackness because-- these Black bricks, because he's talking about Blackness and the representations of Blackness. I think the movie Black Panther was such a success because it imagined a future, a present future that is different than what we can imagine now.

So art is a space of breaking open the probable into what is possible. And I'm looking for those ruptures. What are the things that-- let me rephrase it then. What are the things that inspire you and why, in terms of these inclusive futures?

And they're both acting like I didn't feed them these questions beforehand.

JOSH WOLFSUN: This one did not feed us beforehand. I'm just going to be totally honest about this one. Angélique, I feel like you should go first because you're the-- you have so much to give in this space, but I'm also happy to go first, if you want to think for a minute.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: No, go ahead.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Well, so for things that inspire me, I think-- I'm going to come at this less from the culture and arts perspective and more from what I've seen in political organizing and from my own life experience. So in the political organizing space, what I see often is when I start working with groups and we do strategic planning or we do a retreat or we do visioning, what I find is that often--

And this might sound not inspiring what I'm about to say, but stay with me because I do think it's actually inspiring. Often what I find is really similar questions come up about how do we want to create this group together. What is the point of our work together? And how do we want to structure decision making inside of this group?

How do we want to make sure that everyone's voices are heard? And every group comes to different visions of what they want to do and how they want to set up the structures. But there's a process that happens where when you combine the vision with then the practical piece of how do we want to build this for ourselves in this moment? And you put that power into people's hands, there's just something that lights up in their eyes.

And you can see them start to co-create something together. So it's less-- here's what I see as potential futures as a matter of content and more as a matter of process. That I've seen groups look at where do we want to be in five years and/or what do we want our futures to look like and work together. And then sometimes they win, oftentimes they don't get there because it's hard.

But they come out with renewed purpose and ability to work together. So that's on one hand. On the other hand, for me, I think my own background and story is like, where I come from feeds a lot into what I see as potential political futures and frankly, political futures as a site for continued growth and change.

I grew up in Western Mass. Like, I was raised by two moms. We lived in a community where there was a lot of families with two moms. I remember one of the kids I grew up with and went to preschool with would say-- he his parents were straight, but he his assumption at four years old was that half the world was gay.

He was like, half of all families have two moms or two dads. And it's that being able to see in all sorts of different places, people change the things that we think are not changeable. The really big things, norms. Being able to co-create those spaces in small ways in different places and sometimes in big ways.

Those ripples fan out. There's a little bit of a butterfly effect that can happen. Gay marriage is like, one of those big-- one of those big issues that people talk about a lot where public opinion has shifted massively in my lifetime. So I think I look around, that's a little bit of a mish mash, but I look around at all of those things, experientially and I'm like, those all give me hope and inspire me about the future that we can co-construct together, even when there's obviously a lot of dark stuff on the horizon, too.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: So when I was in high school, there was this book called The Ruins of Ambrai. It's by an author named Melanie Rawn. She wrote the first book, she wrote a second book and then never wrote the third book. I'm still-- see, you're saying you get it.

You get it. You get it. I still think it's somewhere written. But the point of saying this, it was the first book I had ever read where they flipped the patriarchal into the matriarchal and in this world women were the ones who controlled marriage.

They controlled the ones they controlled power. But it was medieval and there were still mages and magic. And the most powerful people were Brown skinned. And I say all that to say is like, my 10th-grade self was like, wait, what? That-- that can happen?

And so the point of that is like, I am always inspired by people who go yes, that can happen. So I have a very good friend, Brian Joseph Lee. He used to be at the Public Theater and now he's out on his own. And his whole ethos was like, the theater space needs to have better ethical treatment of Black and Brown bodies, especially in the queer space.

They ask our opinion. They ask for our expertise. We're the one person at the table, but it is not done in a safe space for us where we feel like it's productive and that we're not being exploited. And I love how he has worked to create writers, retreats in different countries.

How he's been able to create queer spaces for playwrights and screenwriters to come together. And with the sheer understanding you don't have to produce anything. Be in space. I had an incredible conversation with an artist, Terrance Osborne today, who is from New Orleans, who his artwork has profoundly impacted the way people see the vibrancy of the city.

But so few people ask him about his story and where he is from and why his work is so vibrant. And so having that conversation with him about fifth-grade Terrance and seeing that look of process and that look of being able to impact the community in the way that he has literally doing commission piece after commission piece to be auctioned or sold or donated to local organizations to help support the community.

DJ who owns Baldwin books in New Orleans, whose goal is to make sure every single kid in New Orleans has at least 10 books and working with different organizations. And so I wanted to find a book or a piece of work that inspires me. But it really is the people who see the world not fully be deconstructed, but when they ask the why--

People like Greg Pack, who when he was 10 years old, wrote down "why can't there be a Chinese-American Batman?" He did make a Chinese-American Hulk. I don't know if he's gotten to a Chinese-American Batman. He's also responsible for World War-- for Sakaar, Hulk World. Because he questioned the why.

And so when I think of being inspired about futures, I think of activists like Jessica Bird, who just started Black camp, which is literally on Alex Haley's farm, and she is bringing together activists and advocates to have a space to think and community, to have a space to relearn astronomy so they can tell how to map the world and navigate using the stars.

That even, that imagination to think backward to the skills that we did have. And to be one with the land. They go out there, there's an apple orchard, and when the apples are there, everybody gets to come pick a basket and bring it home. And so what does that mean to revision and reimagine outside of what we've been told we have to do?

And ask, what can we do? And so it's really people for me, like, it's just-- I'm always so inspired when I see the construction of people's lives and how they're able to create, even sometimes in the midst of a dumpster fire.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you both for that. I love hearing this tension, again, that sort of social movement inspiration versus the individual inspiration and commitment and engagement with community. I want to take a moment. There's probably a lot of art I could think of, but there's something that I was recently exposed to.

The doctor Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, who is the former head of the Episcopal Divinity School and is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, came to our summit last May and gave a keynote address. Her ability to give a speech is artful. It is an art form. And she said something in there that totally broke the way I see the world.

And I'm going to paraphrase her here. I haven't set with it enough to memorize it. I'm going to paraphrase it. She's quoting the Bible. She says when the first will be last and the last will be first.

She says that's not a call to invert power structures. That's not a call to say somewhere in the future people will get there, what is due to them, either good or bad. If you suffer now, you'll be rewarded in the future and vice versa. If you're rewarded now-- she says, no, the challenge there is not that there's an inversion of the order, that it is a cycle, that there is no first and there is no last.

Who's the head and who's the tail? The point is that we are getting to a point where these power structures don't matter and shouldn't matter. And for me, it was a very powerful moment to hear. Such an important, and I would argue, well known, at least in the context of the United States, religious text being used not in a way to say that there is a deferred justice or that there is-- it is possible to be righteous.

But with work. But in fact, the goal is to break down even the temptation to have this power and control. And as we sit here with religion and public life, Josh, graduated from the program. Angélique, you've been working with us for a while now. We are all sort of familiar with this language, but I think there's so many people in our audience who are wondering, well, what does this have to do with religion?

What is religion democratic futures have to do? And you know, Josh, you started us out thinking about how these ways of life infuse the way we live, whether we want to know it or not, which I think is an important part of this, that there's an implicit question of religion. So when we talk about social relationships, there is this implicit in that our religious communities, whether those are formal institutions like churches and synagogues and temples or gurdwaras or mushes or people's homes or more informal spaces of people who are seeking to gather for something.

And I think the question I want to pose to you is how do you understand, not necessarily religion, because I think that can be a very simple answer or a very complex answer that we don't necessarily have time for right now, but how do you understand why is this important to be having in the context of religion and public life, and thinking about why we have to be thinking about religion more broadly in this political future question?

JOSH WOLFSUN: So I would say two things, to be brief. And there's so many-- this is like, uh, what an onion you just put on the table that we could just keep peeling away layers at. We'll see how many we get through.

So on one level, one of the reasons that I wanted to start with that ways of life sort of setup and frame for thinking about what's happening with politics and economics in most of our institutions out in the world, is because we take for granted as we don't actually engage directly with the question of what ways of life our political systems and our economic systems are generally enabling.

Or are precluding or are cultivating, right? But religions very often do engage directly with the question of what kinds of lives we want to live, whether that's explicitly in terms of theology or whether that's in practice. Like, there's an intentionality that's brought to-- in many cases, there's an intentionality that's brought to ritual, to practice, to theology, to religious community, where you are actively engaging with not these sort of siloed questions that we end up with all too often in politics and in economics and in--

Pick an issue area and you got it, where it becomes about achieving just what we all assume the goal is. But gets back to some of those more fundamental questions. And so in one sense, religion and our assumptions about ways of life, which one could say are religious assumptions, are infused in everything political. On another level, religions offer a space where they can, they don't have to, and certainly they don't always, but where they can begin to explore and cultivate alternative ways of life and alternative futures in an intentional way.

In a way where we don't have those venues to do that in most of our lives in the so-called secular world, at least here in the United States.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: So personally for me, like many people, my idea of community begins rooted in the church. And so similar to what Josh said, there is this idea of community, of collective, but also of caring for a community, of taking care of community. This begets things like benevolent societies and women's organizations.

Even when you look at the Divine Nine, when you look at who have now taken a step into saying we're going to be politically active, who marched in suffrage, the core-- well, the Deltas did. The core of the beliefs of the Divine Nine is rooted in religion, is rooted actually in Christianity and monotheistic religion. But also, and for me this was one of something that stuck very, very much with me throughout my life is a poem by Emily Dickinson.

And I won't recite it, but the whole point of it-- for those it's some keep the Sabbath going to church, is that she is saying that her church is nature. And that stuck out to me because part of that goes into the collective understanding that we are responsible ecologically. And so when you think about how we are to care for the world, I think for many that is also rooted in what many people have learned in religion.

But I will also say-- and I use this stark example and I don't have much time. I always go back to the papal bulls. I go back to the justification of slavery and genocide being rooted in not just permission, but an edict given to European countries and how that snowballed so much of what we consider to be civilization and civilized, but also the lens that so many of the things that we are working to deconstruct is rooted in.

I also say, it took until 2023 for the Pope to verbally, like, publicly reject the doctrine of discovery, which was used up until the late 1800s in the United States Supreme Court. And so religion has such power, whether it is a community that's been created, whether it's been beliefs, because at the same time this year we had the Pope go, hey, six in one hand, half a dozen the other.

We don't believe in abortion, but also that your treatment of migrants is a death sentence. And that voice for so many means so much. And that's not just monotheistic religions. As we look at the care that we have for our world, many of our communities, many of the first rules and laws, we've learned many of the ways that we have these social relationships that Josh and I have been talking about, whether they are codified or not, begin with our values and our beliefs.

And that initial community is so important on how we see the world. And so religious impact-- we are still combating with some of religions impact and deconstructing it and ripping it apart. But also it holds such promise for rebuilding community.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you. Thank you both for those really powerful reflections. And the setup you've given us now to turn to some Q&A. And I want to start with a question offered by Hunter. And depending how you answer, I might have a follow up to this. But the question from Hunter is how do we deal with the tension between evolutionary incremental change, political and societal, and revolutionary change?

Where does the notion of patience appropriately sit-in the conversation?

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: I don't know where Josh sits on this. They have to happen at the same time. It cannot be one after another. And I know that sounds counterproductive the way we understand revolution. The way many people understand revolution is, I think, very immediate. But I am of the opinion that revolutions evolve themselves.

Somebody doesn't just stop in the middle of the street and go revolutions happening now. I mean, it's happened. But normally revolutions require galvanizing, spreading of the word, people coming together, instances happening. And I think that revolutions are somewhat evolutionary. They require there to be a growth for people to amass, for people to--

And then what most people think of as revolutions is like, that boiling point. Like, that's like-- you know, the French Revolution just didn't one day start. Like, they were meeting for a while, they were having these conversations.

And so I say all that to say both should be happening at the same time, because one thing we mentioned in the beginning is like, yes, we're thinking about political futures and looking at this idea of a more just future and opening the doors for the more imaginary, but we can't suddenly forget about what's happening right now.

And the decisions that are made every single day that impact millions of people. So yes, people still have to run for office, people still have to be on city council, people still have to do testimonies as a revolution is building, in my personal opinion, because it's necessary.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah, I could not agree, Angélique, more with your answer just now. Like, just to add on a little bit because I think you've captured so much there. When we think about what happens with revolutionary change, when you have these moments where big-- there are decades where weeks happen and weeks where decades happen or whatever the Lenin thing is.

I'm butchering it, but what I'm talking about. You know when you have those big moments, there's nothing to say that those necessarily continue to push in one direction once that moment has passed. Oftentimes what we also see is the change that happens during revolutions is fragmentary and shoots off in different directions. And in many cases also like, powerful interests retrench.

And so a big thing that's like sitting in the background here, which we shockingly haven't talked more about already, is like, power, and how you build power and how you leverage power to then accomplish change. Like, change doesn't just happen. And when I talk about power, I don't just mean power over people.

I also mean the ways in which through the relationships that we form, we expand one another's capacities. So when you create an organization and you give it structure with five of your friends, suddenly you all individually and collectively have the opportunity to do things that you did not otherwise, before you created some structure to plug yourselves into.

In a very simple kind of way here. So I think there's a lot to say and maybe it's another talk at another point or maybe we'll get more questions about it. But a lot of how these futures end up being enabled is not just us sitting here thinking about what could a future look like, but it's people building and creating their own capacities to manifest those futures in the real world together.

And to Angélique's point, like, the likelihood that we actually end up attaining any of the futures or the kinds of futures that we're interested in pursuing, with just a flash in the pan revolutionary moment, is incredibly small all on its own. You need to have the power to back it up. So just to put a really specific point on what Angélique was covered in real depth there, that's my only other sort of tidbit, two cents to throw in.

HUSSEIN RASHID: I think that's great, Josh. I think it's a really useful way to think about. And, Angélique, I appreciate your approach as well, because I think-- let me give a concrete example and tell me if I'm understanding correctly. But if I'm understanding both correctly. Is people sort of have a visceral reaction to revolution.

Like, revolution is bad. The question is whom is it bad for? Like, there's a reason a revolution is happening. And we've got to be able to understand those structures. But if we think about the American Revolution, I don't think any American is saying we shouldn't have had the American Revolution because that creates all sorts of dissonance for me.

Maybe there are people who can score that. I can't. But that happened also because there's an intellectual art that is developing beforehand and organizing the amassing of power that once the revolution happens then enter into State Building, nation State Building, which if we remember, the Articles of Confederation actually don't hold the country together. It's the Constitution that leads to that.

But it's because this groundwork of this community organizing has happened-- And I'm using community organizing very loosely here. But I mean, this is the only community that matters at the time. The people who could vote, the landowners--

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: I mean, I'll just add, like, I think-- we've talked a little bit about social relationships and then like institutional relationships. And I think there are real differences between those, but I think it's also really fluid. I think that's a real spectrum. And in some ways you can look at the American Revolution as an example of a certain kind of community organizing in a particular community.

And what came out of it, what were the structures that they developed for their organization? It was Congress, the judiciary and the executive branch. And, we may like them, we may not like them, but that was how they structured those relationships and figured out how to share power together and how to also expand the power that they did have. So that's just like--

Sorry to jump in on your point there, but you got me very excited. It's just like, because oftentimes when I'm working with organizations around organizing. They end up creating their own mini governments. Like, that's a little bit how it ends up happening because if you don't structure the power intentionally within your social relationships, a power structure will emerge regardless.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: And at the end of the day, a social contract is necessary.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: And, Hussein, I like the way you and Josh, who kind of said it, too, it's like to this day, we're questioning, well, who was that particular social contract? That wasn't-- that social contract did not include me.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: But I also, Hussein, like the way you highlighted is that we think of revolutions as bad, but we also have to think of the narrative that we've been told. So a lot of people will look at the Haitian Revolution, which-- because it's so anachronistic and amorphous in people's minds, they don't realize it was one of the catalysts for the Civil War, was the fear that this country, the only country to emancipate itself from slavery rose up and abolished the system.

It's not like they didn't go in, just as Josh said, and create another system. And it's not like, Mexico had not just done the same thing. We don't call it New Spain. We call it Mexico because they gained their independence multiple times. But we don't think of those revolutions in the same way.

And so I think it's also revolution isn't bad if revolution is necessary. But revolution is messy.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Sorry, Josh. You came out first. Please.

JOSH WOLFSUN: No, I was just going to ask if you were going to take us to the dark side of that example, Hussein, because I got very excited and cut you off, but--

HUSSEIN RASHID: Go for it. Take us over, Darth Vader.

JOSH WOLFSUN: No. I mean, I think just the other side of the American Revolution example and many revolutions, which I don't know if you were gesturing at, Hussein, but I feel duty bound to take us is, like is the retrenchment. Like, you have the revolution and then a power class emerges and then-- or has already existed in many cases, and also along with whatever change they are in themselves seeking, reinforce their own power.

And that's like, I think, where a lot of this vision and values piece comes back into the equation, is we can be-- it's not just about figuring out a structure of power that works in whatever gets all the trains run on time or whatever. It's about intentionally structuring our relationships in a way that we want to see and allows us to continue to grow and iterate. So anyway.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: I think it all comes back to who does the future serve?

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Right. Who does it serve? Thank you, Angélique. And Josh, your point. I was going to use the American Revolution for that. I was going to use the French Revolution, but yes, the point is still valid.

JOSH WOLFSUN: The French Revolution is more stark for that. That's--

HUSSEIN RASHID: Yes, exactly.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Yeah. I've been doing this for a while. I know things. So Josh, this question-- I have a question that's directed to you from an anonymous user. But, Angélique, I strongly suspect you will have something to say about this because you've hinted at your background in this.

So Josh talked about how many organizations and campaigns are beholden to election cycles, et cetera. How can we break out of those cycles? From your vantage point, what obstacles stand in the way of having broader, more long term vision for our Democratic systems?

JOSH WOLFSUN: Can you read the second part of that question one more time?

HUSSEIN RASHID: From your vantage point, what obstacles stand in the way of having a broader, more long term vision for our Democratic system?

JOSH WOLFSUN: Yeah, mean one of them is just headset. One of them is just mindset. I think we pay a lot of attention to every single election and what that ends up doing, and we spend a lot of money on every single election. There are structural pieces of that are built in. But part of it is the more that we fixate ourselves on every two-year election cycle, the less we're thinking about the longer term.

It's not necessarily about knowing what the longer term destination point is, but we're building campaigns with hundreds, sometimes thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of volunteers that close up shop and end every two years. And then we start new campaigns and we start all over. And what we have, in many cases, lost are communal organizations, whether they be religious, civic.

The decline in labor unions that give people long term community and relationships that enable them to have and leverage long term power and build long term power. And so if we want to break out of this cycle, what we really need is more let's build something that is not just going to close up shop after November 5 this year or whatever the election day is two years from now or the years after that.

And let's stop just playing defense on the worst possible case scenarios electorally, and let's instead invest in year round organizing. Let's invest in building organizations where people actually have the power to do things where we're not just going out and trying to recruit people in to do little tasks along the way, but where they actually have decision making power and can build that community themselves, where power is distributed.

We need to be doing a lot more investment in that. And that's like-- that's not like a big visionary pipe dream kind of thing. Like, we've had these things, these things exist and they have existed. It's not that they're easy, but they are concrete.

And we can start at any stage of the process investing in that, both like monetarily and with our own time.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: Kind of piggyback on what you said, Josh, and I think this is something that-- our systems of communications and trusted voices have been gutted over the last three decades, many of the voting organizations that used to be there, many of the rides to the polls that used to exist outside of campaign structures, the local newspapers, the micro and macro influencers outside of the church, a lot of them have been systematically dissolved.

And I think I agree so much on this idea that we have these campaigns that come in. They spend a lot of money. They bring in organizers from other states, other cities that don't the community, and they're not trusted voices. And there needs to be consistent structures on a local and state level that are consistently informing the communities, but also a more collective mindset that plugs into these local structures and are investing in these local structures all year round.

Because it is hard to trust. And so it creates this-- it creates a level of mistrust. You only came here to get my vote. You don't care about me. You don't care about this community.

What do you know about this community? And that's a very fair reaction when you've brought in an organizer from Las Vegas who has never been in North Carolina in their entire life, or somebody, my example, from Louisiana, who luckily just happened to be from the South so it made it a little better. But it's about giving and empowering the community as well.

And so what does it mean to recreate something that's just kind of been dismantled? And there's a lot more variables that goes into the party system and poll workers and we're not going to go into that. But I think, Josh, I absolutely agree with you that a lot of those trusted sources just aren't there.

HUSSEIN RASHID: So I want to summarize quickly and, again, please tell me if I'm hearing you wrong, but it sounds like part of the way to break the cycle is not being reliant on cyclical events to organize the community, but to organize the community around values, needs, desires that the community has. That requires cyclical individuals, electoral in this case, to come in court and support and buy into that power.

So it is that power resides within the community. And thus, and to your question of trust, Angélique, it is then about that relationality. So it's not extractive, it's not transactional, but is really ongoing. And so to me, this feels like the bridge between the social and the institutional that we've been talking about that, right? These are in fact, there are different ways of organizing, but they have to be in communication and contact.

And so I appreciate that. We've had a few questions that I want to make a statement on and then a question I want to throw to the two of you. So a lot of people are asking, are we working with organizations? Are we working with organizations? Are we working with organizations?

We as a program, do work with a few organizations. None of the ones mentioned so far. We do have students who've engaged with some of these organizations. I think the question is, how many of these organizations are thinking about religion in their democratic futures? Because if they're not understanding the role of religion plays now, they can't be imagining what role religion plays in the future or how to think critically about religion in that space.

And I have to ask and think that people think about the bidirectionality here and that who we choose to engage with are people who are open to the idea that religion exists now and exists in the future and has an impact on society. So can you imagine a future without religion? Yes, you can.

Is that a realistic future? I'm not entirely sold on that idea. So the question that I want to throw to the two of you, this is in response to our framing of directionality versus fixed endpoints in our futurist thinking, how do you aim for direction where you don't have a destination?

So how do you do directionality without thinking about end points? Which I think is a really wonderful, broad question. And there's a second part-- to honor the question, this is from Zain. I want to honor the question. But I think you sort of implicitly answered already.

So how do you have that endpoint-- without having that endpoint where measurability of success is so important in the world now? If without an endpoint, how do you say, yes, I'm meeting these metrics to success?

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: So once upon a time when I was a young 20 something, I was told that I should make a five-year plan. And for every year-- after that, I made a five-year plan. And none of those plans ever came to fruition because they were very concrete. They were very-- they were based only on the amount of knowledge that existed at the moment in which they were created.

Where I was situated at the moment. What access of knowledge I had, my perspective of the world. How much like-- literally when I say situated, I mean sitting in a congressional office. And only what my 27-year-old self could understand of the world. When I turned 20 something, almost 30 something, I decided that I was going to write down what I wanted to see and the life I wanted to create.

How I wanted my life to work. What I wanted my days to look like. And I stopped saying I want to be the senior X, y, Z at this organization, and I want to live in this house on this street. And I was able to identify, when opportunities came my way, what fit within that vision of what I wanted to see my life look like.

I would love to take credit for that. I definitely was like listening to a radio show and a very smart person was like, stop trying to make the world fit into your vision of it because you only know so much of the world. And I think that is the same way I believe Josh and I are looking at a future. Every single one of us only has so much knowledge.

Even if you put all of the smartest people in a room, they can only use so much of their brain. And so I think the perspective is if we come to these concrete, idealistic solutions, they actually may not be the best solutions and they have a very short runway. But if we start thinking about making sure that everyone lives comfortably, that everyone has a living wage, that everyone has the freedom to create a family when and how they want to--

The value sets allow there to be guidance to solutions as knowledge comes available.

JOSH WOLFSUN: I 100% agree with that, Angélique. What a great example of the difference there. The only thing I'd tack on is not having destinations doesn't mean you don't agree to things or set goals for some things. Like, there's nothing wrong with a goal for an organization. There's nothing wrong with here's what we want--

To Angélique's point, here's what we want our organization on the inside to look like. Here's what we want it to look like on the outside. And here's a way for us to try and identify whether we're on the right track with that, whether we're getting there. Where I think the trap is, just to be super clear about this with the destination piece, is in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years, here's where we're going to be. And now we're going to work backwards on all of the benchmarks that come to that point, that far out, in a world that is entropic, naturally.

We're going to work backwards on all the benchmarks. And, we've now created a system that we're now working to serve rather than iterating on and revising regularly to make work for us. And I think there's a real difference in that. And that doesn't mean we don't use as a way to change the lens where do we want to be in five years. As like maybe a way to look at what matters to us.

But that's the limit of really what it should be. It should not be, hey, we're going to have an organization, it's going to be structured this way. And people are going to be like this. And this person is going to feel this way about it, and this person is going to have this and this person is going to have this role with these powers.

And this person is no longer-- like, it's just not going to happen that way. It's just never going to happen that way. And we do a disservice to ourselves, I think, as people who are living out our lives together and building these organizations together, when we set up a system that is not just a structure for us to use to help get us there, but is a structure, a system that now we have to serve, and only works as a way for us to serve it.

And frankly, I think that's a problem, a big picture with a lot of the structures that we currently have, is when you look at our economy or when you look at our political system, we are working for those structures and not the other way around. And that is another way to think about big picture. I just landed on that three minutes before the end. Good thing you stuck around.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Yes.

JOSH WOLFSUN: What we could think about for political futures.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you both. OK, so quickly, one clarifying statement and then closing question. We're going to end. The clarifying statement. Josh's day job is his day job. It is not his role at Harvard. We are a non-political institution.

He is not working-- his political job does not connect with his fellowship at Harvard. So you both have 30 seconds each. What is one practical takeaway our audience can have from this conversation? What is the way they can build their political future?

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: Start with building community right now. Start with looking at your community and seeing where voices are needed and necessary and start setting your own table.

HUSSEIN RASHID: Thank you. Josh.

JOSH WOLFSUN: 100% with Angélique on this. If you want to get really concrete about it, take 10 minutes, sit down, pull out a piece of paper, pull out a pen, write down names of five people who you want to do work with and help make change with and identify one, what you want to work on, and two, where you have the opportunity and power already to help do that.

And then call them. Sit down and magic will happen, I promise. It's like-- it's not rocket science. There's lots of resources out there, so.

HUSSEIN RASHID: I want to give you a golf clap both. Thank you so much, because I'm buying a microphone. If I send a letter, it'll hurt people. But thank you both for this. This has been such a wonderful, enlightening conversation.

I appreciate you starting off our series. For those of you who've joined us, please make sure that you sign up for the next three events in our series. They will continue on the next three Tuesday evenings. You do need to register for each event separately.

Our event next week is on media, religion, and the nation. That is Tuesday, October 1 at starting at 6:00 PM Eastern. And you can sign up for our newsletter at rpl.hds.harvard.edu, which lists this event and so many other wonderful events we host here in the program.

Thank you to the audience for being in here. Thank you for my program mates for making sure this event went off without a hitch. And Angélique and Josh, to you both, again, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom and a fun and enlightening conversation.

ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: And thank you, Hussein. You were an amazing moderator. Thank you for keeping us on track.

JOSH WOLFSUN: Thank you, Hussein.

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